1969 Track & Field Team
During the 1969 track & field season, the team, captained by Mr. Tom Herrington ’69 and Mr. Joe Simpson ’69 and coached by Mr. Jim Seidule, defeated the best public, parochial, and independent schools in Virginia and Washington, D.C. The team won all of its 10 scheduled meets that year, including the Cronly Invitational (with a margin of 29.5 points over the second-place school) and the Virginia Prep Meet, as well as the Alexandria City Meet and the Hill-Woodberry Meet, both of which ended with dramatic relay victories in the last event. In addition, the team defeated Woodberry Forest on four separate occasions and completed its undefeated season with a championship in the Virginia State Meet, topping second place Bishop O’Connell by 17 points. The team set school records in the pole vault (Jesse Erwin ’69), high jump (Jim Morton ’69), triple jump (Morton), 330-hurdles (Jenner Wood ’70), and half-mile and mile (Tom Herrington ’69). In Coach Seidule’s 19 years at Episcopal, the 1969 team was the only one that achieved undefeated status.
Coach Seidule says, “They were at their best in the toughest competition. When called on to compete, many times they went beyond what they and the coaches thought they could do. Thus they set numerous individual and school records. I think we had only one injury. Not one pulled muscle!”
Co-Captain Joe Simpson and teammate Jenner Wood remember Coach Seidule’s dynamism as the driving force behind this championship team. Simpson says, “His boundless energy and enthusiasm (I can see him running around practice yelling, ‘Getting ready!’) made us focus on what we were supposed to do.”
Wood recalls, “He would run around during warm-ups and stretching yelling, ‘It’s a great day for the race – the Human Race!’”
Watch a video of the team's induction.
The members of the 1969 track & field team were:
Walter Fondren Allday ’71
William Oliver Baldwin III ’70*
Richard Bardolph, Jr. ’69
Joseph A. Boyd III ’69
Philip M. Bray ’70
Edward Trigg Brown, Jr. ’70
Carl Ivan Carlson III ’70
John Sloan Cathcart ’69
John Ross Clark ’71
G. Moffett Cochran ’69
William Ruffin Cox III ’71
W. B. Rodman Davis ’70
Richard McKenzie Dobbins ’70
Paul Anderson Duke, Jr. ’70*
Jesse H. Erwin IV ’69
Ralph Wilson Gorrell ’69
Thomas Williford Herrington ’69 (co-captain)
F. Howard Hudgins ’69
Stephen Bordley Hyde ’69*
Estill Forrest Jones, Jr. ’69
Lawrence Elliott Lee ’70*
Oliver Shepler Marshall ’70
Peter Muir Marshall ’70
Jack Beverly Matthews ’69
Lee Massey McLaughlin, Jr. ’70
James McKay Morton ’69
James Edwin Newman, Jr. ’70
Owen Gray Benedict O’Connor ’70
Peter Van R. Rhein ’70
James M. Seidule (head coach)
Christopher Hart Shepherd ’71
Joe Hartsell Simpson ’69 (co-captain)
David Lee Speights (assistant coach)
George Craig Stewart III ’70
Robert C. Vaughan III (assistant coach)
James Cooke Wilson III ’70
Henry Alexander Wise, Jr. ’69
E. Jenner Wood III ’70
Richard Fenner Yarborough, Jr. ’63 (assistant coach)
*Deceased
