Into the shotput circle at Texas A. & M. University stepped Randy Matson, 20, cupping a 16-lb. steel ball in one huge hand as if it were an egg. Sucking in his breath, he tucked the ball behind his right ear, crouched low, and tapped the ground once, twice, three times with his left toe. Then, with a prodigious grunt that could be heard a full 100 yds. away, he hurled himself across the ring. The shot sailed through the air and bit into the dirt, 67 ft. 11¼ in. away. "That one felt pretty good," sighed Sophomore Matson. It should have: by 1¼ in., he had broken Dallas Long's world record in the shotput.
Big Man Around Town. His feat this month came as slight surprise to anyone who knew James Randel Matson—including Dallas Long. By the time he was 18, Charlie Matson's boy was already a big man around the Panhandle town of Pampa, Texas. Naturally—he stood 6 ft. 61 in. tall and weighed 210 lbs. He also averaged 15 points a game for Pampa High's basketball squad, ran 50 yds. for the winning touchdown against archrival Amarillo High, and was practically a one-man track team—heaving the 12-lb. shot 66 ft. 10½ in., hurling the discus 192 ft. 3 in., running 100 yds. in 10.3 sec. More than 100 colleges made him offers, and the University of Southern California assigned Old Grads Long and Parry O'Brien to take the prize prospect in tow. They proudly showed him the library, the dormitories, all those long-legged girls. Pity. They should have spent more time showing him the gym.
They did at A. & M. in College Station, Texas, where the gym is a big attraction. The nearest bottle of liquor is seven miles away, and the sidewalks seem to roll up of their own accord at 6 p.m. "I wanted a place where I could study and train and nothing else," explains Shotputter Matson, a gentle giant who calls everybody "sir" or "ma'am" and hardly goes anywhere without bringing along his pet shot in a brown bowling bag. As far as he's concerned, the M in A. & M. stands for Emil Mamaliga, 44, an assistant coach for the varsity swimming team, who started Randy lifting weights to build up his rangy frame. "You can't fire a 16-in. shell from a PT boat," Mamaliga insisted. "You have to have a big, heavy ship." By last fall's Olympics in Tokyo, Matson tipped the scales at 260 lbs., astounded everybody by flinging the shot 66 ft. 3¼ in. As it turned out, Randy had to settle for a silver medal when Long managed 66 ft. 8½ in. on his fourth toss.
A String of Firecrackers. Long, 24, wisely retired on the spot. Last February in Dallas, Matson smashed the world indoor record with a put of 66 ft. 2¼ in.; earlier this month in Austin he warmed up for his outdoor record-smasher with a toss of 67 ft. 9 in. "I've never seen anything like it," exclaimed Stanford's venerable Coach Payton Jordan, who worked with Randy at the Olympics. "His foot explodes, his calf explodes, his thigh explodes, his hip, his back, his shoulder, his triceps, and right out to the very tips of his fingers. It's like a whole string of firecrackers going off."
Matson's goal is 70 feet, the shotput equivalent of the four-minute mile in 1954, and he's getting closer every day.