L.D. Weldon

L. D. Weldon was the multi-events coach of coaches. Weldon’s teams won 11 conference titles, either Heart of America or Missouri Athletic Union, and did well in National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics meets. His speciality, though, was shaping do-everything athletes into champions. He began his track career winning 12 college letters in various sports, some at Iowa and some at Graceland, plus gaining national acclaim as a javelin thrower. He won the 1928 Drake Relays javelin title competing for Graceland and the 1930 crown with Iowa. He also claimed the then-prestigious national Amateur Athletic Union title. Weldon took a do-everything young track star from Lamoni into Sacramento Junior College in California and Jack Parker responded by winning the bronze medal in the 1936 Olympic decathlon in Berlin. L.D. groomed Graceland athletes Mike Mattox and Dave Bahr to national decathlon titles. Then forty years later, Bruce Jenner, turned into a decathlete and gained international status winning the gold medal at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal with a world-record performance. The Californian first came to Iowa in 1925 enrolled at Graceland Academy for his junior and senior high school year, then spent a year at Graceland College. As a college freshman in 1928, he won the Drake and Kansas relays javelin titles. Then in 1930 at Iowa, he won the three national relays at Texas, Kansas and Drake. He won the 1929 national Amateur Athletic Union title, twice the Big Ten Conference champ and set state intercollegiate javelin mark to 217 feet. Weldon then spent 10-years at Sacramento and his track teams won the Northern California Junior College meets nine times and lead the establishment of a national junior-college meet. During this time at Sacramento two of his many star athletes swept the decathlon in Berlin with Glenn Morris and Bob Clark both surpassing the Olympic record.