Hall of Fame 2008

Thomas Leikam

Class of 1966

Tom Leikam Cross Country

Thomas Leikam was born on March 7, 1947 in Sebastapol, California. In 1949 his family moved to Watsonville where he attended Freedom Union Elementary School (K-8) and Watsonville High School (9-12), graduating in 1966. After two years at Cabrillo College, Tom attended Long Beach State and Cal Poly SLO. He graduated from Cal Poly with a B.A. in English/Social Studies and went on to further study at San Jose State (1972-73), UCSC (1978), and Long Beach State (1982).

Tom's coaching record includes both track and cross country. From 1973 to 2000 he was the assistant track coach overseeing the distance runners and he had numerous individual league champions in the 800, the 2 mile, and the mile relay. Tom was the head cross country coach from 1981 to 2006. Watsonville was undefeated in dual meets from 1988 to 2000 and had another undefeated season in 2004. Tom's team first went to the state meet in 1984 and had several team and individual appearances from 1989 to 2006. In 1989 Watsonville won the CCS.

When asked to write his autobiography, Tom shared his thoughts:

Spring, 1955 - 3^rd Grade: The Corralitos Creek runs through our backyard and across the creek is Resetar's Apple Orchard. Bill, my oldest brother by 6 years, has taken me over to The Orchard to what we called the Main Road to teach me how to run. These biomechanics of running including how to hold my arms, how to use my arms to pick up speed, how to keep my center gravity under me and not over-stride, and how to land on my feet properly. It was like handing me the Grail. When I returned to the house, I got a notebook that I used in school and wrote down every detail Bill had taught me. It was the first time I sat down and wrote an essay of any kind on my own. The two areas that would mark my life were established in one afternoon's journey to The Apple Orchard.

1956 - 4^th Grade: My class is taken to the auditorium to watch a movie. When we return to the classroom we are told to write about the movie. I summarized the movie and when the teacher sits down with me to go over my paper, I am told the movie and the writing assignment were to see how creative we were. I was told that I lacked imagination, but I had always considered myself to have a good imagination. I was shattered.

Spring 1961: P.E. has just finished. As I walk out of the old field house I see a poster to join the track team. I am uncertain about joining, but there is a part of me that wants to join. I had just finished a good basketball season and saw basketball as my main sport. But every time I walked past the poster in coming days, it pulled at me. I participated in track in junior high and had been a decent high jumper. I then decided running track was better than going home to chores ... it'd simply be more fun. Little did I know what I was getting myself into.

Summer, 1963 - I get a job with a lettuce producing company - Schuman Farms. I am the caja boy - spreading the boxes ahead of the Braceros. I get to the fields at 6:00 am and get home between 6 and 7:00pm. I am exhausted, barely able to eat dinner. One day my brother Lee, who is taking me to work, asks if I've ever been to Yosemite. "No," I tell him. That sealed it - no work - we're off to Yosemite. A magnificent day and we even managed to get home at about the appropriate time for having gotten off work. Mom and Dad never knew. The next day I was fired for not calling in sick. As a result of working the fields, which I had worked since Mom could get all of us kids there, I knew I would go to college.

Winter, 1964 - The end of Cross Country season and we are ranked in Nor Cal. I am anxious for basketball to get started. As basketball season gets underway (about mid- season) Mr. McGarvey, the cross country coach, approaches Bob Scurich, Dick Dyer and myself about what he thinks we are capable of doing with our running. He believes we could be ranked nationally, but, there was a catch. We could continue to play basketball and be mediocre or we could quit basketball and devote our efforts to running. We understand his reasoning, quit the basketball team, and the three of us begin running full time.

Fall, 1965 - Cross country has been going well. The race to determine the National Champions is set for Dec. 10, the same date as the SAT's. Coach McGarvey wrote the SAT Board to get another date for the SAT and he succeeds. Our intermediate goals are to win league and the CCS and we win league easily. However, we place third in the CCS behind Homestead (who will go on to be national champions) and Cupertino (who will also be nationally ranked.) After the CCS "debacle", Mr. McGarvey rages at us. I held the course record where the CCS race was run, but I took fifteenth. In short, he refused to take us to the December 10^th race; we should all hang it up and maybe he'd see us in the spring! We had trained too hard to have one "poor" race eliminate us from the national championship race. So, as a team we held a secret meeting. We knew that Coach McGarvey played golf at Spring Hills Golf Course on weekends and sometimes during the week when he wasn't coaching us. We decided to meet after school everyday and run. We'd warm-up by running past his classroom, at the track and past Spring Hills when he played golf. The strategy worked. He saw our passion for the sport and took us to the nationals. In the end we were ranked fourth in the nation.

Spring 1966 - I seriously contemplate graduating at the end of the first semester, but I felt that I owed much to the track team and if I didn't hang around, I'd miss a great track season! So I stayed and had fun setting some records: the MBL 2 mile in 9:42.9, the Regional 2 mile in 9:48.0, and the Distance Medley in 10:36.3.

1966 - 1968: I attended Cabrillo College and ran cross country and track and, again, I held many course records in cross country and a few track. Yet, it was at Cabrillo that my running career came to an ignoble end. As a distance runner, I was running 100 miles a week. I was 5'9" and weighed 129 pounds. My body couldn't take the stress and broke down. I would receive cortisone shots on Monday for my knee injury and couldn't run for 48 hours. I would warm up on Wednesday, race on Thursday, take Friday off, and then race again on Saturday. After Saturday�s race, I wouldn't walk until Monday when the procedure started again. Finally, Mr. Mitchell, one of the football coaches, asked me if anyone had told me about cortisone. I answered no. He then told me he knew another runner who had a similar problem and it took rest to heal. I gave up the cortisone shots and ran only races for the rest of the season. Then, I didn't run for about eight years.

Summer - Winter, 1968: I'll be attending Long Beach State. I move in the summer and after one semester, I decide that it isn't for me. I contact my former distance coach from Cabrillo who is now at Sonoma State. He tells me he can pull the classes I need. I am bound for Sonoma State, except for a little glitch. My former coach did not pull the classes I need and I was the last through registration, ending up with only a half unit of his track class.

Spring, 1969 - Spring, 1970: I drop out, come home, and spend that spring substituting. The subbing confirmed I wanted to teach and I enrolled in the summer session at Cal Poly SLO in 1969. For the next four quarters I averaged 22 units a quarter and kept the promise that I had made to myself of graduating with a B.A. in four years. The B.A. was a double major in English/social studies.

Spring, 1972 - Spring, 2006: I am offered a teaching position by Bob Bowman, the principal and my high school counselor. I will replace the venerable Mr. Hamilton in the English department. I accept the job and never look back.

Spring, 2008 - I walk out to the new track ... it calls to me, a not-so-subtle call. The memories of the workouts, the races - as if 43 years later I should still be out on the track doing 16 X 440 yards under 70 seconds. I can feel the call in my heart.

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