Howard Wood Dakota Relays marks 100th running this week

By Mick Garry, for Pigeon605

The Howard Wood Dakota Relays track meet, set for Friday and Saturday, has evolved over the years in some ways, but in many other ways, this annual Sioux Falls sports centerpiece remains charmingly unchanged.

A look at the 17-page program commemorating the 100th running of the Howard Wood Dakota Relays is exhaustively researched and worth a deep dive whether you’re a serious fan of track meets or not.

In the program, you learn that at the first Dakota Relays took place at what was then a new facility on Sioux Falls’ east side and is long gone. South Dakota State’s Clarence Schutte, a Hecla native, won the 100-yard dash in 10.1 seconds, SDSU’s Frank Coffey set the state discus record with a toss of 127 feet, 2 inches, and Sioux City narrowly defeated Tyndall in the 880-yard relay in 1:33.6.

More than a century later, the times are quicker, the throws go farther, and Sioux Falls, which had a population of around 25,000 at the time –  is about nine times as big as it was in 1923.

The Howard Wood Dakota Relays has maintained a prominent presence on the region’s sports calendar throughout its 100 meetings. Neither wars, radical shifts in culture or the emergence of smartphones have been able to take the Relays down a few notches. The first weekend in May remains a big deal for a lot of kids.

“If you’re a high school athlete, you’ve been training and training, and then you finally get a chance to come to Howard Wood and hear your name on the public address system with your grandparents, your aunts and uncles and parents in the stands,” said Terry Nielsen, a past president of the meet’s board of directors and longtime volunteer who will be at the meet for the 51st time this year.

 “They’re competing in front of thousands of people and hearing those cheers for the first time in a lot of cases. We have board members who stick it out and continue to volunteer their time to this event because they were part of those kinds of memories at Howard Wood as high school athletes.”

This 100th running – a rainout, construction and COVID pushed the centennial back a few years  – begins at 1 p.m. Friday and at 9 a.m. Saturday.

That first Dakota Relays included 27 schools and had categories for grade schools, high schools and two college divisions. An estimated 2,000 spectators attended. By 1925, there were more than 600 athletes participating.

The meet now annually attracts more than 3,000 high school athletes from South Dakota and surrounding states. This year, the spectators attending will include as many as 100 descendants of Howard Wood, the event’s namesake. They will be recognized at the meet and also be part of a social gathering after Saturday’s competition.

Wood was a Sioux Falls coach and administrator who thought a track meet that included all levels of competition was a good idea. A testament to his organizational acumen was his ability to include community sponsors in the early years. He was definitely ahead of his time in that regard. According to the program, this included a deal on train travel. If you were coming to the track meet from somewhere else, you paid full price to Sioux Falls for train fare but only half-price on the return trip.

 Wood, who died in 1949, was born in Canada, went to college in New York and came to Sioux Falls Washington High School in 1908 after teaching and coaching for a short time in North Dakota. He took time away from Sioux Falls to coach the North Dakota State football team but returned two years later and maintained a legendary presence in the city for decades.

Among his Sioux Falls athletes was Dean Mann, a Sioux Falls legend in his own right who was part of the meet as an athlete in grade school, high school and at Augustana before beginning his work in helping run the meet in 1957.

Mann, a longtime Sioux Falls teacher, coach and administrator, died last summer at age 92. He was part of the meet’s brain trust for 65 years.

“A lot of us got all we know about Howard Wood through Dean,” Nielsen said. “I think Dean carried on a lot of Howard’s legacy with all the effort he put into this meet over the years.”

Seventeen athletes who have competed at the Relays also have competed in the Olympics. It goes back to Joie Ray, a distance runner who ran for the United States in the 1924 and 1928 Olympics, and includes Chris Nilsen, a former University of South Dakota pole vaulter who competed in the 2020 and 2024 Olympics, winning a silver medal in 2020.

Nilsen, who remains one of the top pole vaulters in the world, will be at the Relays this year, representing a group of Olympic alumni that includes his coach, USD’s Derek Miles, who won a bronze medal in the pole vault in 2008 and competed in the meet as a collegian.

Lincoln High School track and field coach Jim Jarovski knows all about the tradition of this meet. He competed himself as a high school athlete, then in college and now as a coach. He tells his kids about the meet’s tradition, and they get it. A track meet doesn’t get to its 100th birthday without athletes looking forward to being part of it.

“We have it circled on the calendar every year,” Jarovski said. “It’s a special meet for a lot of reasons, but one of the biggest is that it gives you a chance to compete against kids from every class in South Dakota and then five or six other states. We have kids who don’t even qualify for the finals at Howard Wood who end up placing at our state meet. That’s how competitive it is.”

In 1978, the meet began holding a special event that is given extra attention. On a rotating basis by year, a 200-, 400- or 800-meter race is featured with a field that Howard Wood officials have recruited. The goal is to get the top runners in the region for that event.

This year, the boys race is the 800 and starts at 6:25 p.m. Friday. The girls race is the 200 and will begin at 6:55 p.m. Friday.

Ticket information for Friday and Saturday is available here. 

Jarovski’s time at the meet is now up to 30 years. Like a lot of his runners, it goes by pretty quickly.

“The Howard Wood tradition is not just about our school,” he said. “It includes our city and our state. It’s always been something we emphasize and get up for. We get some of our best times of the year because kids focus on it, and the level of competition lifts you. We’ll be expecting a lot of personal records being set and maybe even some school and state records.”