Running with the Huskies: Former Battle Mountain track coach pens fictional work inspired by 1983 team that finished third at state
Randall Howlett/Courtesy photo
Randy Howlett isn’t comparing himself to Gene Hackman and it’s not like the 1983 Battle Mountain girls track team was the Vail Valley’s “Hoosiers.”
Still, a good sports story is worth writing down.
“I’m 71 and I’m kind of looking back at my life and I wanted to put things into writing,” said Howlett, who self-published “That Golden Year” last month. The 168-page work of fiction, which took about nine months to complete, was inspired by his time coaching track and field alongside Dave Daubers and Firooz Zadah at Battle Mountain in the early 80s. It captures the trials and triumphs of the 1983 girls team that took third at state.
“The book is mostly true, but there’s some fictional elements,” Howlett said. “(That season) was an accomplishment to me and a huge accomplishment for these ladies.”
A 1971 Battle Mountain graduate who left the Vail area in 1983 and has lived in Bangkok, Thailand, the last decade, Howlett has woven literary threads back to Eagle County in other books he’s published since retiring from the insurance industry in 2012.
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“Taking the High Road: Leadville to Vail in 100 Years” traces Colorado’s history from the 19th-century silver boom up to the early ski industry. “Wildflowers Never Die” follows five CIA agents through the first 30-year history of the Cold War and includes a section about Tibetan Freedom Fighters training at Camp Hale in the late 1950s.
He also published “Stories of a Lifetime,” a collection of 24 true tales from 15 storytellers, including himself, in 2020. That book discusses his mother’s life under Nazi occupation in Norway and his father’s work as a double agent for the Americans and KGB, something only his mother knew about when the family moved to Vail in the 1970s. The voracious writer is currently working on “Patpong: Story of a Red Light District,” and “Five Crazy Years,” a personal memoir based on his experience running a go-go bar in Bangkok.
Howlett said “That Golden Year” came to fruition out of a desire to preserve his athletes’ legacies and some of his most cherished athletic memories. Debbie Haines, Marjean Holden, Donna Mott, Ingrid McMillan and Jeannie Harteker starred for Battle Mountain during the 1983 season when the team won its first district title and rewrote the school record book.
While Howlett changed names, added a few dramatic events and fabricated certain relational characteristics, the book maintains the girls’ actual performances, many of which still stand atop the Battle Mountain records list.
Haines — who won the 1983 state title in the 100-meter dash — still holds the school record in the event at 12.1 seconds. Donna Mott’s 5-foot, 7-inch high jump mark has yet to be beaten either. The team’s 4×100-meter time is fourth on the list and Lynn Bishop’s 48.88 in the 300-meter hurdles is seventh. Finally, Marjean Holden won the 100-meter hurdle state title in another untouched school record and was a vital relay leg and powerful long-jumper, too.
“That he’s writing a book — that’s fascinating to me,” said Holden, who now lives in Cody, Wyoming. “From my perspective as a high schooler, it was exciting. We all worked really hard to get to where we were.”
Holden said she hasn’t talked with Haines for a long time but saw McMillan at an annual Husky alumni barbecue along the Front Range last summer. She also attended homecoming in 2019.
“We talk about track and all of our experiences and how everybody was so tight,” Holden said.
While Dawn Eggers graduated before the 1983 team, her memories of the era are similar.
A 300-meter hurdler on the 1980 squad, Eggers fondly recalled sitting atop the school bus between events listening to Fleetwood Mac with her teammates and piling into Oscar (Marjean’s dad) Holden’s RV for rides home, “so proud of how we had done that day.”
“We were a hardworking bunch who reaped the benefits in awards and friendship … I don’t ever look at my medals from those days, but recollect often how those days, friends and coaches made me feel.”
The 59-year-old Holden does vividly remember setting the 100-meter hurdles program record of 15.38 seconds at the 1983 state meet.
“My dad was filming. He had his old Super 8 camera out,” she recalled. “And, he was so excited that he got none of it on film!”
Though Holden was a prized volleyball recruit at Northern Arizona, she also walked onto the track team during her first collegiate spring.
“It was like a night and day difference from high school,” she said of the NCAA DI level. Eventually, she dropped out of college and became a movie star, earning her big break in “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.” It’s another one of those stories worth telling — but perhaps not here.
Howlett said his “classic feel-good sports story” captures the classmates’ camaraderie and personal development through its extensive dialogue, particularly in the second half.
“I think that makes it interesting,” the author said. “It puts you there like you’re one of the characters, and I also think it’s amenable to maybe turning it into a screenplay.”
Well, maybe there’s something to the “Hoosiers” comparison after all. Then again, while the classic basketball ballad takes place in hoop-crazed Indiana, Howlett’s track tale takes place in a resort town.
“As a kid growing up in the valley we all knew that track season meant some of that training would be around the track in a freezing blizzard or hurdles lined up down a hallway,” Eggers said. “Whatever it took to get better and stronger.”
“As I mentioned in the book, it’s a sport nobody cares about in ski country,” Howlett said. The character who plays him in the book, Raymond Sinclair, even criticizes the local sports reporter for not covering the team. The writer, Walter, is eventually persuaded by Sinclair to punch up a few pages every now and then.
“That’s what keeps the people going. They need that community support,” Howlett said. “Walter’s basically kind of a wannabe athlete, so this is his way of getting into this world, so to speak.”
Sinclair’s similarities with Howlett are vast but not comprehensive. Sinclair is an injured Vietnam war veteran who returns to his small mountain hometown and is reluctantly hired as the high school girl’s track coach. He initially struggles to gain the respect of his athletes, but eventually, his methods lead the team to a state title.
Howlett rose to the rank of captain in the U.S. Marine Corps after six years of service, but never was injured or went to Vietnam. His acceptance as coach was never a problem, either, but both he and Sinclair incorporated unique training methods, like pulling Haines from behind a car to create more pliable fast-twitch muscles.
“I promptly stopped doing it after a couple tries due to safety concerns,” Howlett commented.
In real life, Howlett attended Bellevue High School in Nebraska before coming to Battle Mountain his senior year. He went on to set the school records in the 100-yard (10.2) and 220-yard (22.7) dashes and won the conference and district titles at both events before finishing third at state.
When he returned with his bronze, a girl told him, “Oh, I thought you would have taken first,” Howlett recalled. “It’s always kind of bugged me that I may have missed an opportunity with the fact that I never really got any training.”
The true incident is replayed with the fictional Sinclair and reveals one of the story’s primary themes: seizing the day.
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“People have aspirations in their life, and don’t let time slip you by — take the opportunity while you have it,” Howlett said, pointing to a page where his fictional self tells an athlete “time is fleeting” as the state meet approaches.
“Basically, you have a couple months now to make or break — and why is it so important that you achieve something?” Howlett rhetorically asks in summarizing that conversation.
“Because it will show you later in life you can achieve whatever you put your mind to.”
