Track's Al Buehler to Hang Up His Spikes

The news media devote little coverage to cross country and track and field, so the name Al Buehler might not be familiar to some sports fans. He is, nevertheless, one of the most successful coaches in the history of Duke athletics. And this season he is taking a victory lap.

Since he arrived on campus in 1955, Buehler has helped thousands of young runners achieve their potential; led six ACC championship cross country teams; and served as head manager of the U.S. track and field team at Olympic Games in Munich, Los Angeles and Seoul.

This spring Buehler, 69, will complete his run as head coach. He will retire from his storied career in June and proudly pass the baton to the rising generation.

"Al is the dean of ACC coaches," said Norm Ogilvie, associate head coach of the men's teams and Buehler's anticipated successor. "When he ultimately steps down, he will have left an indelible mark on the university. I know in the future we'll find appropriate ways to honor him."

Buehler's track career started at Hagerstown, Md., where he raced to the state high school cross country and 880-yard championships. After high school, he enrolled at the University of Maryland and over time became one of the school's finest middle distance runners, winning three conference 880-yard championships.

Duke's track and field and cross country teams knew no such success, even though they had world-class athletes like Dave Sime and Joel Shankle. The year Buehler arrived in Durham, Duke didn't even have enough distance runners to field a full cross country team. "I had to knock on doors at the dormitories and fraternities and convince guys to come out," Buehler recalled.

The veteran coach remembered one runner named William Hotelling, who was a sophomore when Buehler arrived at Duke and the second-best runner on the team. At a team meeting early in the season, Buehler asked Hotelling what his time was for the two-mile run.

"He said, 'Coach, I don't know because every time I finished a race, the timers had stopped their watches,'" Buehler recalled. "This guy was so slow no one had ever bothered to time him. But he wanted to improve, paid the price and eventually held the Duke two-mile record."

Duke won one cross country meet and lost seven during Buehler's first year as head coach. The following year, the team won twice. On Buehler's third attempt, Duke went undefeated in the ACC in cross country.

Even as the cross country team dominated the conference in the late 1950s and through much of the 1960s, it's worth noting that most of Duke's runners couldn't beat Buehler in an 880-yard race.

The track and field team also grew more competitive during those same years in part because of Buehler's guidance, but it never rose to the same heights as cross country. (Buehler became head coach of cross country when he arrived on campus, but he didn't take over track and field until 1964, the year head coach Robert Chambers died.)

Duke's best stretch in cross country occurred from 1958 to 1975, when the team placed either first or second in the conference 11 times. During the same interval, Buehler trained several All-Americans and a number of Olympians, including Bob Wheeler, Sime, who won a silver medal in Rome in 1960, and Shankle, who won a bronze medal in Melbourne in 1956.

Selective recruiting and a modest amount of scholarship money helped Buehler keep Duke's cross country program on a strong pace. One of his recruits in the late 1960s was a young man from South Carolina, James Dorsey, a swift-footed runner who would go on to become the first black undergraduate accepted at Duke's School of Medicine.

En route to a dual meet at the University of Virginia one day, the team stopped at a restaurant in a small town just past the state line. When the team sat down, Buehler recalled, the owner approached him and, using a racial slur, said Dorsey would not be served inside the restaurant.

"I put the team back on the van and we found another place to eat," Buehler said. "I wasn't about to have James Dorsey eat out of the back door of the kitchen."

Buehler was no activist, but colleagues say he is a decent man who has always been generous with his warmth and wisdom. In some ways, he may even have been ahead of his time.

For instance, in 1974, he teamed up with U.S. Olympic Committee president emeritus Leroy Walker, at the time head track coach at North Carolina Central University, and together they staged the U.S.A.-Pan Africa Meet, which for the first time unified the best runners from the different African countries under one flag. The interracial meet was held peacefully before a big crowd at Wallace Wade Stadium at a time when sit-ins and more aggressive efforts at integration were unfolding across the state.

It was also during the 1970s that Buehler rose to prominence as a track meet organizer and official. He was elected president of the NCAA Track and Field Coaches Association in 1970, after serving as vice president. That same year he directed the first annual U.S. Olympic summer training camp at Wallace Wade Stadium.

Buehler also was director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Games in 1973, the U.S.S.R. Meet in 1974, the U.S.A.-Pan Africa-Federal Republic of Germany Meet in 1975 and the Lite Invitational Meet in 1981.

Asked what he considered his proudest moment as a coach, Buehler harkened back to his early days and said the first time Duke's cross country team beat Maryland and his former coach, Jim Kehoe.

"Maryland had been thumping Duke for so long," Buehler said of the 1958 victory. "It was a big breakthrough. It was really a special moment for me because I was from the Maryland program, and I knew how good they were. During one stretch, they won 25 conference championships in 26 years.

"The highlight of my career, however, has to be the opportunity to have worked with thousands of talented young men."

Another special occasion is in store for Buehler in this, his last season. The NCAA Track and Field Championships are scheduled to be held at Duke from May 31 through June 3. More than 700 athletes from more than 100 Division I schools will participate. Duke hosted the same meet in 1990.

Buehler, of course, was instrumental in Duke's successful bid to have the games held at Wallace Wade Stadium. It's fitting that he would capture one more championship before finally hanging up his spikes.

Written by Noah Bartolucci.