Bill Huyck Film, Carleton's 1980 NCAA XC Championship Viewable on YouTube

A short documentary film about long-time Carleton College track and cross country coach Bill Huyck (pictured) as well as ESPN coverage of the 1980 NCAA Division III Cross Country Championships -- which Huyck's Carleton team won in an upset -- are available for viewing on YouTube.

(You read that right, by the way: ESPN coverage of cross country!)

Carleton student Meeks Brucker made the biographical film on Huyck as part of a Cinema and Media Studies class at the college. Brucker's initial ideas of how the film might turn out changed in the making of it, however.

"I had ideas about hearing how Carleton has changed over time, cool insides about teams of yonder years, and perhaps the inside scoop on the 1980 championship team," Brucker explained. "However, as you can see in the piece, I used very little of that subject material. I let coach Huyck decide what he wanted to talk about and then in the editing room I just tried to weave a cohesive story. "

The ESPN coverage -- viewable in three segments here, here, and here -- has some wonderful nuggets: Chris Berman uttering the words, "Next, Division III Cross Country Championships," Larry Rawson excitedly covering the event, Macalester's Paul Mausling and St. Thomas' Larry Deeney battling for the individual title, and an interview with 1972 Olympic 800 meter gold-medalist Dave Wottle ... plus everyone's got a lot more hair than they do now.

Results of the 1980 meet can be found on Kirk Reynold's fine Division III Cross Country web-site.

(Full disclosure: I am an assistant track coach at Carleton.)

Photo by Sara Rubinstein, courtesy of Carleton College.