LITTLE ROCK — As a Southern Arkansas University freshman, George Eriquezzo ran the 100-yard dash in 9.3 seconds on the Little Rock Central High School track in the spring of 1965. Some 45 or so years later, a newspaper reporter had cause to mention Eriquezzo’s epic run, which was printed in the next day’s paper as 9.2.
Eriquezzo wastes no time correcting errors. The next day or so, this note arrived from him:
“Thank you very much for the 9.2 (100-yard dash) and for an extra tenth of a second. However, I only ran 9.3.”
The world record at the time was 9.2 seconds, set by Olympic sprinter and NFL wide receiver Frank Budd in 1962.
The past two or three years, Eriquezzo has been working on an autobiography he intends to call Wasted Talent.
“Wasted Talent, that was me all the way,” he said in a recent phone interview. “I never trained, or at least I never trained except as little as possible. Smoking, running around, all that stuff, never seemed to bother me. I was about 5-9, 160, and when they tested me for body fat, I registered 2 percent coming out of high school.”
Eriquezzo, who grew up in Danbury, Conn., said, “I was trying to make up my mind about going south instead of looking at some other offers, but my father wanted me to play for Coach Rip Powell. In many ways, I would soon realize they were very much alike.” In 1964, Eriquezzo enrolled at Southern Arkansas. At that point, Powell was trying to build a track and field dynasty, while concurrently serving as a defensive football assistant under Coach Auburn Smith.
“Coach Rip wanted to either run you off or straighten you up,” Eriquezzo said. “With me, I think he tried both.
“You’d run sprints. You’d run 220s. You’d run 440s. You’d run 880s. You’d run the mile medley; remember the mile medley? All kinds of relays. I was a sprinter, and I might show up running the 880. That didn’t make much sense to me.
“When did Rip and me start getting on better terms? I guess in my sophomore [and final] season, when I started hearing he was telling people, ‘Here I sit with the fastest white kid in the NAIA [Eriquezzo] and I can’t get a lick of publicity’ - things like that.” Eriquezzo soon went back to Danbury where he worked for several years. He returned to Arkansas in 2006 and settled in Waldo.
Powell, who had been ill for some time, died in October 2011 while being transported by medical flight from Magnolia to a Shreveport hospital.
“That really shook me up,” Eriquezzo said. “But long before then, I realized that good, smart coaches will try anything that might work. I’ll be 67 next May. Wasted Talent, that was me all the way.”
Sports, Pages 16 on 08/14/2012