Hanover
“It’s for your nonathletes,” Zarnowski said in his office at Dartmouth College, where he is a visiting professor and senior lecturer of economics. “It’s for coaches, meet directors, writers, historians and public address announcers.”
In Zarnowski’s case, make it all of the above.
Leading what he calls a “double life” in academia combined with devotion to track and field for more than 50 years, Zarnowski’s services have been ubiquitous, especially to followers of decathlon. The 73-year-old York, Pa., native has been the two-day event’s PA announcer at nearly every NCAA championship meet, USATF National Championship, U.S. Olympic Trials and Team USA international meet since 1970. He’s worked multiple Olympic Games in a variety of roles, including national TV commentator.
In the college ranks, Zarnowski began as a cross country coach at Lehigh University and went on to coach for both track and cross country at his alma matter, Maryland’s Mount St. Mary’s College, for eight years.
A tireless historian, Zarnowski is the author of eight books, including favorites The Decathlon: A Colorful History of Track & Field’s Most Challenging Event (1991) and American Decathletes: A 20th Century Who’s Who (2002). He’s also produced more than 900 decathlon newsletters, posting them for the last 16 years on the website for his registered nonprofit, The Decathlon Association (www.decathlonusa.typepad.com).
For all this, Zarnowski is part of USATF Hall of Fame’s five-person class of 2016, to be honored at a “Black Tie and Sneakers” ceremony Nov. 3 in New York. Zarnowski joins women’s throwing dynamo Connie Price-Smith, sprinter Butch Reynolds, marathon pioneer Leonard “Buddy” Edelen and shot putter extraordinaire Al Feuerbach, all of whom were voted into this year’s class by the Track and Field Writers of America.
“Lately at the events I announce, I’ve asked to be back on the infield. I got tired of the booth,” said Zarnowski, who resides in Emmitsburg, Md., just south of the Mason-Dixon line, when he isn’t at Dartmouth. “That has made me a little more visible, which I think may have led to being nominated. Certainly there are lots of others who could have been.”
‘Zarnowski is referring to track’s largely uncelebrated army of behind-the-scenes devotees, the countless organizers who facilitate equipment and supplies, handle permits and reservations and keep timimg and scoring, often for little or no pay.
“It’s not a profession, it’s an avocation,” said Zarnowski, who names a limited social life among the byproducts of his dedication to the sport. “Track is what it is because of volunteers and because of the love of the sport.”
Zarnowski’s distinguished involvement has been built entirely on his own persistence, though his first coaching job was more happenstance. A first-year graduate student at Lehigh with some marathon running experience — Zarnowski’s personal marathon best is 2 hours, 52 minutes — he decided to try to walk onto its cross country team in 1965. One problem for the Engineers: their coach unexpectedly quit after buying a lumber company.
“Lehigh’s athletic director was Bill Leckonby. He saw I was a grad student and said, ‘How would you like to coach while we look for someone else?’ ” Zarnowski recalled. “I was 22 years old, the youngest coach in Division I, and I was a grad student at the same time. That’s kind of where my double life in academia and track and field began.”
Zarnowski went on to coach both cross country and track at D-II Mount St. Mary’s, where he’d gone for his bachelor’s degree. In 1970, he brought a few athletes to the NCAA College Division national championships at Minnesota’s Macalester College, where Zarnowski’s ambition wouldn’t allow him to focus solely on coaching.
“It was kind of a cold, rainy day. I went out to the infield and there was a live microphone, but no announcer,” Zarnowski said. “(Organizers) said, ‘We don’t have an announcer,’ so I grabbed it and started reading off the heat sheets.”
The following week, Zarnowski ventured to the NCAA University Division title meet at Iowa’s Drake University to see if he’d find a similar scenario. This time there was an announcer at first, but it was a teacher who left partway through for a class.
“I hopped the fence, went over to the mic and took over for him,” Zarnowski said. “Pretty soon I feel a tapping on my shoulder, and it was the announcer. He said, ‘Who are you?’ and I said ‘I’m your replacement.’ He said, ‘No, you’re not, but do the rest of the day and then come back tomorrow when I have class,’ which was the end of the decathlon. That was how the decathlon sort of became my de facto event.”
It wasn’t long before Zarnowski had worked his way into PA decathlon announcing at the USATF championships and the Olympic Trials, eventually invited to be a stadium announcer at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. He returned as a broadcast spotter for the 1988 Games in South Korea and, in 1992 at Barcelona, teamed with former decathlon gold medallist Bruce Jenner and others for an NBC cable and satellite channel dedicated to track and field coverage.
“We set a broadcasting record for most live track and field coverage at an Olympic Games: 62 hours,” Zarnowski said.
Zarnowski did radio work in Atlanta in 1996 and online writing for the 2000 Summer Games at Sydney. In 2004, he joined Dan O’Brien for more television coverage, this time racking up 66 hours on the air.
“Another record,” Zarnowski said. “There were no commercials; we were on from 8 a.m. to 9 at night. We covered every run, jump and throw.”
The records Zarnowski has most enjoyed are the world decathlon marks he was on site to announce. He’s called four such performances, most recently Ashton Eaton’s at the 2012 Olympic Trials in front of a home crowd at Eaton’s alma mater, the University of Oregon.
“We were in Eugene in front of 22,000 of his closest friends,” Zarnowski said. “I did my best to get them fired up, saying, ‘He needs your help, Eugene, he’s running for you!’ ”
During the decathlon’s final event, the 1,500-meter run, Eaton needed to beat his previous personal record of 4:20 by four seconds in order to claim a new decathlon points record.
“He did it by six,” said Zarnowski, who still tears up when recalling the moment. “It was probably the most exciting accomplishment I’ve been a part of.”
Among those Zarnowski will be thanking during his Hall of Fame acceptance speech are Carl Wallin, the retired Big Green throwing coach who first helped convince him to come to Dartmouth in 2001; Bil Gilbert, a late Sports Illustrated writer who profiled Zarnowski in 1979 and encouraged him to remain diligent; and Harry Marra, an athlete of his in the 1960s at Mount St. Mary’s who went on to coach the U.S. Olympic track and field team — helping Eaton to a gold medal at the 2012 Olympics in London — and the Oregon Track Club Elite.
Marra plans to be on hand for next week’s ceremony.
“(Zarnowski is) one of the hardest-working people I’ve met, if not the hardest,” Marra said in a phone interview.
“If he ever were a decathlete, which obviously takes a lot of energy and persistence, he would have been a heck of a good one because he would have stuck with it and come back from all the failures that every decathlete has along the way.
“You’ve got to keep fighting back and I think Frank’s life has mimicked that. He’s been charging ahead his whole life with all of the work that he’s done. He’s a credit to the sport and a credit to humanity.”
Jared Pendak can be reached at jpendak@vnews.com or 603-727-3225.