Ron Altenberg: Marion's 'Natural'
As a junior high school kid, he prowled his Marion south side neighborhood, begging the bigger boys to let him into their vacant-lot football games. He was so small they were afraid they might hurt him. But he persisted, and when they finally let him play he was so fast they couldn’t catch him.
Ron Altenberg was never afraid of the bigger guys, said his sister, Audrey Thompson.
When he was a sophomore in high school, he stood only about 5 foot, 3 inches, and his mother was concerned he wouldn’t be big enough to play on the varsity teams. She knew it would break his heart. Assistant coach Lynn Brown told her the kid could play no matter how tall he was.
But Altenberg sprouted eight inches over the next two years and grew into one of Marion’s greatest all-around athletes. And one of Iowa’s. And one the nation’s.
Ron Altenberg was blessed because he was good at all sports and he loved them all. It was also his curse in a way, because his love of basketball almost surely prevented him from achieving his potential in track. And if he had never run track, he could have been an even greater basketball player.
This is track season, so let’s go back 55 years to the spring of 1956 and the Wamac Conference meet, held on Marion’s crushed-cinder track. Altenberg, standing 5-11 and weighing 155 pounds, is entered in four events, the most allowed any competitor.
Altenberg wins them all: the 100-yard dash, the 220-yard dash, the 180-yard low hurdles and the long jump (called the broad jump then).
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