Bair left his mark as a runner
During the 1960s, ’70s and into the early ’80s, Sam Bair Jr. was one of the top runners in Western Pennsylvania.
The Scottdale native was a three-sport athlete at Scottdale High School (now Southmoreland). He played football and basketball, and ran track.
“Times obviously have changed,” Bair said. “The night of my final basketball game, I would lay out my running gear for the next morning to start track season. Most guys went from one sport to the other. A lot of kids these days are one- or two-sport athletes, so they train year round for their sport. In those days most of us didn’t do that, we just went from one sport to the next.”
Excelling in track, Bair won two state championships in the 800-meter run. After running 1:56 his junior year, he lowered his time to 1:54 during his senior season.
“I probably was the only high school kid ever that got up in the morning before school and ran,” Bair explained. “Then I ran another workout after school with the team. In those days, you didn’t have to be in school until around 8 o’clock in the morning. I used to jog three miles in the morning before school.”
His high school track coach, Don Gilpin, was a big part of Bair’s development.
“Gilpin is still coaching cross country at Southmoreland,” Bair said. “He came in my junior year as our backfield coach in football. He was also an assistant basketball coach and he was my track coach. He was not much older than we were. He was young and very enjoyable to be around. I thought that he played a pretty good part in my development.”
One of the giant figures in Fayette County track, miler Joe Thomas from Uniontown, played a role in Bair’s coming of age as a runner.
“Joe and I are good friends,” Bair stated. “Joe had a major influence on me when I was young. When I was in seventh grade, Jim Kriek wrote an article about Joe Thomas coming to the Fayette County track meet in Connellsville. I remember reading this article about Joe, who at the time had the fastest high school time in the nation in the mile. My cousin and I convinced my uncle to drive us to Connellsville that night to see Joe run. He had a very major influence on me when I was young. He coaches at Albert Gallatin and I coach at Shaler, so we usually get together at meets.
“Whenever I used to go home and visit my parents on weekends, Joe and Brent Hawkins would drive over from Uniontown and we would go for a run in Scottdale.”
When Bair graduated from Scottdale in 1964, only a few schools offered scholarships. Bair accepted a scholarship to run for Kent State.
Walking into the coach’s office to report for the first day of practice, Bair was a surprise to the man behind the desk. Even a disappointment.
“He thought he was getting this tall guy,” says Bair. “Some big, powerful guy who was going to power out some half miles for him.”
Instead, standing in the doorway was a 5-7 rail-thin kid who couldn’t have weighed more than 120 pounds.
“You better run the mile,” the coach decided after taking one look at the kid.
“That’s what I want to do anyways,” Bair replied.
Peter Snell, of New Zealand, was viewed as the greatest middle distance runner in the world at the time and the famed Arthur Lydiard was his coach. In one of the magazines that Bair came across, he found out that Snell was running 100 miles a week.
He figured he should do the same.
He bought Lydiard’s training book: Run To The Top. With the book on his bedside stand that summer before enrolling at Kent State, Bair started running.
Devising his own plan, he spent the first week of his summer running five miles a day. The next week he was up to seven per day. By the third week, he ran 70 miles in the seven-day span. By adding morning runs, he got up to 85. Sure enough, only a month and a half into his summer, Bair was running 100 miles in a week.
Bair ran 4:08 as a freshman. Then 4:04 as a sophomore and 3:58 in a magical race in Bakersfield, Calif.
“Jim Ryun destroyed everybody in that race,” Bair marveled. “On that night he ran a 3:51.1. He led from gun to tape. He ran it on a beat up cinder track and he could have easily been the first man under 3:50 in the mile that night, if he had a pace-setter. In those days it was a big deal. Breaking four was relatively new when I did it. That was something special.”
Bair was a seven-time NCAA All-America, and indoor and outdoor champion in the mile. In 1968, he was a cross country All-American. That same year, Bair placed seventh at the U.S. Olympic Trials. In 1971, Bair earned a spot on the No. 1-ranked U.S. cross country team, the Florida Track Club.
Bair ran all over the country, but was having trouble meeting expenses. The AAU was track’s governing body. In 1974 he joined the International Track Association, a start-up professional racing series. He accepted money from the group and was only allowed to race other runners that were a part of the ITA. The association disbanded before the 1976 Montreal Olympics and Bair was left to try to rejoin the AAU. They made it very tough.
Claiming he would “contaminate” the other races, the AAU would not allow Bair to compete against other AAU athletes. He continued to run his 100-mile weeks and found non-AAU sanctioned races. He stopped running competitively and got a job.
Bair was the track and field and cross country coach at the Community College of Allegheny County (CCAC), where he was named National Junior College Cross Country coach of the year five consecutive years. He produced NJCAA championship teams in 1973, 1976 and 1977. For 40 years he was a professor of Health and Physical Education at CCAC. He was a volunteer coach at Pitt for four years. Retired, he now coaches track at Shaler High School.
Sam Bair III ran a sub four-minute mile in 2010 at the University of Washington Husky Classic with a time of 3:59.71.
“We are one of five father-and-son combos to run a sub four-minute mile,” the older Bair said. “It was just terrific.”
Bair, 67, resides in Pittsburgh with his wife, Arlene. They have two children, Sam Bair III and Alyson.
Bair Jr was inducted into the Westmoreland County Sports Hall of Fame in 1976 and Kent State University Sports Hall of Fame the following year. In 1977 he was inducted into the Pittsburgh Dapper Dan Hall of Fame and in 1995 he became a member of the Western Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame.