Ray Vickrey takes a practice jump during his post-college days

The blessing and the curse of having heroes

By Bob Vickrey

October 11, 2013

As I stood at the very end of the long jump runway at Dement Field awaiting my final preliminary jump, I spotted my dad among the spectators standing on the infield that had come out to support its hometown high school track team in the annual district meet.

I took a deep breath and knew that this was my last chance to make the cut and advance to the final round of competition. I accelerated slowly down the runway and gained speed before hitting the takeoff board, just like I had practiced so many hundreds of times before. When I landed in the sand pit, I knew instinctively that I had successfully beaten my best jump of the day. As I was preparing to celebrate, I glanced up to see the official raising his red flag signaling that I had scratched. My right foot had extended slightly beyond the board, thus disqualifying my very best jump.    

I walked slowly back up the runway to reclaim my warm-up uniform and promptly scanned the crowd. My dad was nowhere in sight. I knew even in that moment that my disappointing performance was about much more than failing to qualify for the finals of the long jump event. It was about doing so in the presence of my father.

You must understand that in my dad’s era, he had been one of the finest athletes to emerge from East Texas in many years. He excelled in baseball and track and field, and just about any other sport he decided to play. I remember in his later years that he painfully lamented his second place finish in the Texas High School State Championship competition. He remained a competitor to the bitter end. He had never exerted any pressure on me to follow in his footsteps, but somehow I managed to inflict that burden upon myself, as only sons are capable of doing.

My older brother Ray had been inducted into the Baylor University Hall of Fame after winning multiple long jump titles at the Southwest Conference track meet a decade before I entered college. He blossomed into a great sprinter who was a member of several record-breaking relay teams. He once captured the title of Most Valuable Performer in that same championship meet by scoring points in four different events.

The first memory of my big brother’s athletic prowess occurred the night I attended one of his high school football games. My sister Elsie played clarinet in the school band which performed during halftime, so Friday nights had become somewhat of a family affair for us that year. In fact, I played the nagging little brother who constantly accused her of being the band member that was out of step as they marched during halftime. I remember receiving a playful slap on the back of the head after each remark on the way home. 

During the game against Gulf Coast rival Baytown, Ray returned a punt almost the length of the field. I was only eight years old at the time and vividly remember my dad hoisting me up on his shoulders so I could see above the crowd. Our team lost that night 40-6, but my brother’s exciting punt return for a touchdown had given the crowd about the only positive moment to cheer about that whole evening.

While growing up in the midst of an athletically gifted family as the youngest child, I took immense pride in the successful athletic careers of both my dad and brother, and never considered the lengthy shadow they each had subtly cast until I grew older.

I eventually inherited Ray’s bedroom after he departed for college. During his occasional weekend visits back home, he would bring his medals and trophies and deposit them in my desk drawers. As each desk drawer filled to overflowing, I cleared out another drawer beneath it to accommodate his prizes. I proudly showed them off to my best friends and we eagerly held up each medal and studied the imprinted labels engraved upon their backside. In his senior year, the Baylor 440-yard relay team tied the existing world record, and Ray ran the third leg on that record-breaking team. It represented a rather proud moment for one little brother.

After being raised in that competitive environment, I naturally grew up loving sports. In fact, our east-side Houston suburb of Galena Park was sports crazy. There were at least a dozen college athletes living within a two-block radius of our house, and several of them were players making headlines in statewide sports circles. We were raised in a culture that prided and defined itself on athletic success and offered no apologies for those traditions.

I had always known that while I possessed some portion of my family’s athletic genes, I was lacking in the one area that could not be coached—speed. It seems that my dad and big brother had used up the family gene pool in that important category. I had been forced to rely on practice and repetition to offset that missing ingredient. I recognized my limitations of size and speed and also probably lacked much of their will and desire.

During my dad’s retirement years, he told me that he often still had recurring dreams about long jumping—only in these dreams, he could glide through the air and choose when he would come down and make his landing. He laughed with slight embarrassment as he told me the story about his ability to fly through the air and arbitrarily control how far he jumped. I nodded to him and confessed that I had also had the same dream. We decided it was likely most athletes had similar fantasies and dreams about their various sporting events.

Exactly four years after that high school district track meet, I stood once again on another long jump runway ready for my final attempt and realized the occasion perhaps offered the chance to atone for that earlier disappointment. No, this wasn’t the finals of the Southwest Conference track meet, nor was it any event that would capture tomorrow’s newspaper headlines. I was merely competing in the annual Diadelosa Relays, the Baylor University intramural track meet that brought together many former high school athletes on campus who no longer competed in varsity sports.

This time I scanned the infield and caught sight of my brother Ray chatting with his old college roommate and family friend, Clyde Hart, who had become the very successful Baylor track coach. I paid little attention to them as I stormed down the runway and did what I had previously only done in those dreams. I landed somewhere beyond my wildest expectations and somewhat miraculously broke the existing Baylor intramural record by almost an entire foot.

As I sat on the grassy turf unlacing my shoes and attempted to take in what had just transpired, I heard the public address announcer confirm the record jump. I sat still basking in the euphoria of the moment while knowing this small feat represented only a personal triumph—and nothing more. That day I found out that redemption could mysteriously appear in the most unexpected moments.

When I looked up, I spotted two familiar smiling faces approaching me from the infield. I was sincerely hoping that Ray & Clyde had not walked all the way across the field to inform me that I had fallen asleep and was only dreaming—because this one felt undeniably real.

Bob Vickrey’s columns have appeared in the Houston Chronicle and Ft. Worth Star-Telegram. He is a member of the Board of Contributors for the Waco Tribune-Herald and a contributor to the Boryana Books website. He lives in Pacific Palisades, California.

I.L. 'Vick' Vickrey wearing his Texas State Championship medal