Jan. 16, 2007

by Louis Bonnette

At this time of year, Don Troutman gets a spring in his step and a little quicker beat to his heart.

It's track season and the 67 year old McNeese State Hall of Fame member has a fondness for it.

In the coming summer almost 51 years ago, he had a legitimate shot at earning a spot on the United States team for the 1956 Olympics.

As it was, he missed out by a half inch.

Troutman was a jumper - long (it was the broad jump back then) jump and triple jump and as a 16 year old he was one of the best in the nation.

"I really don't know where I got the ability," he said, "I just know that I began jumping when I was in the seventh grade and steadily progressed."

As a seventh grader at then Roanoke High School, Troutman's jumping ability - on the basketball court - caught the attention of the school's coach, Norris Lambert.

"I guess that he saw how I jumped in basketball and thought that I could be a good jumper in track," said Troutman who had never before even thought about track but had been playing basketball since he was in the fifth grade.

"Where I grew up, we played basketball every day, all year round," he said.

Troutman became a jumper and with his coach began to work every day he could when he wasn't practicing basketball

He became almost a one athlete show as he also ran the sprints.

"We had a track back then but it was grass and only two lanes. We ran our straightaways on a dirt road next to the school and we had jumping pits made out of sand and sawdust," he said.

By the time he was in the eighth grade, he was competing in the state track meet for his school.

"I actually made my first start for the track team as a seventh grader," he said. "I think that it was a meet in Elton and one of the runners on the mile relay team was sick and I filled in for him.

"When I was in the eighth and ninth grade, you could compete in as many events as you wanted to and I competed in all of them. I can't remember ever being beaten in the broad or hop-step and jump (now the triple jump) and I won most of my races in the 100 yard dash, too," he said.

"I remember one meet at Northwestern State where I ran in 10 events."

It was between his junior and senior years that he was invited to the Olympic trials in Los Angeles.

"I had had a real good season and had won the state meet at 24-11 3/4," he said. "And, I was invited to an AAU meet in Houston. I won that meet and that got me into another meet in Fayetteville, AR and I won that meet.

"That put me in another meet in Bakersfield, CA where if you placed in the top four you were invited to the trials."

Troutman had gone 24-10 in Houston and 24-11 in Arkansas. He then jumped 24-7 3/4 and placed second in Bakersfield, earning him a spot at the trials.

"I rode out to Los Angeles with Johnny Morris (coach at the Univ. of Houston) and some of his athletes. It was the biggest thing that ever happened to me. I was just a scared 16 year old kid.

In the long jump event Troutman would take the match all the way down to his final jump before he was eliminated.

"I remember getting 24-3 1/2 on my first jump and then 24-11 3/4 on my second. I went 25-1 on my third and needed a half inch to get in. They were taking the top four, three on the team and an alternate. I couldn't get over it on my final jump."

Greg Bell won the competition and he went on to win the long jump at the Olympics that year.

"I got to see some things in Los Angeles while I was there. Before this New Orleans and Baton Rouge were about the only places I had been. I remember meeting Dean Martin. There were a lot of movie stars who came out to see us perform. And, we performed in the coliseum and it was packed. I was even offered a scholarship to attend Stanford while I was there. I still have the papers."

Back at Roanoke High for his final year of prep ball, Troutman would go on to become one of the state's top basketball players and continue his run as the top performer in track and field. He earned all-America honors in both and he set state Class C records that still stand in the long and triple jumps.

"In my last three years of high school I wasn't defeated in any high school meets in the broad and triple jumps," he said.

He also had a bushel full of scholarship offers, among them Kentucky, LSU, Houston and all of the other state schools.

He selected McNeese State so he could go to school with older brother Ken who was already on scholarship at McNeese.

In college he never regained that summer of 1956 when he was the best teenage jumper in the nation.

He did set a McNeese and a conference record in the long jump, won three conference titles and led his team to the school's lone conference track and field title (1958) and he earned most valuable player awards in both track and basketball, scoring 1,055 points in his career.

"I could tell," he said. "The spring in my legs was just gone."

After graduation, he spent 10 years as a coach and teacher and then joined Brown & Root from which he is now retired and living 19 miles east of DeRidder.

He says that he does a little fishing now, gets to a track meet now and then and watches a lot of college basketball, particularly Southland Conference ball where his daughter - Brenda Welch-Nichols - is head coach of the women's team at Sam Houston State.

And, at this time of the year his memory often drifts back to the summer of 1956 and he wonders "What If."