Big and Getting Bigger : More Than 1,200 Turn Out for All-Comers Meet at Birmingham High

Athletes poured out in great numbers Wednesday night at The Track That Arco Built.

The occasion: the All-Comers track and field meet at Birmingham High. And all came.

Well, not all. But many. More than 1,200 competitors.

“Last week was a good crowd,” said Blair Fictum, who has been director for this meet the past 12 of its 27-year existence. “This one’s bigger. It seems to be building.”

“It’s the biggest crowd we’ve had this summer,” public address announcer Jay Darmstaetter said. “One of the coaches came up to me and said the parking lot’s completely full.”

It was. When the L.A. Unified School District called these meets All-Comers, people took the name seriously.

The meets have entertained world-class contending athletes and world-class pretending athletes alike. High jumper Dwight Stones showed up here last year. So did Dennis Lewis, the national junior college record holder at 7-8 who beat Stones last year at the All-Comers meet.

There were no household names in attendance Wednesday--most of them are competing on the European circuit or in the Goodwill Games. But Fictum is expecting them before the championship meet at 7 p.m. on Aug. 1 at Birmingham.

The All-Comers meets are held Monday through Thursday in the Los Angeles area--Mondays at Los Angeles Southwest College, Tuesdays at Venice High, Wednesdays at Birmingham, Thursdays at Bell High. Of the four sites, Birmingham gets the biggest turnout, Darmstaetter said.

“There’s a couple of reasons,” Darmstaetter said. “One, this track has lights. Two, people want to run on this tartan surface.”

The track is state-of-the-art. It was built, with help from the Atlantic Richfield Co., as a training site for the U.S. team for the 1984 Olympics, the same year that Olympic officials “wouldn’t let us get near here,” Darmstaetter said. In ‘84, Taft High played host.

Two years later, Bob Pullard and Jay Borick are taking advantage of the track the Olympians left behind.

Pullard competed for USC from 1970 to 1974, helping the Trojans to the NCAA championship in 1972 by placing third in the pole vault. Now, he runs his own pole vault club, using the All-Comers meet as a primary training session.

“I was looking at the newspapers and saw guys doing 11 feet and 12 feet,” said Pullard, now 35, living in Northridge and working for the Los Angeles Police Dept. Pullard set a city record in 1969 at Los Angeles High, 16 feet, 7 inches. The record stands.

“I didn’t see any reason for high school athletes to be doing anything less than 14 feet, so I decided to start a club and give my expertise,” Pullard said. He recently set a Police Olympics record in Irvine by vaulting 16 feet, 9 inches. The man’s still got it.

“Up North, they’re doing 15 feet, just killing us,” he said. These meets are helping Pullard do something about it.

Jay Borick listens to Pullard. Borick, from Taft High, is the City pole vault champion, winning the 1986 meet with a 14-9 3/4 vault. Not only is Borick listening, he’s also competing at the All-Comers meet.

“I’m trying to improve over the summer, towards 16 feet by the season,” said Borick, looking forward to his senior season. “There’s no reason why I shouldn’t have about a foot’s improvement. It won’t be that hard when you consider I improved four feet last season.”

And when you consider that he’s out here, competing in the off-season, you realize Fictum could be right. More people might show up--if for no other reason than they don’t want Borick to get too far ahead.