News-Record.com

Our News Department hosted a journalism workshop for area high school students this week. They were all brilliant kids, but I was especially impressed when I saw one guy wearing a green T-shirt with yellow lettering saying, "Go Pre."

Pre, of course, being the late, great Oregon distance runner Steve Prefontaine ...

... who was killed in a car crash way back in 1975.

So I was surprised, to say the least, that a teenager all these years later would have any idea who Steve Prefontaine was, let alone have a Go Pre T-shirt.

Turns out he's Seth Crawford, an outstanding distance runner at Northwest whose ambitions are 1) to lead his team to a state cross-country championship this fall and 2) go on to run at Carolina next year.

Northwest has an outstanding track and cross-country program and produces many excellent athletes, including state-record pole-vaulter Scott Houston.

I did a blog entry last fall noting that four former Vikings were current members of the UNC cross-country team.

Anyway, Seth's T-shirt gave me an opening to tell the students a story that links Prefontaine to the launch of my journalism career.

I had just finished my sophomore year at Carolina and was working for the summer at a knitting mill outside Hickory when Pre died. Despite his ranking as the country's top distance runner, there wasn't much coverage in the Hickory Daily Record.

So I wrote an article and dropped it off at the paper. Soon, sports editor Dan Richards called. He didn't publish my article but used exerpts from it (with credit) in a column of his own ... and he hired me to cover sports part-time for the rest of the summer. I worked in the mill from 7 'til 3, then covered youth baseball and local golf tournaments in the evenings and on weekends. The next summer, I was given a full-time internship. So, my first professional journalism jobs came about because of Steve Prefontaine.

Pre excelled because he was a famously hard worker and fierce competitor. Seth tells me the Vikings runners are already following a tough training schedule this summer. I'll be pulling for them this fall.

Go Seth!