Dave Lamm's oldest son is named after two men – both of whom were instrumental in making the 1968 Saint John's University graduate the successful track and field athlete he eventually became.
That success, in turn, laid the framework for the professional accomplishments he achieved later on.
"I would never have been a lawyer had I not had the success I did in track and field," said Lamm, a five-time MIAC outdoor champion sprinter who earned NAIA All-America honors in the 200-meter dash in 1968, then went on to a long legal career before his retirement in 2016.
"I was a shy person. But track gave me the confidence to know that if I worked at something, I could be successful. It made me believe in myself."
In gratitude for that sense of self-assurance, Lamm – who has three sons in all – named his eldest Jim in tribute to Jim Korth, the head track and field coach at Mankato Loyola High School, and
Jim Smith, the legendary SJU basketball coach who was also Lamm's track and field coach during his time in Collegeville.
Korth convinced a young Lamm, who had battled asthma and had never gone out for a sport before his junior year, to give track a try.
"My brother Ken was two years behind me in high school and he was out for track and doing well in the 440-yard dash," Lamm recalls. "We were playing around in our backyard, trying to pole vault over things with a bamboo pole. I seemed to do OK, and my brother told Coach Korth, who convinced me to come out.
"In my first meet, I went 9-feet using a metal pole and tied for first place. The problem was, during that same meet, when I got up to 9-6, I fell backward with the pole across my face and chipped a tooth. After that, I didn't really want to pole vault anymore."
But if pole vaulting didn't work out, sprinting did – thanks, in part, to the help with his asthma that Korth's ingenuity provided.
"He had the track team run down the football field and suggested that I try being a sprinter," Lamm said. "I reminded him I had asthma and that I couldn't catch my breath when I got done running. He said 'Let me see what I can do.' He talked to a man who owned a welding company and got a mask and an oxygen tank. He told me to use that when I got done with every race. So, after that, my excuses were gone.
"I ended up doing pretty well as a senior in 1963. I set the Loyola school record in both the 100- and 220-yard dashes."
Still, despite his high school success, Lamm said his times were not elite by any means.
That changed when he arrived at SJU, though that did not occur until after a detour to a Jesuit seminary in St. Bonifacius, Minn. (now the campus of Crown College).
"I was studying for the priesthood, but eventually I just couldn't see myself teaching or being comfortably able to talk to people and advise them," he said. "I was still pretty shy back then and I lacked self-confidence. It just didn't feel like the right role for me.
"Ironically, after graduating from SJU and the University of Minnesota Law School, I practiced law in the areas of real estate, wills, estate planning and probate. So I was counseling people and occasionally doing public speaking on those subjects."
That road started at SJU. He said the decision to transfer there came, at least in part, because he'd run in a track meet there in high school and was familiar with the campus.
He got to Collegeville in the fall of 1965 – just as Smith (who'd arrived as basketball coach one year earlier) was taking over the track and field program from football coach
John Gagliardi.
"It was funny because here was a guy (Smith) who, by his own admission, didn't know a lot about track and field," Lamm said. "But he had a meeting for everyone who was interested in going out for the sport and he told us he was going to work hard and learn. And he did. So I went out for track. Also, I had bought a pair of track spikes and I didn't want that to be a waste of money.
"Coach Smith was the only coach for the entire track and field team while I was there. He turned out to be a great track and field coach and I will always be grateful to him."
Indeed, it didn't take Smith long to see the talent he had, including in the sprinting corps. Though he said his first attempts at figuring that out yielded perhaps more of an optimistic assessment than was warranted.
"We took all the sprinters over to South Junior High in St. Cloud," Smith recalls. "And we had everyone run the 100-yard dash to get an idea of how fast everyone was. We were timing them with a stopwatch and everybody was coming in under 10 seconds. I was blown away, then I looked at the yardage and saw we were only running 90 yards. We'd marked it off wrong."
But whatever the distance, there was no mistaking Lamm's ability. During his first season in 1966, he won the 100 at the MIAC meet, but had to settle for second in the 220 after a stumble. He returned to win both events as a junior in 1967, then repeated the feat as a senior in 1968 when he earned the Randy Bartholomaus Memorial Trophy as the meet's most valuable performer. He set conference records in both events.
"He was a competitor," Smith said. "He did not like losing to anyone. I think one time at a meet, he finished second to a sprinter from Hamline (Terry Larson) and that really bothered him. But other than that, he beat everybody in the conference almost every race."
Lamm, though, had an excuse for losing that race. He'd just run the 440 immediately before the race (an event in which he later set a school record that stood for many years). And while Larson edged him, their times were identical (9.9 seconds).
As a junior, Lamm qualified for the 100 at the 1967 NAIA national meet in Sioux Falls, South Dakota - failing to make the finals in an event won by Texas Southern's Jim Hines who went on to win two gold medals at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City before playing briefly in the NFL.
He qualified for nationals in both the 100 and 200-meter dashes as a senior in 1968 (because it was an Olympic year, the NAIA national meet used the Olympic distances). That meet was held in Albuquerque, New Mexico to simulate the elevation in Mexico City (the site of that year's Olympics), and Lamm recalled the journey there was an interesting one.
"We rode down there with Jim, his wife and their kids," Lamm remembers. "But first we had to go to Chicago where we dropped off three of Jim's kids and picked up Jim Holmes, who was a high jumper for us who had qualified for nationals. Then the two of us, Jim and his wife, and three of his kids all continued on the road to Albuquerque.
"I remember getting out of the car once we got there and I could barely walk."
But he recovered enough to finish third overall in the 200 in a time of 21.3 seconds (hand timed), which stood as a school record until it was broken by
Kevin Arthur this past spring. His time in the 100 at the meet (10.4 seconds) stood as a program mark until 2018, when it was first broken by
Ryan Miller, who has since broken it again and now holds the record with a time of 10.22.
"Dave was unbelievable," Smith said. "He was a small guy, but he was very flexible. He just had another gear that no one else had at that time."
This despite the fact that, as he readily admits, he never truly got the hang of using starting blocks.
"I had to come from behind in a lot of my races," he said with a laugh. "I was always playing catch-up. But I liked that. It motivated me."
Lamm – who moved from Mankato to Florida after his retirement – still looks back on his time in Collegeville fondly. His enthusiasm for the school was so strong, in fact, that Jim Lamm - the son named for his two track and field mentors - attended SJU as well, graduating in 1994.
"That brought it full-circle," he said. "I loved SJU and so did he. It's a great school and I owe a lot of what I went on to achieve to the things I learned during my time there."
