POTSDAM – Bill Lewis, Potsdam High School’s storied boys’ track coach from 1963 to 1974, will be honored Monday, May 9 when the track at the school will be named for him.

The alumni and school district plan to set a boulder with a plaque inside the stadium complex, near the memorial for longtime radio sportscaster Con Elliott.

The dedication is scheduled for 3:30 p.m. Monday on the school’s athletic fields.

Lewis’s remarkable coaching record probably hit its peak at the 1972 Van Dusen Track and Field meet at Ogdensburg Free Academy, the annual Section X championship, which Potsdam won in dramatic fashion.

Here is part of a recollection of that meet by Sandstoner Scott Conroe, who was ream manager in 1971 and 1972:

The sun over Ogdensburg Free Academy’s Elliott Field slipped low as a large crowd waited to see if there would be a new Section X champion in boys’ track, Tupper Lake, or if Potsdam had won an eighth straight crown.

Announcer Gordon Powers read the team names and points, lowest to highest. The day was Saturday, June 3, 1972.

The Van Dusen is a boys’ and girls’ invitational now but for decades it was the boys’ track and field sectional meet. That day had become a battle between Potsdam and Tupper Lake, which had bested the Sandstoners two weeks earlier in a controversial dual meet, ending the Sandstoners’ string of 85 wins.

Potsdam had won only three events at the Van Dusen: junior Roy Cyrus in the pole vault, in a battle with Tupper’s Charlie Delair; the mile relay team of junior Dave Wilson and seniors Dave Lenhart, Babe Ceglarski and Kim Sprague; and the 880-yard relay team of junior Dave Romola and seniors Peter Nicola, Lyle Rowe and Tim Sweet.

Tupper had won two events: senior Ray Bigrow in the mile run, senior Mike Chartier in the triple jump. Both teams had top-six finishers in almost every event, however, and the meet was very close.

“In second place, with 117 points: Tupper Lake,” Powers said.

The Potsdam athletes and their supporters cheered. They were section champion for an 8th straight year and had avenged their only dual meet loss.

“And in first place, with 117 and a half points: Potsdam.”

The half-point had come from junior Tom MacGregor’s tie for fifth place in the high jump.

OFA Athletic Director Brian Wade presented the team trophy to Potsdam Coach Bill Lewis, his assistants Mike Loconti and Joe Daniels, and the Sandstoner athletes, who could hardly believe the narrow victory margin and sense of redemption.

That 1972 title is worth considering as an example of why Potsdam is naming its high school track after Lewis on Monday, May 9. The dedication ceremony is at 3:30 p.m., before the meet between the Sandstoners and OFA.

A social gathering and memorabilia viewing will follow at A.A. Kingston Middle School cafeteria. Track alumni have raised over $10,000 and will discuss how to use leftover funds, even as they continue to take donations.

Lewis coached the Potsdam boys’ teams from 1963 until 1974, a time when Section X began competing at the state meet for the first time (1971), started using fiberglass poles in the pole vault, and saw the first all-weather track in the North Country, at Salmon River. Potsdam’s track will bear Lewis’s name because of the influence he had on so many young men, not just his 107-3 record and nine sectional titles.

Lewis recruited athletes of all sizes and abilities. His mantra was “Let each become all he is capable of being.” He listed personal bests in the weekly Courier-Freeman. He had team members serve as student coaches.

He allowed shoulder-length hairstyles, where some coaches did not. He let the team have a theme song on bus rides: Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Cotton Fields Back Home” in 1971 and “I Just Want to Celebrate” by Rare Earth in 1972, because Lewis’s theme that spring was to celebrate life by competing the best you could.

“Bill was a master planner who knew the league very well and who were the best performers in every event,” Ceglarski says. He said Lewis had developed a large number of middle distance runners and could project how to get points from them.

Lewis always met with the team for chalk talks at the junior high gym (now the high school library) before meets. Event by event, he showed where Potsdam might score points. He usually projected his team to lose or barely win.

Conroe’s entire article is posted on his web site, www.boxgrovecomm.com/stories.

Donations in the form of checks or money orders can be made out to David Dwyer and mailed to David at 22 Grove St., Potsdam, NY, 13676.