Great Dual Meet Rivalries

[Mighty Favog]

Talking college, of course. A query about this is on my blog, linked through the front page, but I thought I'd ask here too. Need not still be an active rivalry, but has to have some history and tradition and intensity to it. Big schools or small, doesn't matter to me.

So far I've got...

Everybody in the Pac-8 versus everybody else in the Pac-8 (only three are still going)
Almost everybody in the Ivy League versus almost everybody else in the Ivy League (only a few still going)
Arizona-Arizona State
Army-Navy
Ohio State-Michigan (less consistently held than you'd think)
Lafayette-Lehigh (much newer than you'd think)
UC Davis-Sacramento State
Williams, Amherst & Wesleyan (aka The Little Three)
Sam Houston State-Stephen F. Austin
Montana-Montana State
Akron-Kent State

What am I missing?

EDIT: Looks like Occidental versus Pomona Pitzer is a decent rivalry.

[26mi235]

I was there when Seig was and one of those years PP finally tied(?) Oxy, who had won the League meet since forever. A year or two before they finally beat Oxy in XC.

I think that Oregon State and Oregon had a pretty good rivalry back in the 60s.

[ElSuper]

USC vs Ucla of course very much alive and still a heated show down every year!

[gh]

...
I think that Oregon State and Oregon had a pretty good rivalry back in the 60s.

as the mighty one said, everybody vs. everybody else in the Pac-8 was "huge" in the '60s and '70s. And even though that was an era when Bowerman's powerhouses were winning national titles, Berny Wagner's Beavers held their own. In those days, the meet (as with the football game) I believe was called "The Civil War"

[Marlow]

Good news: I competed in the 1971 Stanford-Cal Big Meet
Bad News: I didn't score a point.
Good news: We won!

[EastBayprepoftheweek67]

UCLA vs Kansas
Cal vs San Jose State

[Halfmiler2]

Talking college, of course. A query about this is on my blog, linked through the front page, but I thought I'd ask here too. Need not still be an active rivalry, but has to have some history and tradition and intensity to it. Big schools or small, doesn't matter to me.

So far I've got...

...

Almost everybody in the Ivy League versus almost everybody else in the Ivy League (only a few still going)

...

The following would get the special attention:

The H-Y-P meet (Harvard-Yale-Princeton)
Penn-Princeton (used to be indoors and outdoors every year sometimes with Columbia, now not as consistently held)
Penn-Cornell (served every 4th year as a qualifying meet to send a joint team to England to face Oxford-Cambridge)

[Mighty Favog]

Tom Lewis at USTFCCCA alerted me to Kansas-Missouri. Dates from 1901 but had a significant hiatus before coming back in an indoor-only version.

[Tuariki]

The most unyielding aspect of each of my four seasons at WSU 1970 through to 1974, from the point ofview of our coaches - JAck Mooberry and John Chaplin (especially Chaplin) was that we beat the Huskies in the dual meet. From my fading memory we won every year.

As far as Chaplin was concerned it was tantamount to treason if the Cougs were to lose to the Huskies.

Had some great dual meet memories - especially Ngeno v Pre and then the other Oregon runners when we were up against the Ducks.

[gh]

....
Everybody in the Pac-8 versus everybody else in the Pac-8 ....

Not to sound too much like the old guy in the retirement home waxing nostalgic about the good old days of walking up hill to school both ways, but indeed one of the real strengths of the Pac-8 system in the glory days was that all of the duals were important (although with its small student body Stanford was pretty much a weak sister for much of that era).

And, to me it least, it bred a competitiveness that many of today's athletes seem to be lacking. It worked this way: the Northern Division was the 2 Oregons and 2 Washingtons, the Southern was Cal/Stanford in NorCal, USC/UCLA in SoCal.

Each year you had 5 in-Conference duals, 3 of them being inside your division, 2 out. So using my letter-year season of '68 as an example, Washington State hosted Stanford, Oregon State and Washington and visited Oregon and USC. And the "rivalry game" was always the last of the meets, the first weekend of May (against the Kentucky Derby).

The next week was the Northern or Southern Division meet (4 schools, completely team based), although I don't think the Southern version lasted too long.

And then the next week the Conference meet. So that was 7 straight weeks of 8 high-powered schools banging away for team glory. Just like a real sports league!

Is it any wonder I miss it?


(ps--the facts above from memory, may be slightly off on finite details)

[26mi235]

One thing that I remember from high school days was the rivalry between USC and UCLA, with USC being the traditional power. I think that they televised the meet and UCLA edged out USC. Of course, since I did not really know that much about track and field, I 'knew things' that were actually not the case. But another interesting thing that I remember (and now I will find out if it is correct) concerns the LJ. Specifically, in 1972 Randy Williams set the WJR at 8.34 (still standing?) to win the Olympic Gold and came back in 1976 to get the silver. You would think he would be a shoe-in to win the LJ in the dual meet, but, NO, he never won.

[dj]

One thing that I remember from high school days was the rivalry between USC and UCLA, with USC being the traditional power. I think that they televised the meet and UCLA edged out USC. Of course, since I did not really know that much about track and field, I 'knew things' that were actually not the case. But another interesting thing that I remember (and now I will find out if it is correct) concerns the LJ. Specifically, in 1972 Randy Williams set the WJR at 8.34 (still standing?) to win the Olympic Gold and came back in 1976 to get the silver. You would think he would be a shoe-in to win the LJ in the dual meet, but, NO, he never won.

Which is the basis for one of U.S. track's great trivia questions, first offered (at least to my ears) by Jim Dunaway: Name the four jumpers who won the USC-UCLA dual meet in the Randy Williams years.

[tandfman]

One thing that I remember from high school days was the rivalry between USC and UCLA, with USC being the traditional power. I think that they televised the meet and UCLA edged out USC. Of course, since I did not really know that much about track and field, I 'knew things' that were actually not the case. But another interesting thing that I remember (and now I will find out if it is correct) concerns the LJ. Specifically, in 1972 Randy Williams set the WJR at 8.34 (still standing?) to win the Olympic Gold and came back in 1976 to get the silver. You would think he would be a shoe-in to win the LJ in the dual meet, but, NO, he never won.

Which is the basis for one of U.S. track's great trivia questions, first offered (at least to my ears) by Jim Dunaway: Name the four jumpers who won the USC-UCLA dual meet in the Randy Williams years.

Been there, done that:

www.trackandfieldnews.com/discussion/vi ... =5&t=41341

[gh]

Williams also had limited NCAA success too. After winning as a frosh, he was 4th-2nd-4th in the Nationals. But he had that gold medal forever!

[Mighty Favog]

Arkansas at Oregon next year, in the middle of the Oregon Relays:
http://www.oregonlive.com/trackandfield ... sas_a.html