In the basement of East Tech High School on Cleveland’s East Side is a once state-of-the-art indoor track. These days the finish lines are fading. On the infield is a weight room where the benches have frayed upholstery and the dumbbells are mismatched.
The boys track and field roster at East Tech is pretty bare. The team lacks standard racing shoes and practice apparel and many of the student-athletes are unfamiliar with track strategy like understanding the lanes and how to use starting blocks.
East Tech Boys track and field head coach Michael Hardaway is unbothered by these hurdles.
When it comes to weightlifting, he knows it doesn’t matter how old the barbells are: 50 pounds is 50 pounds.
“I love this stage of it. This is the beautiful part, the humble beginnings, building the culture,” Hardaway said. “Certain things that are going to stump you for a minute, but you got to get back on your horse and you got to keep going. I preach that all the time.”
East Tech is located in one of Cleveland’s poorest neighborhoods. The Cleveland Metropolitan School District is facing budget cuts that aren’t expected to affect athletics in the short term, but it still has some worried about the long-term future of extracurriculars.
Through all of that, the team turned to its history to rebuild its storied programs. One of the historical lessons of track and field is that you can triumph over adversity.
Teaching track history lessons at East Tech
In 1936, athletes from around the world gathered at the Summer Olympics held in Berlin, Germany. Nazi flags — red with a white disc and a black swastika were draped around the arena like wallpaper, archival footage shows.
A young Clevelander named Jesse Owens took the track and field world by storm and the 1936 games were his keystone.
Owens didn’t just nullify Hitler’s Nazi athletic agenda, he destroyed it, winning four gold medals in the 100-meter dash, the 200-meter dash, the four-by-100-meter relay race and the broad jump. And he did it all in a stadium full of spectators controlled by a regime that believed Black people like him were inferior.
“The competition was grand,” Owens told a newsreel in 1936. "I am very glad to come out on top.
But before all of that, Owens ran for East Tech High.
“Having probably the greatest Olympian ever to come from your high school, there’s nothing like it,” Hardaway said. “I’m always going to preach the gospel of Jesse Owens.”
Hardaway sought the head coaching job at East Tech after learning about its vacancy last year.
"We don’t have a boys team? At the home of Jesse Owens?"
“I was like, 'Where the boys at? We don’t have a boys team?'” Hardaway said. “At the home of Jesse Owens? That’s unacceptable.”
The East Tech boys track and field team hasn’t existed for a while. COVID-19 wiped out sports district-wide in 2020 — and an effort to bring the team back in 2022 was short-lived, according to Hardaway.
Hardaway said it was his duty to celebrate Owens and the best way to do it was by reviving the boys track and field team.
“We’re going to put some pride back into our school,” Hardaway said.
People in Northeast Ohio idolize their Black sports legends like basketball star LeBron James and football great Jim Brown. But Owens, who broke barriers for Black athletes during Jim Crow and stood up to Nazism along with other Black and Jewish teammates isn’t as celebrated.
“In 75 years or so, will Cleveland forget LeBron? In 75 years, did Cleveland forget Jim Brown?” said Cleveland City Council president Blaine Griffin.
Griffin wants to ensure that Owens, who ran for Ohio State University after East Tech High School, gets his due. In May, Council passed an ordinance to make the Olympian’s childhood home on East 100th St. a local landmark.
“To let everybody know that Black excellence can come from these communities that are experiencing so much of a drought of resources is just important,” Griffin said.
“We need that legacy."
Coach Hardaway holds Owens up as an example — and not just as a runner.
“We continue to preserve his legacy to the younger generation that may not be as familiar with Jesse Owens and the things he’s accomplished on and off the track,” Hardaway said.
Student-athletes, like freshman Zikei Harris, are buying into the revival.
“It’s time to bring it back at East Tech where it’s supposed to be,” Harris said. “We need that legacy. We need track because without track there’s no East Tech for real."
Reviving the team honors Owens, team members say. The Jesse Owens silhouette on their Brown and gold uniforms honors him, too. But this team also wants to win the way East Tech used to win.
The track and field team won 27 conference titles in 33 years from 1931 to 1964 — a streak of greatness started by Jesse Owens.
“I look up to him. I want to break his record and try to improve upon what he did and make another legacy behind his,” Harris said. “It’s just amazing because he was here. He started from here and ended up there. So now I got to start from here and end up where he was at.”
Updated Tuesday, May 7, 2024, 11:50 a.m.: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the date when Cleveland City Council approved an ordinance naming Owens' home a Cleveland landmark.
