All-time great high school teams: Boys cross-country - Bloomington North 1980
Carmel's 2015 girls swim team has established itself as perhaps the best in U.S. history and certainly the best ever in Indiana.
In conjunction with that, The Indianapolis Star is selecting all-time best teams in the 19 other Indiana high school sports. Selections were made in consultation with experts from around the state.
• All-time great Indiana high school teams sport-by-sport
Bloomington North's then-31-year-old coach, Charlie Warthan, had a good idea that he had a strong team in 1980. Not only were the Cougars eighth at state the year before, Warthan ran with them every day.
Warthan, who finished 22nd at the 1972 U.S. Olympic marathon trials, said he kept his runners "honest" on long training runs. In faster workouts, he said, "they could kick me pretty good."
Warthan wasn't alone in that regard.
Bloomington North's championship was historic on multiple levels:
>> Its score of 34 points was two off the state record of 32 set by Anderson in 1947. (Anderson's record was set in the second year of the formal state meet, and the sport was not as developed then.) With individual runners displaced, Bloomington North's Marty Bassett, Keith Sharpless, Jeff Grove, David Johnolz and Chris Crewell had a 1-2-4-7-20 finish.
>> Bloomington North beat runner-up Carmel by 115 points, second-largest victory margin in state history. (The record of 131 was set by Anderson in 1951.)
>> It was Indiana's first state meet in which the distance was 5,000 meters. Owen Valley's Curt Carey won in 14 minutes, 42.3 seconds – a record that still stands – at Indianapolis' South Grove Golf Course. Chatard's James Murphy, who once ran a sub-4-minute mile, was second in 14:56.1 and future Olympian Terry Brahm of Heritage Hills third in 14:57.5.
>> Bassett (15:03.1) was fifth, Sharpless (15:03.7) sixth and Grove (15:07.6) eighth. Including Johnolz (15:13.5) and Crewell (15:35.5), the team's average time was 15:07.6 – one of the fastest 5K averages in U.S. history at a state meet. The spread from runner Nos. 1-4 was just 10.4 seconds.
>> MileSplit.us retroactively recognized Bloomington North as the national champion of 1980. Bloomington North and 1981 Carmel are two of only seven boys cross-country teams inducted into the National Coaches Association Hall of Fame.
In a runnerspace.com article, Bassett said the runners were so close that did everything together, from running to listening to music to playing the "Risk" board game. The day before the state meet, they jogged the course and slept overnight at the Indianapolis home of Grove's sister, spread out on beds, couches and sleeping bags.
"That morning the mood changed, the lack of sleep forgotten, and a steely, purposeful resolve embodied us," Bassett wrote.
The Cougars ran as they always did, clumped together. In the Hoosier Hills Conference meet, they had swept the top six places, with five boys tied for first. At state, their pack started near the back but gradually moved up.
"They supported each other," Warthan said. "We had a good game plan going in, and they followed through."
Through two seasons, Bloomington North's only defeat was at state in '79.
In 1981, Bloomington North dropped to third; Bassett and Grove finished second and fourth, respectively. Both runners also qualified for the Kinney nationals, in which Grove was 14th and Bassett 31st at Orlando, Fla.
Bassett and Sharpless went on to run for Indiana University and Grove for Purdue.
Sharpless became a colonel in the Indiana Army National Guard. He spent one year in Afghanistan as an embedded tactical trainer at an infantry battalion of the Afghan Army.
Other teams considered as Indiana's best ever were 1981 Carmel, which packed five runners within seven seconds of each other from 10th to 18th; 1993 Carmel, which had four of the top 12 at state and five of the top eight at semistate; and 2003 Columbus North, led by state champion Christian Wagner. Carmel scored 61 points in 1981 and 51 in 1993; Columbus North had 43 in '03.
In 1974, Hammond's Rudy Chapa, Carey Pinkowski and Tim Keough finished 1-2-5 at state, respectively, but the team was fourth. All three ran a sub-9-minute two-mile the following spring, an achievement not duplicated by a high school trio until Northport, N.Y., did so last year.
Call Star reporter David Woods at (317) 444-6195. Follow him on Twitter at @DavidWoods007.