for Old Times' Sake

Read about the now-fading
inscriptions(right) made by five tracksters at old Mayo Hall (at left), and you’ll know something about your Alma Mater that few others do.

It’s the Mayo Hall of records

The cavemen did their boasting on the walls of their cavern. The Egyptians recorded their accomplishments with hieroglyphics preserved in pyramids. And on the exterior of a building on the southeast corner of the campus, some members of the early ’60s ET track team celebrated their accomplishments.
Only a few people know of the messages they left atop the walls that parallel the exterior front steps on the north side of Mayo Hall.
Like other records left by long-gone civilizations, these are fading. Weathering and a good coating of white exterior paint have made them hard to read or even see.
Etched on top of the east side of the stairway wall of the building which at that time served as a men’s dormitory are the following words:

1963 (April)
E.T. MILE RELAY
KYSER
COLLUMB
CLARK
MCNEILL
————
3:13.7 (Record)

Written track records from that period, the kind found in the Sports Information Office, tell us that in March of 1963 at the West Texas Relays in Odessa a team made up of Morris Kyser, Pete Collumb, Basil Clark and Ronnie McNeill set a school record. They placed third in the meet’s competition.
The record did not last long and the following was added to the masonry document:

Clark, McNeill and Morris (first, third and fourth, kneeling) ...Their records are etched in stone.May 4, 1963

E.T. MILE RELAY
CLARK 48.4
KYSER 47.9
LASATER 48.1
MCNEILL 47.4
——————
(Record) 3:11.3

By then R. L. Lasater had replaced Collumb on the foursome, and the school record had been set at Northeast Louisiana University in Monroe, La.
At that point, the concrete record ends. But sports historians tell us that the following year Kyser, Lasater and McNeal teamed up with Bridges Ballowe at the ’64 NAIA national meet where they won the national championship in the mile relay.
And, Lasater still holds the school record for the wind aided 100-meter dash-a record he set in 1964 at Memorial Stadium. He also shares the 100-yard dash record of 9.4.
So if you want to feel like Indiana Jones and get the story directly from the ancients, put on your hiking boots and head for Mayo Hall.