Jack Shepard is the king of tracking high school track and field

Jack Shepard admits that often opening a file that has track meet results can be similar to the anticipation of a child on Christmas morning. You never know when it might be something very special and very unexpected.

And Jack Shepard looks at a lot of track meet results. Thousands and thousands, seeking that juicy morsel that might have been missed by those who compile the local, state and national lists.

That's because he takes all those lists to the ultimate level, not only producing annual boys rankings for Track and Field News, but then adding only the best to the all-time lists, all of which he has done by himself since 1979 after working directly with T&F News a decade before that.

The result is the only annual publication that, with the help of girls editor Mike Kennedy, no true track and field fanatic can do without. It's a 5½ x 8½, 68-page book that is short on pictures, has no text, has type that often requires magnifying glasses but is crammed with invaluable statistics.



Simply titled "High School Track," the 53rd edition is on sale now and will no doubt be scattered about at this weekend's 44th Arcadia Invitational in Southern California's San Gabriel Valley. The meet, at Arcadia High School, is annually one of the nation's best and has produced 24 national records over the years and featured 125 future Olympians. 

Shepard's book, which will likely be called upon frequently during Saturday night's national invitational, is a labor of love that each year becomes easier and easier while at the same time harder and harder. It's a paradox brought about by the electronic world that makes access to meets easier but also doubles and triples the workload that used to include newspaper results, telephone calls, mysterious faxes, his attendance at all of the major meets and often two or three dual meets daily if he was looking for specific performances.

You picture someone who is driven by marks and pays careful attention to wind readings and timing devises as a kind of hermit who rarely leaves his office and wouldn't have the slightest idea, or interest, in the economy or world affairs.

And you'd be wrong.

Jack Shepard may be a statistician but he has other interests and from July to February, he actually manages to have a normal life. Hey, better than normal since he and his wife of 47 years spend several weeks each summer in Europe.

From March to June he admits, is "a little hectic."



"It starts building in March and I'll spend 16 hours a day (gathering marks)," said Shepard, who worked for Texaco for 36 years until 1996. "I get 99.5 percent of my information on-line now days. I study major track web sites like DyeStat, Athletic.net and MileSplit and then I fan out from there to very solid web sites from various states."

The hours build up quickly, usually 60-70 a week, so he balances that even during the season with activities like the Orange County Wine Society and his church. He says he has no problem breaking away from his constant search for track marks which in the end produce lists of several hundred names, 50 or so which make his annual lists. The top marks often carry over to the all-time leaders, dating back to the 1880s.

He admits he had a lot of help researching both indoor and outdoor track results and yet there have been times when he stumbled upon a mark eight to 10 years after-the-fact that never before had surfaced.

"For example, one of my friends was looking up some old track meet results for an all-time state list and he came across a Nebraska state championship meet story," said Shepard. "The story explained that the meet was hampered by heavy rain, forcing the long jump and pole vault events indoors.

"The long jump was won at 24-10½ by a pretty good athlete named Gale Sayers. For a week or so that became the national indoor record, six years after the fact. That record was broken a few weeks later."

Clearly, Shepard is not averse to changing records when he gets good, solid evidence that the new mark is legitimate.



"I remember we got information about an indoor 800 that was run in 1:51 and change," he said. "That was also better than the national record at the time. We went back to the result and saw two or three runners in the race ran 1:52, so that validated the mark."

It goes the other way.

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Changing with the times
For the longest time a discus thrower named Tim Vollmer was given credit for the high school record with the college-weight implement. Years later Vollmer himself admitted that he got away with using a lighter high school discus.

Vollmer fessed up and Shepard used his best legitimate effort.

Although Shepard is not hung up on many of the stats his peers cling to, like the affect of altitude and requiring four schools to be in a meet for a record to be considered, he isn't blind to the affects of wind and timing devises.
Shepard will accept a record from a dual meet provided there are accurate wind gauges, fully automatic timing and creditable coaches.

"If you have a dual meet and you know it's well-officiated, why not?" asks Shepard, fully aware that the National Federation would swoon if asked the same question. "We're more concerned about how the mark was officiated than the kind of meet.



"We don't agree (with the National Federation) and that's OK."

He tells the story of marks from Texas state meets, which he attended until recently, where both fully electronic and hand times were recorded for 20 straight years.

"Because the hand times were faster when they converted them, they just reported the hand times," said Shepard, who went to his first meet with his dad at the age of six in 1941. "That happened for a long time. When they finally went to fully automatic, many of the records were questioned and rightfully so. Instead of adding (the standard hand-automatic conversion) .24 for example to Roy Martin's 20.0 for 200 meters, they just added a zero and made it 20.00. We found the fully electronic reading and it was 20.13, which is still the national record."

But he also admits that modern technology is helpful in determining questionable performances. He can scan a complete result on the computer in 20 seconds. While others might watch video of a 100-meter race to see who won, Shepard finds himself looking for evidence of wind conditions like flags being straight out, a potential sign of an excess breeze.

He tries to limit his list from 100 to 150 names while Kennedy has between 300 and 400.

"Having that many names does provide a good data base," said Shepard of Kennedy's list which is an open window for athletes to watch in the future.



The two are good friends and often help each other get splits when they both attend the same meet. Both have numerous sources to help gather information and they keep those secret so coaches aren't tempted to try to influence them.

"Jack is very meticulous in what he does," says Kennedy, former Los Angeles Times sports writer who went from collecting coins as a youngster to searching for track performances and joined Shepard in 1982 in organizing his half of the lists for Track and Field News.

"He approaches things in a very organized way so he can utilize his time very well."

Kennedy says gathering girls performances is probably a little harder than boys because until recently there were fewer sources. He, like Shepard, scans thousands of results.

"We've gone from famine to feast," he says. "For example, last weekend in Texas alone there were more than 80 meets. Not dual meets, we're talking about 80 invitationals. They're not all big ones but you never know where a quality mark will be."

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Big picture, unbreakable marks
When he started, gathering information the same way as Shepard, he figured he was about 80 percent complete. Now he knows it was closer to 50 percent. Even now while he strives for more, he knows while it seems like he's getting 95 percent, he may only find 75 or 80.



He said it does take a certain type of personality to do the job and those who can't usually throw up their hands in frustration or burn themselves out trying to be 100 percent accurate while slaving over those marks for 16 to 18 hours a day.

The two are different, too.

While Shepard is attending meets less and less these days, Kennedy still goes to as many major events as he can, hoping to see those ‘once in a lifetime' performances.

"Doing this requires an inquiring mind and being able to recognize when a mark just doesn't look right," said Kennedy echoing Shepard's words. "If you see where a 6-2 or 6-3 high jumper went 6-10, you check more carefully because maybe it's just a typo and he went 6-1.

"This happens more in track than any other sport and you don't want to give someone credit they don't deserve."

But if that high jumper beat someone who cleared 6-8 for second place, they are quickly added to the list.



Kennedy says the explosion in information has forced him to adjust his standards. In the girls 800, for example, the 2:17 that made his 300-400 name list five years ago has been replaced first by a 2:16 and now 2:15.

"I'll bet it's down to 2:11 in five years because we're getting more results than we used to," he says.

Both statisticians try to look at the big picture, hoping to have the most accurate lists they can so the next generation of stat-gathers and record confirmers won't have to scour quite as hard as they or people like Dick Bank, who first started High School Track in 1956 or the late Scott Davis, helped make the book an invaluable tool for writers and coaches, not to mention limitless athletes who find where they stand (or don't stand) after a particularly fine performance.

Shepard has seen most of the best in his book.

When asked the mark he considers the most untouchable in track, he doesn't hesitate to say Michael Carter's 81-3½ in the shot put.

"The greatest high school track athlete had to be Jim Ryun for his body of work for two years," said Shepard of the Kansas great who dominated in the mile in 1964-65 as no high school athlete has before or after.



"But Michael Carter. I used to tell people I'd never see Michael Carter's record broken as long as I'm alive. But when I saw that (Gresham, Oregon's) Ryan Crouser put the shot 77-2 to break Brent Noon's indoor record this winter, I called his coach and told him I don't want to be dying in the next six months," said Shepard, who did not see the Carter's prodigious toss at the Golden West Invitational in Sacramento in 1979.

"It's still exciting to find good marks. I find myself going to DyeStat 20 times a day during the season looking for that mark that will make my list."

Steve Brand, senior writer/columnist Mitch Stephens and MaxPreps Director of Photography Todd Shurtleff will be leafing through Shepard's book often Saturday while covering the meet in Arcadia. See coverage here throughout the weekend.