High School Track's Keeper Of The Flame (and Records), Jack Shepard, Entering Hall of Fame

By Doug Binder, DyeStat Editor

Jack Shepard works at his desk, day after day, and analyzes high school meet results on a 32-inch monitor, carefully and precisely finding the numbers that are good enough to make his list.

Shepard has been doing this year after year, decade upon decade.

The editor of the annual records manual, High School Track, locates strands of information all over the country -- a dozen marks at a big meet here, two there, one more someplace else -- and weaves them together into a database that records the history of high school track and field in the United States.

“I love lists and numbers,” Shepard said. “I think I was doing lists and numbers before I was doing track. I used to create whole (baseball) teams and leagues and tournaments using the statistics. I’ve always enjoyed it.”

Shepard is one of the behind-the-scenes figures that has celebrated and upheld the standouts in U.S. prep track -- and he is going strong after doing it for more than half a century.

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This weekend, Shepard will enter the NSAF High School Track and Field Hall of Fame as a contributor, an honor that he calls “humbling.”

“What I do is nothing compared to the athletes and coaches,” Shepard, 84, said. “They are the ones out there doing great things. The only thing I’ve done, is done it longer.”

Shepard, who lives in Orange County, Calif., is deeply rooted in the Southern California track and field scene. His father was a meet official for 50 years, beginning in the 1920s. He attended Occidental College during its track heyday of the 1950s, when the program was run by legendary coach Payton Jordan. He became a meet official, like his father, and his passion for numbers and lists led him to a long association with Track and Field News.

He has been responsible for maintaining the most accurate and detailed lists of boys track and field lists and records for nearly 50 years.

Shepard was 6 years old when he worked at his first track meet, in 1941.

“I’ve been involved in track and field for 78 years,” he said. “My first meet was at Eagle Rock, between Pasadena and Glendale. My father (John Shepard) was an official and my mom probably wanted me out of the house. So he took me to a track meet. He didn’t want to leave a 6-year old in the stands, so he took me to the field. I worked it. They let me hold the yarn which served as the finish line tape.”

Shepard attended, and helped his father, at two meets at Occidental in 1941.

When the U.S. entered World War II later that year, John Shepard entered the service. 

The younger Shepard continued to grow and then re-entered the world of track and field in 1947.

“Then I started going every weekend in the spring,” he said. “I was watching (Olympic champions) Mel Patton and Parry O’Brien and people like that.”

By the age of 17, Shepard was an AAU official just like his father. He was a timer, finish judge, even a head official.

“In later years I was the head judge and (my father) worked for me,” he said.

John Shepard had been a star half miler in New England and he was inducted into the University of Vermont Hall of Fame.

For Jack, a love of track never amounted to an athletic career. As a high school senior, Shepard weighed a mere 110 pounds.

Back then, in the Los Angeles vicinity, you rose through the sport based on a system of points that combined height, weight and age.

“I never got big enough to get past the ‘B’ team,” Shepard said.

His contributions to the sport would come in myriad other ways: As an official, working in the announcer's booth as a spotter, becoming the ultimate high school statistician and records compiler.

In the early 1960s, Shepard drew an assignment from Track and Field News to compile the annual list for “frosh and junior college” – a designation that existed because college freshmen were ineligible to compete on varsity teams in those days.

By then, Shepard had a full-time job and was working in the oil industry in Texas.

A bit later, he was asked to join high school track rankings experts Hugh Gardner and Fran Errota in helping to compile the annual list for Track and Field News. They were the next links in a chain that began with original editor Dick Bank and his first attempt at a national list of top performances in 1956.

In those early days, Track and Field News published the booklets of records and lists.

By 1969, Shepard was doing all of the record-keeping after Gardner died and Errota left the post when he moved from being a writer to the prep sports editor of the San Jose Mercury News.

In 1980, Track and Field News stopped publishing the lists, so Shepard started doing it on his own.

With the rise of girls track and field in the mid-1970s, a variety of people have assisted Shepard by compiling the top performances by females – Jim Spier, Doug Speck, Dave Johnson. Mike Kennedy has been handling the girls outdoor lists for 25 years.

It is painstakingly detailed, but satisfying, work. 

“When I started out, before I got a computer, everything was on 3x5 cards,” Shepard said. “Everybody had a card, 60-70 cards for each event, and at the end of each year I’d have two and a half shoe boxes of 3x5 cards.”

Twenty-five years down that road, or so, the space required to store all of those boxes had begun to add up.

“I thought, ‘I better start putting it on the computer,’” he said. “So, I would do the current stuff and then go back and add 7-8 shoe boxes worth of older material every year.”

Today, in addition to maintaining the accuracy of the current year’s lists, something he spends 40-55 hours a week doing during the indoor and outdoor seasons, he collects research from friends like Bob Jarvis and Jack Pfeifer in order to create historical lists and progressions.

“I can go clear back to 1900 and have 30-40 deep lists,” Shepard said.

It’s an astounding achievement and it’s an endless process.

Jarvis, the longtime meet announcer at the Golden West Invitational, is especially adept and committed to scouring old newspapers for track and field agate that might contain a kernel of important information – and achievement on the track or in the field that meets a standard worthy enough to make the list.

Shepard, now retired for 22 years, plugs along at his life’s passion. He also serves at his church and volunteers at the Orange County Wine Association with his spare time. After the completion of the summer season, and the selection of high school All-Americans for Track and Field News, he and his wife travel to Europe for a month -- almost every fall.

He loves special projects aside from the annual lists. He feels close to ready to print a copy of High School Track for the year 1940.

“We’re 99 percent ready,” he said. “But we’ll never finish.”

Over the past couple of years, he charted the vaulting of Lafayette LA star Mondo Duplantis.

Duplantis, it seems, was interested in trying to vault 18 feet more times than every other high school boy in the U.S. all-time, combined.

“At the time there were a total of 21 18-foot vaults, and (Mondo) already had 14,” Shepard said. “When he finished, he had 75 or 80.”

The print version of High School Track has become less popular over the years. He prints only a couple hundred copies and sells them to a hardcore audience of coaches, parents and other collectors. Internet sources like Athletic.net and Milesplit have become primary sources for marks making life a bit easier than the days of phone calls, letters and faxes. Shepard’s job is to sift through the results, verify the accuracy of the information, and ensure that it is perserved.

Sunday’s Hall of Fame induction brings some measure acknowledgement to Shepard’s work, which is truly immeasurable.

Ordering A Copy Of High School Track

The 2019 High School Track is 68 pages and costs $12. 

Contact Jack Shepard at [email protected].

To obtain a copy, make checks payable to and order from:

Jack Shepard

14551 Southfield Drive

Westminster, CA 92683