OSU
Sports History Minute - February 23, 2001
Part
6 of 20: The Year Was 1975
In
1975, as Beaver football was beginning a free fall
that would stretch 28 years, two Oregon State sports
achieved recognition and remain true landmarks of
excellence.
In the modern period, women's athletics at OSU emerged
in the early 1970s and was very quick in producing
its first world-class athlete, Joni Huntley.
In January 1975, Joni, '75, set the American outdoor
high jump record at the New Zealand games with a
leap of 6-2 1/2, then duplicated the height indoors
at a USA-USSR meet to set the American indoor record.
 |
| Joni
Huntley took the track world by storm
in 1975. |
|
In between, she received the Hayward Trophy as Oregon's
outstanding amateur athlete. Her jumping style employed
the "Fosbury Flop," invented and perfected by Oregon
Stater Dick Fosbury in Corvallis in the 1960s.
Later in the spring of '75, OSU hosted the AIAW National
Track and Field Championships, the largest women's
intercollegiate track meet held up to that time, with
more than 500 athletes from 103 schools competing
for medals. Huntley won both the high jump and long
jump competitions.
Things would get even better for Joni. At the Pan
American games later that year, she won gold with
a new Pan Am women's record and for the next 12 years
she would compete for her country as a member of the
U.S. Olympic high jump team, winning bronze in Los
Angeles in 1984.
During her career, she was ranked No. 1 in the U.S.
five times and appeared in the Top 10 a remarkable
13 straight years!
The year 1975 also brought national recognition to
OSU crew as the women won the Northwest Women's Regionals
at Seattle, sweeping national powerhouse Washington
in all three events.
 |
Left:
Some of the women on the 1975 crew team.
The team won the Northwest Women's Regionals
at Seattle in 1975.
Below: The men's 1975 Heavy-8 boat.
This group won the coveted Steward's Cup
at the Seattle Regatta.
All pictures on this page from The
Beaver, 1976. |
|
Not to be outdone, the men captured their first national
title in crew, winning the varsity-4 with coxswain
at the 73rd Intercollegiate Rowing Association meet
in Syracuse, N.Y.
The five team members were Robert Zagunis, Craig Ambrosen,
Tom Dover, David Nealy, and Michael Rollins as coxswain.
Zagunis rowed for the U.S. at the Montreal Olympics
in 1976.
Earlier, the men's varsity-8 had won the coveted Steward's
Cup at the Seattle Regatta, the first time in the
seven-year history of the competition the top prize
had not gone to Washington.
-- George
P. Edmonston, Jr. and Chuck Boice
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