Last week the legendary Eads coach Gail Crawford was inducted into the CHSAA Hall of Fame and spoke at length about his coaching experiences in Eads. Crawford was a superb athlete in his own right growing up in Joes, Colorado among a culture of greatness among boys’ sports competitors. He himself was a tremendous hurdler while in high school.
The thing that Crawford shared that was his guiding light while coaching was the fear of losing. Gail Crawford doesn’t like to lose and so it was that whatever assignment he was given, he gave it his all for those teams and those athletes. Even when he was assigned to coach girls.
Crawford may not realize it, but from my perspective he set the tone, the understood legacy of excellence, in girls’ sports at Eads. He came into the Eads system just as Title IX became the law of the land, and in Eads, like all the other schools in the state and nation, this new law was instrumental in bringing girls’ sports into their extra-curricular programming. Prior to 1972 girls were only cheerleaders and never had the opportunity to compete in organized, competitive sports.
Looking back over 50 years of girls’ sports at Eads, we won the lottery when Gail Crawford was hired to be a coach in the district. He had a gift when coaching girls. First, he took them where they were—which was basically nowhere as they really had no concept of what it took to be competitive. He taught them how to train, to approach strategy in sports, to set personal goals for themselves, and to respect each other as they made their way through those first learning years of competitive girls’ sports.
He showed them how to be winners.
His first challenge was girls’ track, but luckily at the same time Title IX had passed into law, at Eads there was a group of surprisingly naturally talented female athletes. Crawford immediately saw they had talent and began to train them and tell them they could be winners.
I was not in high school yet, but even down in the junior high and late elementary years, Crawford saw some talent, including me I guess, and had us running and jumping and learning how to compete in some Junior Olympic Track meets. He developed a feeder program before the concept in girls’ sports was ever even considered.
At the high school level, he was blessed with a lot of talented athletes, but one stood out among the rest and that was Nikki Igou who dominated this part of the state while in high school. In 1976, when Nikki was a senior, she was chosen All-Conference and All-State in basketball.
At the district track meet that same year she won all four of her events, breaking the meet records in all four. In 1976, the track was not measured in meters, but rather in yardage so the 1976 times are not quite equal to today’s metric standards. At the state meet the next week, Igou was a state champion in both hurdle events, and placed second in the discus, and third in the long jump. She set new school records in the 80-yard hurdles at 10.9 seconds, 110-yard hurdles at 15.1 seconds, Discus at 101’ 4”, and the long jump at 18’ 3”. That long jump record still has never been broken. She finished the season with 127.5 points out of a possible 144 in 6 track meets. Igou was picked by the coaches at the 1976 state track meet in Limon as the outstanding track performer at the meet and was given a plaque by Colorado Sidelines Magazine.
Igou was a talented athlete, no doubt, but it was the training and instruction from Crawford that made her the performer she was.
Crawford got the same results from the rest of that 1976 team. By the end of that season, they showed up at Limon, in what is always crappy spring weather, and competed way above their prior performances.
It was Eads’ first ever girls’ state championship in any sport—and as it has turned out—it is still the only girls’ state track championship ever won by Eads.
Crawford went on to find great success in girls’ basketball leading Eads’ first girls’ team to advance to the Colorado State Girls’ Basketball Tournament where they placed runner-up in 1979. He stuck with girls’ basketball and finally won the first girls’ basketball title for Eads in 1984. He went on to win more titles in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was Crawford, above all other coaches, who first set the championship tone for Eads girls’ basketball that is still present today.
Crawford used the sport of track & field to build athletes—in this case the girl athletes at Eads. Every day the girls track team arrived in the locker room and he was so organized he had posted every athlete’s training assignment for the day. He tracked their progress, taught them how to set their own goals, and to rise to even more greatness than they ever even realized was in them.
Below is the article about the first and only Eads girls’ track & field state championship team that was written 50 years ago:
Nikki Igou Leads Eads to State Track Crown (Kiowa County Press, Friday, May 21, 1976)
LIMON – the Eads girls track team, led by a pair of victories by super-athlete Nikki Igou, won the state Class A track meet last Saturday here, outscoring neighboring Cheyenne Wells by nine big points.
It was the first state track title in the school’s history.
The boys’ track team scored 11 points to finish eighth in the state with the school’s athlete of the year, David Stavely, winning the state half-mile championship.
But it was Igou that provided Eads with its shining moments here.
She won the 80-yard hurdles in 10.9 seconds, more than a second better than the existing state meet record of 12.0 and she ran off with the 110-yard hurdles in 15.3 seconds, again more than a second better than the state meet record of 16.4.
Both marks were aided by a strong wind, however, and will stand only as “wind-aided” records.
Besides her two hurdle victories, Igou finished second in the 100-yard dash and third in the long jump to become clearly the star of this state track meet.
Despite her premier showing here, however, her broad jump performance was a disappointment. She had jumped 18 feet, three inches last week in the district meet in La Junta. On this day, however, she was not able to adjust to the stiff wind into which she jumped and the nip-and-tuck schedule, according to coach Gail Crawford.
In fact, Crawford said, “Igou’s best jump of the day was launched off the wrong foot. The winning jump, by Terri Dorrell of North Park, was 15 feet, 8 inches, more than two feet less than Igou’s district marks.
While Igou clearly led Eads to victory, it was a couple of 220-yard dashes by sophomore Konda McKnight that actually brought Eads the title.
Her first starling performance came on the anchor furlough of the half-mile relay. She took the baton in third place and turned it on to bring the Eads foursome home in first place with a clocking of 1:52.8.
It was her second 220 that actually clinched the state title for the Eagles. Only one other event remained when McKnight toed the starting blocks for the open 220, and that was the medley relay in which Eads was not entered but nearest competitor Cheyenne Wells was.
A Cheyenne Wells victory in the medley, and a triumph by CW’s Suzie Harwig over McKnight would have given CW the state title, and McKnight hadn’t beaten Harwig in the 220 this year.
But McKnight sped home ahead of Harwig, finishing fourth and clipping the team state title for the Eagles.
McKnight was joined on the winning half-mile relay team by Lori Zimmerman, Patty Glover, and Natalie Watts.
A couple of less-than-perfect handoffs spoiled Eads chance at another victory in the 440 yard relay, and the foursome of Glover, Watts, McKnight, and Suzette Barnett came in fourth behind Hugo, Platte Valley, and Mancos.
In the boys meet, Stavely battled the Limon wind in the half mile to win in 2:08.5 to claim the lion’s share of the Eagles’ 11 points.
John Weirich chipped in with a third-place in the discus, beating district champion and teammate Frank Miller, and Mike Weirich finished in fourth place in the 180-yard low hurdles.
Haxtun won the team title with 37 points over second-place Granada’s 21. Others included Limon 15, West Grant 14, Primero 12, Merino 11.5, Eads 11, and Cheyenne Wells 5.5.
