Howard Hammonds

WESTPORT, N.Y. — All it took was a stroll across the track at the right time.

“It changed my life,” 1962 Butler graduate Howard Hammonds said.

A pole vaulter for the Golden Tornado track and field team, Hammonds was making his way back from the pole vault area during practice when a coach stopped him and told him to run a pace lap for the team's mile runners.

“I did one lap with them and felt pretty good, so I did another one,” Hammonds recalled. “I was still leading the pack, so I did a third lap, still led, then finished the mile. The other guys were huffing and puffing and I wasn't breathing that hard. I ran it in five minutes, 12 seconds, having never run the mile before.

“The coach said I wasn't a pole vaulter anymore. I was a distance runner.”

Hammonds went on to a stellar career as a distance runner and coach — and will be inducted into the Butler Area School District Athletic Hall of Fame Sept. 18. Hammonds, Mike Seybert, Mickey Haley, Cliff Diehl, T.J. McCance and Donnie Brown will be honored during a 5 p.m. ceremony in the high school cafeteria, then presented on the field prior to the Golden Tornado's home football game that night.

“That was the most impactful five minutes of my life,” Hammonds said of pacing Butler's mile runners that day. He went on to place fifth in the WPIAL meet in his first season running the mile. His time of 4:28 broke the school record.

The summer leading into his senior year, Hammonds and three other returning senior distance runners petitioned the school district for formation of a cross country team.

“The athletic director asked why we wanted a team and we said we had a chance to win a state championship,” Hammonds said.

The program was formed and Hammonds won the PIAA individual state title in 1961, during Butler's first-ever cross country season. The Tornado have not had an individual cross country state champion since.

Butler finished third as a team at the state meet. Dave Eichenlaub placed ninth at the state meet, Don Hinchberger 15th. Ed Hepe, who was joining Butler as its boys basketball coach, guided the cross country team as well.

Hammonds went on to place third in the state in the mile run after winning the WPIAL title in that event. He ran at Slippery Rock State College, “but my focus began shifting toward coaching at that point.”

He coached the Berks campus of Penn State to a third-place finish at the NJCAA national meet and coached the individual national champion that year. Hammonds coached 14 Division III All-Americans in three years at SUNY-Plattsburgh in New York.

“The 1976 U.S, Olympic (track) team was looking for a training camp and I convinced them to use Plattsburgh, since it was on its way to Montreal,” Hammonds said. “I wound up organizing that camp.

“From there, I was asked to coach the Olympic track team in Saudi Arabia.”

He was there for two years before Saudia Arabia decided to honor the U.S. boycott of the 1980 Games.

“I got out of coaching at that point and sold sports equipment for 30 years,” Hammonds said.

At age 71, Hammonds now helps out coaching for a local high school in New York.

“You never know when you might change a kid's life, send it in a different direction that works out for him,” Hammonds said. “It happened for me. If I wasn't running across the track that day, who knows how my life goes?

“I'm proud of my accomplishments at Butler. I'm glad to see they're memorializing athletic achievements there now. That school has so much history that way and people coming through the district should know about it.”