Sometimes there really can be an 'I' in team
Buhler's Jim Baker doesn't remember it happening 35 years ago, but Lorraine Johnson can't forget.
"He was a math teacher, and he'd sit there and plot out every single place in the state meet based on what everybody did at (regionals)," Johnson said of her high school track coach. "I remember him telling me, 'Lorraine, if the points fall just right, all you have to do is go out and win three events and we'll win the team title.'
"To me, it was more amazing he could figure that out than me actually doing it."
So that next weekend in 1975, Johnson (then Lorraine Davidson) won the 100-yard dash, the 440 and finally the 220, getting six points for each win and giving Buhler 18 — enough for the Class 3A girls championship, two points better than Haven.
"She dominated every track meet we went to," Baker said. "I don't think she was ever defeated in anything."
Johnson is the only girl to have won her team a championship by herself. Five boys have done it, the last being Mac Johnson from Deerfield (1A) in 1983.
Winning a team championship with one athlete is rare for a few reasons. The class' talent has to be so spread out that no team wins more than a couple events. The current scoring system, in place since 2002, spreads points among the top seven placers, instead of five in the 1960s and early '70s.
On the other hand, athletes may participate in as many as four events, up one since the mid-1970s.
Still, the sight of seeing one athlete accepting a team trophy is rare — and pretty cool if you're a 16-year-old sophomore. So cool that Johnson still gets emotional talking about it.
"The trophy was as big as I was," Johnson said. "I got a standing ovation from the crowd. It was an amazing feeling."
Johnson had already won the 220 as a freshman and came to the '75 meet as the overwhelming favorite in all sprints. She won the 100 in 11.3 seconds, then the 440 in 56.2.
"The 440 was a sprint, but it really wasn't considered a sprint back then," Johnson said. "I was the only girl who used starting blocks, and people would be annoyed that I had to get in a three-point stance."
By the time she started in the 220, she knew the team title was within reach. She won in 25.3 seconds, shaving 1.1 seconds off her freshman victory time.
"I remember coming back to school and there was a sign in the lunchroom that said 'Davidson, One Woman Track Team,' " she said. "That was pretty cool. That's pretty hard to wrap your head around."
Johnson swept the sprints again as a junior and senior, making her one of nine Kansas athletes to win 10 career individual events.
She competed at Kansas State and later coached at the middle- and high school levels in Colorado, where she lives today. Two grown sons were also track athletes.