When Gary Cornelsen returned to Liberal in the late 1980s after nearly a decade of coaching football and track in Texas, he found the Redskins' gridiron and track programs in need of an injection.
It did not take long for the Oklahoma native to rebuild the Liberal program in both sports. During the 1990s and early 2000s, the southwest Kansas high school became a hotbed of success in the fall as well as the spring.
Seeing the success of his football program and then assimilating those athletes into track for an equal measure of success, Cornelsen took the reins of both the boys and girls' track and field program in the early 1990s.
He would assign his coaches in the specific areas of track – sprints, distances, hurdles, throws, jumps – in a way that allowed them to train both boys and girls.
The results over the next 14 years would be some of the most impressive in the now 50-year history of high school girls' sports in Kansas.
Cornelsen's program produced 10 Class 5A girls' state team championships from 1994 to 2004, winning 10 out of 11 titles in that span.
"I really felt excited to be able to get the track program off the ground," said Cornelsen, now retired, from his Texas panhandle home. "We had done some of the same things in Texas where I oversaw both boys and girls and it just allowed me to coordinate everything."
Cornelsen said he was blessed to have an outstanding group of assistants, noting that he would designate one to be more in charge of the boys and one other to be responsible for the girls.
"I thought it just made everything simpler for the coaches, and it also worked for the kids," Cornelsen said. "We had a lot of similar workouts for the boys and girls and didn't change much in the different events. Perhaps there were times we backed off a little of the workout for the girls, but for the most part everything was the same."
Cornelsen said it allowed the workouts in all the different areas of track and field to be streamlined and then could focus more on the days of the meets.
"We didn't have coaches running all over the place from one event to another," he said. "We just had them with their area of emphasis. I think it made it better for the kids, too. They weren't getting a lot of different information from multiple coaches."
One other thing Cornelsen said that helped the school become so successful was each coach was responsible for doing "recruiting" within the school.
"Our coaches were told to identify kids who we thought were good athletes and really work hard to get them out for the sport," Cornelsen said. "I think the early success the boys had just kind of carried over to the girls' program. The girls saw how much the boys enjoyed winning and I think they wanted to be part of it."
The Liberal boys won their first state title under Cornelsen's watchful eye in 1991 and every year through 2003, the Redskins dominated the Class 5A state track meet in Wichita, winning 14 straight.
Long-time sports radio broadcaster at Liberal's KSCB station, Brock Kappelman, got a first-hand look at some of the strategies Cornelsen employed that led to the school's immeasurable success.
"What amazed me was how successful he was at anything he did," said Kappelman, who arrived in Liberal in 1998. "In track, it was every sort of athlete that he got to come out for the sport – throws, jumps, distance, sprints, hurdles – they excelled in everything."
The girls' program quickly came to life as well. With assistant Brett Eckert overseeing that portion of the program, the Lady Reds brought home their first title in 1994. Then, it was Joe Wilkerson's turn as he worked under the watchful eye of Cornelsen from 1995 to 2000.
In 2001, Cornelsen assumed sole duties and won three more girls' titles in 2001, 2003 and 2004 before hanging up the coaching duties as well as ending his football-coaching career. His time there produced 28 total state titles (4 football, 14 boys track, 10 girls track). The football program in Liberal had produced four Class 5A state championships under Cornelsen in the 1990s and his teams played in what is still a record seven consecutive Class 5A state title games.
What creates the kind of success that Liberal enjoyed in that decade-plus time frame?
"First, you have to have good athletes, and we had more than our share," Cornelsen said. Also, there are many athletes who are good, but you've got to find the right events for them and coach them up. I think our coaching staff did a great job of that."
Cornelsen said he inherited a program that was more likely to be average to above average than bad or great.
"They would win some meets, but as far as state goes, they were never competitive there," Cornelsen said. "I think in those first few years we just were able to create excitement in the students to come out and participate, learn to be competitive and also have some fun with their classmates."
Cornelsen and his coaches would identify kids they wanted out for track," Kappelman recalled. "They would get a warm-up suit and go to a class, hand it to the kid and tell them 'I'll see you at practice after school.' And they'd show up."
Again, Cornelsen credited his coaching staff with the large success of the program.
"I think we were able to get the most out of our athletes," he said. "The coaches seldom missed out on identifying kids who could do the different events. They put the program together and it worked out well for everyone."
By the early 1990s, Title IX of the 1972 U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights had been in effect for two decades.
Cornelsen said he could not recall ever talking to the girls track athletes about Title IX because his staff set the same expectations for the girls as they did for the boys.
"Once we started winning, the next group the next year took pride in keeping the streak going," Cornelsen said. "We had great leadership from the kids. We always had a bunch of boys out, and probably would get 35 or so out for the girls."
Kappelman said that the workouts planned by Cornelsen were always quite challenging.
"I know many of the athletes there who went on to compete in college said that the workouts under Cornelsen were more demanding than what they had in college," Kappelman said. He was meticulous about planning for a meet. He would know how many points they needed to win the meet, how many points needed in different events. At a meet, he would be running all over the place."
Before his arrival in Liberal, Cornelsen had coached two state track championships at Pampa, Texas, and utilized his same coaching philosophy in Kansas that had worked in the Lone State state.
"The main difference in Kansas track is that they don't double up on relays," he said. "You have to have kids who can excel in the individual events and that's where we tried to push the kids to."
Cornelsen said his main area of coaching came in the sprints, leaving the hurdles, distances and field events to his staff.
"You don't do it all by yourself, that's for sure," Cornelsen said. "Is there any difference in coaching boys and girls? There is some. I think instinctively you expect more from the boys, and certainly, brow-beating girls does not work. I think girls have always been easier to coach.
"I think the girls enjoyed being around the boys track team and it went the other way, too. You just train them like you would any other athlete."
While there was no doubt Cornelsen was the general in charge, Kappelman said he gave a lot of responsibility to his assistants.
"He let the coaches coach and I think the kids responded to that style," Kappelman said. "But you could always see him at a meet. He'd pace the whole stadium worrying about this, or that."
There have been a number of highly successful track coaches through the decades, but none has rarely enjoyed the success for both girls and boys programs as did Gary Cornelsen.
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