Together Again Mead High’s First Cross Country Team Reunites To Relive Memories, Play Cards

Twenty years ago, the runners who made up Mead High’s cross country team didn’t fully understand what they were starting.

The seven - Jay Bendewald, Jeff Rahn, Bob Bundy, Ed Brandstoettner, Bob Dellwo, Kelly Walters and Craig Deitz - won the school’s first team state championship in the fall of 1976, under then-coach Duane Hartman.

“It was a thrill to win it,” said Hartman. “It took years to get.”

The Panthers have since made the title their personal province. Beginning in 1988, following the arrival of Pat Tyson as coach, Mead has won eight straight and is working on a ninth.

Last week, that first state championship team was reunited to relive memories and play an all-night game of cards that had become their weekend custom as high school buddies.

Wednesday they were at Manito Park to witness the results of their pioneering handiwork.

“Every successive year the kids get better and better,” said Bendewald. “I wonder how many of us now would make the team?”

Things have changed in two decades. Mead High is the dominant Greater Spokane League athletic school in all sports. Cross country and football currently co-exist unbeaten at the tops of their respective leagues.

After this season, Mead, whose enrollment growth has been astronomical, must share its athletic wealth with a second district high school, Mount Spokane.

And there is yet another state cross country championship try.

Still, there remains something special about the first time.

Today, Bendewald, the individual state race winner, is a Lutheran pastor in Michigan. Brandstoettner is a Navy lieutenant commander stationed in Panama. Bundy is a mechanical engineer for a firm in Anchorage, Alaska. Dellwo is a labor statistician in Olympia for the Department of Employment Security.

Rahn is a chemistry professor at Eastern Washington University, Deitz and Walters, the team’s lone junior, are Spokane school teachers.

Jane and Nate Bundy, Bob’s parents, organized the reunion.

“It had been 20 years since we won the cross country thing,” said Jane Bundy. “What I wanted to do was support the team Mead has now. It went from there.”

The couple had helped lay the groundwork for Mead’s ongoing track successes when they coached summer youth track beginning with Northwest Kiwanis team and its offshoot, the Mead Track Club.

Distance runners were at its heart, including national champions Bendewald and Bundy.

Practically from the moment the class of 1977 entered Mead, the school began producing a succession of track and cross country championships.

Bendewald and Dellwo ran varsity cross country as freshmen.

“My dad started me running in second grade,” Dellwo dead-panned. “I think I was at my potential by seventh grade.”

Bundy, a half-miler, left football and joined cross country as a junior. The runners qualified for state.

“We finished sixth and Coach Hartman was disappointed. I think everyone ran poorly,” said Rahn. “The next year we won every meet and knew we could be state champions, but you don’t want to jinx yourself.”

Brandstoettner went out fast to lead Bundy and Rahn early.

“I wondered where you guys were,” he recalled. “It wasn’t until the mile mark that you went by.”

Bendewald didn’t lead the race until the final lap on the track of Evergreen High School in Seattle, the race site.

The next year with Walters the lone experienced returnee, Mead finished second in state.

“I think coach was more proud of that accomplishment,” said Bendewald.

In high school, the seven runners lived and breathed cross country. They would train by running from Mead High to the Bundy house for a break - “They had access to my refrigerator,” Jane Bundy said - then to Shadle Park High and finally back to Mead.

“The worst thing they ever did, according to Tracy Walters,” said Jane Bundy, “was go to Giant T and try to get the girl to put six scoops of ice cream on one cone and they’d run back with it.”

On weekends, whichever one had access to a car would pick up the others and they’d get together for the inevitable card game.

Although the seven ultimately went their separate ways for successful adult careers, Rahn said they have stayed in contact.

“Jay said he was looking more forward to this than his 20th high school reunion next summer,” Jane Bundy said.

The lady who has scrapbooks filled with their accomplishments was looking forward to it, too.

“They are a wonderful group of guys,” she said. “There’s not one I wouldn’t have adopted.”

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