I ran for LC and was the same year at Micah and Skiy. It was an honor sharing the track and the cross country course with those guys for four years, and with Greg, Rob, and Matt for the two years I was running in the some meets as them.

They made everyone better, and Tyson exuded such positivity to everyone who was a part of the sport.

Sidenote just for fun - I was at the Nirvana concert described in this post and remember seeing the Mead guys there. They were legends even then, and in my mind that was almost as cool as seeing Nirvana themselves.

I had a daughter running for Ferris around this time. Mead actually gave her an award at one time. I was shocked, a competing school recognizing a runner from another school. That was the greatness of Pat Tyson.

Hayward, that article reminds me of Grote always saying to never count Matt Davis out, even if he showed up to the meet on crutches. A stretcher, maybe.

Dan

I had the original of this cut out of the paper and always enjoyed it. As it relates to Matt Davis and touches on the Mead connection, I thought I'd share it.

http://www.spokesman...s-from-shining/


Thanks for the additional information Doug. I also did find the new spacing easier to read. Thanks again for the article.

A little bit extra about Mead ...

After a week of trying to reach Matthew Davis I finally got a text from him late yesterday afternoon and then talked to him on the phone a few hours after that. I had already posted the story in its original form but I talked with Davis for about an hour and it was time well spent.

He has re-located to Michigan in the past two weeks and is the CEO of a creative agency. He's got a family now and sounded like he was doing great despite the upheaval of a move.

I thought I knew quite a bit about Mead, particularly after working on that book Tyson for the past year and a half. For instance, many people may not realize that Mead was preseason No. 1 in the summer of 1993 and then promptly went to Vale, Oregon for the first meet of the season and got thumped by a team from Utah. (Davis was not in the lineup that day). That loss put a bitter taste in everybody's mouth that was part of that Mead travel party. They were camped out in the gym at Vale High School and at midnight, Tyson took everyone out into the parking lot for a team meeting. It was a moment that sort of galvanized the team and re-focused it. Up to that point, things had been a little too easy.

As a result, Mead lost its No. 1 ranking. The way the Panthers got it back was by going to Foot Locker West (at Woodbridge Park in Fresno) as a full team and crushing the course record there. By then they had already scored a perfect '7' at Sunfair and gone 1-2-3 at the Washington state meet, among other achievements.

One story that I did not know until I talked with Matt last night .... prior to his sophomore year the team went to the White Pass summer running camp. The Mead kids were a bit wild, pulling pranks and perhaps misbehaving a bit. A coach at the camp cornered them at one point and cussed them out, told them they were "losers" and that Mead wouldn't amount to anything. So Davis et al, went back to Spokane ticked off at this particular (college) coach. And for a year straight, they wore their White Pass T-shirts where they had crossed out the words on the front with markers. They used that coach's words as motivation ... as if they needed any more with Tyson as their coach ... and preceded to dominate the state (and Davis won three titles in a row). At some point at the state meet, that coach approached the Mead runners and apologized.

But what's fun to me about that particular era of Mead cross country is that in a small way they sort of made their stamp on Northwest culture ... they got to be about as big a deal as a cross country team could realistically hope to be.

And it makes you wonder ... did those Mead teams factor in to the creation of BorderClash? Did debate about Mead (92-93) and other incredible programs like York and and a few others lead to the creation on Nike Team Nationals?

I'm not sure I could have made those leaps in the story I wrote yesterday but I think they are worth considering.

Chardongirls1978, on , said:

I noticed the same thing. Impressive staying power.

Dan

hayward102, on , said:

OK, maybe that spacing is a little bit better. I would like to see the "article pages" evolve to something a little bit better.

hayward102, on , said:

Yeah, I sort of feel the same way. It's something I'm going to try to improve soon.

It's amazing how much overlap there is with the rankings in 1993 and the rankings in 2013. So many schools still have a team in the field.

Great article. Great team. Nice to "hear" from Davis, Tyson, and Lee looking back on those years from the perspective they have today. And there was no better place than the NW to live in the grunge years! Such an energy! While the music has changed the great running lives on in the NW today.