Year: 2024
Award: Team of the Year
Location/Affiliation: Denver, Colorado
- 1972 only female athlete Tack and Field Team
In 1966, Robert Smith started the nationally renowned Colorado Flyers Track & Field Club in northeast Denver… for boys. After Mrs. Ruth Lucas approached him, decided to open the team up to girls… the next day not one, but one hundred and fifty of them showed up! By 1972, pre-Title IX, our “Team of the Year” only trained female athletes. For more than half a century, Robert, Freddie Houston and Tony Wells – the three amigos – did everything they could to teach these young women about competition and success… on the track and in the classroom. They drove school buses and borrowed Salvation Army Buses from Denver to Albuquerque to Phoenix to Los Angeles.
His results? Dozens of women who attended college. Numerous girls and a team that took the track and field world by storm. The 1978 Flyers Indoor Mile Relay Team set an American and World Record and in fact our 1986 Sportswoman of the Year, Yolanda Johnson, was the fastest prep hurdler in the nation!
In all, 16 of Robert and Tony’s Colorado Flyers have been honored by Sportswomen of Colorado. and it’s time for us to recognize them and his Flyers… as our Team of the Year!
