Dolls On The Move To Mexico

This pretty special thing happened in a secluded corner of Southern California last weekend and a lot of track nuts are having trouble keeping cool about it. Consider our Olympic problems as good as solved, they are saying. There is really nothing to worry about. Nothing. What happened was that in the Olympic trials last Saturday and Sunday the United States put together the best women's track and field team it has ever had—more mobile, stronger, deeper and faster than anything before.

It was clear right from the start, when all those young hopefuls began gathering at Cal Poly in Pomona, that something unusual was about to take place. There was a youthful touch of femininity in the air, perhaps a faint breath of hair-spray, a mysterious new something nobody could quite define but which one coach called "a great influx of pretty young things coming into the sport." When it was all over late Sunday night one thing seemed clear: even if they do not win a Sierra Madre lode of medals in Mexico, as everyone expects, these pussycats are ready to call the future theirs. The kids are coming on.

Consider, for example, Maren (repeat Maren) Seidler, a large, cheerful 17-year-old shotputter who wears a sort of runaway Mia Farrow haircut and dangly, ornate silver earrings. She says, "Oh, I know, I know. You say 'shotput' and right away this picture of a giant Tamara Press comes into your mind. I realize you can't be exactly petite in this sport, but you don't have to go the other way either."

Or consider Doris Brown, a dainty little thing who runs the 800 meters with a great deal of �lan and who can get away with a costume that includes orange sweat socks. "To give you an idea of how good this team is," she says, "this is the first time the United States has ever even qualified anyone for the 800 meters. We have entered girls in the 800—every country is allowed to enter one girl even if she hasn't met the Olympic standard. But this year all three of our girls ran it under the required two minutes and six seconds."

And there are more, a great many more girls who look great in those warm-up suits, almost as though they were modeling them, for heaven sakes, instead of just keeping their muscles warm. Listen to Track Coach Ed Temple, that portly gentleman in the ventilated baseball cap who works a special sort of magic with girls at Tennessee State. Temple is to women's track what Courr�ges is to hemlines.

"I think," says Temple, "that we will make a tremendous showing. People are going to find out—they already are finding out—that we can hold our own with anybody."

All this hopeful new thinking crystallized Saturday and Sunday nights in a setting so artfully hidden away from the rest of the world that one might think America was ashamed of its girls. Pomona is out of sight all by itself—it lies somewhere above Los Angeles in air the color of a papaya milkshake. Cal Poly is hard to find; it is one of the new, sort of instant-plastic campuses that are springing up everywhere. And the Olympic trials were a step farther away, in the stadium of Mount San Antonio College, which is the school next door.

The Mount SAC stadium is tucked into a ravine and surrounded by that beige stuff Californians have come to think is what grass should look like. A few spectators wandered in and sat down expectantly. There was a small band in Mexican costume with maracas and a real tuba. Officials wandered about the infield; children ran screaming through the stands. In this casual setting the girls set about making history.

To be sure, certain top performances were expected. Doris Brown and Madeline Manning, for example, have traded wins in their 800-meter event so many times that they almost have permanent possession, and Mamie Rallins, that tiny-waisted thing who does not look strong enough to handle a hurdle, always does. It was typical: the gun went off and here came Mamie—who had politely waited for the other girls to start first, since Mamie is courteous that way—suddenly moving so fast that she seemed to be taking tippy-toes steps between the hurdles and passing everybody easily. When it was over, she ran a few dainty steps beyond the finish, stopped and threw her head back in a sort of madcap gesture, like Tracy Lord in The Philadelphia Story, and looked at the crowd with the faintest suggestion of a shrug. In the 800, Manning and Brown came down the homestretch side by side, like a sister act. The time was 2:03—with Manning first, Brown second, the camera declared—and it was enough to put both of them on the Olympic team, which came as no surprise.

And then the powerhouse look, this vital new something about the team, began to appear. There in third place came another young thing with a perfect name that might have been invented by 20th Century-Fox—Jarvis Scott. Miss Scott has been inching her way toward the top for about a year now; her performance was typical of the shape of teams to come. She came loping home in 2:04.5, well inside the Olympic qualifying mark and a full two seconds faster than she had ever run the event.