Track performer, coach deserve Hall honor

FAYETTEVILLE — The Razorbacks opening this week’s four days of SEC Football Media Days in Hoover, Ala., seems to all but officially start the college football season today.

So this marks a final chance to make Hall of Fame track and field points before football commands center stage from August preseason practices through January bowl games dominance.

There’s room for only so many from each sport in the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame in Little Rock. From the 2016 Olympics alone, track and field seemingly bursts the Hall of Fame seams.

Sylvan Hills’ Jeff Henderson won men’s Olympics long jump gold. Former University of Arkansas, Fayetteville athletes Omar McLeod won men’s 110-meter hurdles gold, and Sandi Morris brought home women’s pole vault silver.

Razorbacks 2016 senior U.S. men’s Olympian Jarrion Lawson, the long jump and 100- and 200-meter dash winner at the 2016 NCAA Outdoor, was voted The Bowerman, college track’s Heisman Trophy equivalent.

However, two from track and field deserve Hall of Fame inclusion first.

One, Erick Walder has been annually proposed in this space as ridiculously Hall of Fame worthy.

From 1992-94 Walder won a Razorbacks record 10 NCAA championships in the long jump and triple jump.

With Walder propelling them by leaps and bounds, Coach John McDonnell’s Razorbacks went 6 for 6 from ’92-’94 annually winning the NCAA Indoor and NCAA Outdoor national championships while also going 6 for 6 winning the SEC Indoor and SEC Outdoor Championships from 1992-94.

For not just good but great measure, Walder sailed 28-8 1-4 in the long jump at an outdoor meet within legal wind conditions at El Paso, Texas.

Nobody before or since has long jumped that far while a collegian.

That alone deserves Hall of Fame admittance.

Until recently, it’s been taken for granted here that Arkansas Women’s Track/Cross Country Coach Lance Harter had been Hall of Fame inducted in Little Rock.

He hasn’t been.

It seems about the only Hall of Fame intersecting Harter’s career without him.

Harter has been inducted into the United States Track and Field Cross Country Coaches Association Hall of Fame, the California Collegiate Athletic Association Hall of Fame, the Mount Sac Relays Hall of Fame and of course the Sports Hall of Honor at both Arkansas and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo for his incredible success, including the only two women’s team national team championships that the UA has won in any sport, and 31 SEC championships, including three consecutive SEC Cross Country-Indoor-Outdoor triple crowns that no other SEC women’s team has even achieved once in addition to his success at Cal Poly with 12 Division II national championships.

Now with so many other worthy candidates from so many sports, it’s likely too much for a same year track twofer into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame.

But surely Walder and Harter will soon get their due lest the Hall appear not keeping track of the best in their field.