The RoundHouse | 8/29/2019 4:04:00 PM

Where are they now?
 
Alan Walker, cross country, track and field (1969-73)
 
It took Alan Walker time to find his spot as a distance runner. Once he did, the sport and its challenges consumed him.
 
"All I did was eat, sleep, study and run," he said. "I got to the point where I was working out three times a day – run in the morning, lift weights in the afternoon and then have the organized practice with the team. Sometimes, I'd have to go out and run a couple of miles just to stretch the legs before bed time."
 
Walker, who didn't start running until his junior year at Derby High School, turned that hard work into a decorated career at Wichita State. He earned cross country All-American honors in 1972 by finishing 22nd in the six-mile race in Houston with a time of 29 minutes, 22 seconds and was a semifinalist in the 1,500 meters at the 1972 Olympic Trials.
 
"I happened to win the state mile in 1969," he said. "I had begun getting interest from junior colleges and small colleges my senior year. I impressed some people at the state meet in a couple of events and started getting a little more interest from Wichita State and Kansas State."
 
He chose Wichita State, in large part because of his family connections to the school. Once there, he helped the Shockers to a golden era of distance running under coach Herm Wilson. They won five consecutive Missouri Valley Conference cross country titles from 1971-75 and advanced as a team to the NCAA Championships in 1971, 1973, 1974 and 1975.
 
"I just wanted to compete," he said. "Once I began to have some success at the college level, I got more motivated. My junior year, I was good enough to get to the Olympic Trials and run some national meets."
 
Walker was inducted into the Shocker Sports Hall of Fame in 1982. He won seven MVC titles, including the cross country championship in 1972. He holds WSU's indoor mile record (4:01.50 in 1973) and ranks fourth in the outdoor 800 meters (1:49.60 in 1972) and 1,500 (3:43.10 in 1972).
 
Walker, after a career in the petroleum industry and 22 years at Boeing, is retired and lives in Edisto Beach, S.C.
 
Family – Wife, Susan; sons Austin, Cameron
 
Roar of the crowd – While Walker didn't win the 1972 Glenn Cunningham Mile at the Kansas Relays, he savors the memories from that day in Lawrence.
 
Jim Ryun won the race with a time of 3:57.1 with Tom Van Ruden second. Walker, who had run the college mile a day earlier, finished sixth with a time of 4:01.3.
 
"There were 40,000 people in the stands to see Jim Ryun," Walker said. "After about the second lap I could see the score clock and I realized they were letting the race go at a slower time than I had run the day before. With 600 yards to go, I charged up to the lead. I got to about 100 yards to go and Ryun and a couple other guys got by me, but I ended up running a 4:01 mile. I knew I could do better, but I felt real good about that."
 
Always a Shocker – Walker grew up in a Shocker family. His father worked as a manager for the football teams that played in two bowl games. He remembers watching Dave Stallworth and Nate Bowman play basketball and football stars Bob Long and Hank Schichtle in the 1960s.
 
Stallworth's famous 46-point game in 1963 against No. 1 Cincinnati stands out in Walker's memory.  Stallworth scored seven points in the final 3:10 to rally WU from a six-point deficit for a 65-64 win in Wichita.
 
"I'm one of the guys who can claim he saw Stallworth score all those points," he said.
 
Change in atmosphere – WSU's runners trained in a weight room in the basement of Levitt Arena and ran around the concourse on a quarter-inch rubber mat. 
 
It was common to run meets on dirt and cinder tracks. He remembers a square track at one road meet and a banked indoor track in a gym at Drake.
 
"We didn't have quite the facilities the young guys do now," he said. "It was 250 yards around (the concourse), so Coach Wilson had painted little hash marks every 30 yards so we could know where (the yardage) was until it got warm enough to go outside."
 
Top teams – Wilson's teams in the early 1970s dominated MVC cross country with runners such as Walker, Randy Smith, Bob Ream, Alton Davis, Bob Christenson and others. The Shockers won the 1972 men's outdoor track and field title, in addition to the five cross country titles.
 
"So many of the guys on the team were within 40, 50 miles of Wichita," Walker said. "We had our 50th reunion for Herm (Wilson) a year or so ago in Wichita. We got together with the guys from all the years that Herm was coaching, as well as the cross country championship teams. I cherish the friendships."
 
The Shockers finished 14th in 1971 and 18th in 1973 in the NCAA cross country meet. Walker said the 1972 team was set up for bigger things. A flu bug ruined their performance in the regional meet.
 
"We were ranked in the top 10 and we were beating KU and K-State and Missouri and other teams regularly," he said. "It was a disappointment that on a cold, cold, cold November day at Echo Hills that just two of us qualified as individuals and the rest of the team missed that. It was a special group."

Paul Suellentrop covers Wichita State Athletics and the American Athletic Conference for university Strategic Communications. Contact him at paul.suellentrop@wichita.edu.