U.S. OLYMPIC TRACK AND FIELD TRIALS : Kersee Ready for Vacation After This Meet

By all rights, you should be reading more words of prose and praise today about the splendid sprinter, Florence Griffith-Joyner, who obviously shops for her running outfits at Frederick’s of Westwood, and about the longest jumper, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, who floats through the air with the greatest of knees, and about the premier mileage-plus runner, Mary Decker Slaney, who prefers to keep people, and beat people, at a distance.

Or you should be reading more about Edwin Moses, who has overcome still another hurdle, and about Mac Wilkins, who hurls a discus the way some people throw a Frisbee, and about Carl Lewis, who remains among the world’s fastest and strangest humans, and about Butch Reynolds, who took the checkered flag in the Indy 400.

Or maybe, just maybe, you should be reading more about the brave hurdler with the broken arm who ran out of luck, or the steeplechase runner who got disqualified and then fell into his weeping mother’s arms, or the young woman who was beaten out for a berth on the U.S. Olympic track squad by her best friend, in a photo finish, and then broke down crying, only to be comforted by her husband, who was released by his professional football team a day before.

There are a million stories in the Olympic Village, and these will be some of them.

Today, though, in our opinion, you need to read more about this man, this coach, kind of a skinny guy, with a scraggly beard and legs that belong on a piano. He was born 34 years ago, in Panama, but eventually he settled down in San Pedro, and did some studying at Cal State Long Beach, and did some teaching at Cal State Northridge, and did some coaching at the University of California at Los Angeles, which has been known to go by its initials.

How amazing and amusing it has all worked out for this guy, Bob Kersee, head women’s track coach at UCLA, husband of Jackie Joyner, guru of America’s Olympians, particularly when you consider that all he ever wanted to do was grow up to be Vince Lombardi. All he hoped to do was coach some football, kick some tail, win some trophies, mold some minds. He never figured to be the heart and soul of our Seoul-bound track team, the head that guides the feet.

A flag-waver and fast talker when he cares to be, Bob Kersee was both Saturday afternoon at the U.S. trials, once the team finally had taken shape. “My work is done,” he said, Lone Ranger style, seeing as how someone else will handle the actual coaching of our Olympic team from here. “Thank God it’s over and everybody came out healthy. Now my life as a coach is over and my life as a husband can begin again.”

To that end, Kersee intends to grab Jackie by the jersey and drag her, if he has to, to the Bahamas, for rest and relaxation. Bob is a workaholic and insomniac who knows he needs a break. His wife is a study in perpetual motion who never allows herself a break. How long will their vacation be? “As long as Jackie allows,” he said.

“She gets bored easily. Helicopter rides, snorkeling, whatever. It doesn’t matter. She almost breaks her neck three times here today going for a world record in the long jump, but I can’t get her to go swimming with me. She’s not afraid of pain, but she is afraid of sharks.”

In taking six cracks at a world record in the long jump, Jackie crash-landed at one point and badly skinned her million-dollar knees.

“That’s what you get for playing around in a sandbox,” her husband said.

To appreciate Kersee as a coach, and to acknowledge everything he has done for those who did and did not become Olympians here, you had to check him out after hours, behind the scenes, busting his hump to squeeze out an extra ounce of effort that could make all the difference.

You had to notice his lamp light burning at 4 a.m., when he was still in his room, studying film of Gail Devers-Roberts, trying to find a flaw. You had to catch him at midnight, coaching Al Joyner by moonlight, working on form. You had to hear him scolding Roy Martin, ripping him a new eardrum for nonchalanting a turn, motivating a notorious underachiever into such a frenzied effort that Martin threw himself at the finish line in the 200-meter dash. Face down on the ground, Martin found out that he had just finished third, and had made the Olympic team.

Kersee took special interest, naturally, in his UCLA speedsters--the whizzers of Westwood--and took special pride in placing at least one athlete from his camp in every Olympic sprinting event, or two in some cases.

“We’re going after the East Germans now. We’re going after the Russians,” Kersee said. “When the flag goes up and the torch is lit, we’re gonna be ready to go. If somebody wants to box Florence Griffith-Joyner, figuratively speaking, for 15 rounds, they’d better be ready to fight her for the whole 15 rounds, because she’s going to be ready.

“People are going to be talking about America’s track team, if we have anything to do about it. With Florence and Jackie and Carl and Mary setting the tone, we want everybody to know that American track and field is still alive and well.

“We couldn’t go in 1980 because of political reasons. They couldn’t come in 1984 because of political reasons. Well, everybody’s showing up in Seoul, so the way I look at it, this is the rubber match. Let’s get it on.”

This track team is some other coach’s responsibility from now on, but Bob Kersee’s imprint is stamped all over it. In the Korea commotion, though, this simple fact could fall through the cracks. That is why it is best we note Kersee’s contribution now, before these runners and jumpers take another step.

From the time he joined UCLA’s staff in 1980 to his head-coaching appointment in ‘85, and from the time he accompanied an exasperated Jackie Joyner to a senior nationals competition in Tacoma, Wash., and taught her what she was doing wrong by manufacturing a make-believe long jump runway in a hotel corridor, Bob Kersee has been a force in American track and field.

The husband-and-wife partnership that developed was an added bonus, one in which Bob and Jackie have had to make certain accommodations, leaving professional arguments outside the door the instant they step back into their Long Beach home. Bob Kersee sometimes acts a certain way because a coach has gotta do what a coach has gotta do, but “Bob Kersee the husband doesn’t like that Bob Kersee very much,” as he himself puts it.

When he watched his wife do damage to her knees during competition Saturday, Kersee had to keep on his coaching mask, and not go running over to beg his honey to be more careful. He had to remember that some athletes cannot overcome adversity if pampered, and that Jackie the Olympian knew what she was doing, that she was bound and determined to keep bounding into that sandbox.

“People say, ‘she’s crazy, she’s nuts,’ but she came here to take six jumps, because she felt she needed six jumps to prepare for Seoul, so she was going to take six jumps. Period. Sometimes you need a coach, and sometimes you need to do things for yourself, and Jackie’s fine except for a couple of skinned knees, and now it’s time to join her husband in the Bahamas.”