Wolverine History: Calculating Victory, Dacus Wall and the 1980 and 1981 Track State Titles

The Woodruff Times, in Part 11 of its series "Moments That Changed Wolverine History," looked back on the early-1980s Woodruff track and field teams through the story of shot-putter Dacus Wall. The piece was published July 2, 2021. Here is our summary.

Wall was not a big thrower, at roughly 5-foot-8 and 155 pounds, but he taught himself the spin technique in the shot put, which was rare among high schoolers at the time. He won the conference shot put title in 1979, 1980 and 1981, and the paper notes he beat future bodybuilder Lee Haney of Broome High School and David Clayton of Byrnes, a Clemson football recruit.

The team's rise was just as striking. David Pratt was hired as coach in 1977. In 1979 Woodruff scored only a single team point at the Class 2A state meet after a rough upper-state meet, and Wall wrote in yearbooks that the Wolverines would win the state title the following year. They did: Woodruff won the 1980 Class 2A state championship and defended it in 1981. In one 1981 dual meet the Wolverines led Clinton 63-0 at one point on the way to a 127-9 win, and against Liberty they led 105-26.

The article follows Wall and Pratt to the 1984 Olympic track and field trials in Los Angeles, a trip Wall says pushed him toward a career as an airline pilot. He flew for 31 years, first for Northwest and later Delta, after time in the Air Force Reserve, and retired in 2020. The paper also notes that Tony Rice, who was an eighth-grader in 1982, went on to break Wall's school shot put record in 1985.

This is our own summary for community reference. Read the full story, with its details and photographs, at The Woodruff Times using the source link below.