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But for a football coach in Bentonville, Carlton Efurd might not have ever run track.
But then fate — and a determination never to quit — has long played a role in Efurd’s running and coaching success.
Good fortune, says the coach, follows hard work.
Efurd, a counselor at Elmwood Junior High School the past two years, was named the head coach for the boys’ cross country here team in 1988.
He and the Mounties have dominated the sport in Arkansas ever since, winning 12 state titles — including the past three — and four times as runners up.
Thursday, June 9, the winningest all-time coach at Rogers High School will be inducted into the Rogers Mountaineer Hall of Fame.
He was a member of the University of Arkansas’ five-time national championship track and field team from 1982-1986. He was named to the Southwest Conference All-Conference team in 1984, when Arkansas won its first of 38 national titles. His induction into the Hall, he says, came as a surprise. "I was thinking maybe after I retired," he said recently. "It’s probably fired me up more for next year than I’ve been in a while." He thanks Bentonville head football coach Barry Lunney for steering him to track. "Coach Lunney was the junior high track coach in Greenwood," says Efurd. "He got me interested in the sport. I was trying out for the golf
team in seventh grade."
He didn’t make the cut, he said. "I couldn’t make the top seven. I tried several times. I’d
always be eighth or ninth." So, Efurd turned to football and Lunney saw Efurd run a time trial. "I was well under the time and he said, ‘Efurd you need to run track, ’" he said. "We didn’t even have a track back then. We ran on the football field. They set cones up around the football field." And Efurd ran them very fast. His cousin Jerry Efurd was the high school track coach. He helped Carlton win the Class AAAA mile as a junior, which got him to the Meet of Champs. He didn’t qualify for the MOC mile as a senior, but did qualify for the 800.
That’s when, Efurd says, Arkansas’ John McDonnell saw him run for the first time.
Two weeks later, Efurd got a phone call from McDonnell, who’s Razorbacks had just finished winning the SWC Triple Crown. "He asked me if I wanted to run for Arkansas," said Efurd. "If I hadn’t run the 800, I don’t think John would have seen me and I don’t think I would have ever run at Fayetteville."
The only drawback was, Efurd had never run cross country. What an eye-opener that was, he says. "I had not done a lot of long distance training like we do here at Rogers; we didn’t have a team at Greenwood," he said.
Distance guys at Arkansas were running 70 to 80 miles a week. Middle distance runners were logging 40 to 50 miles. "I couldn’t handle near those sets of miles," Efurd said. "I struggled with both of them and ended up running with the middle distance runners my freshman year to get used to the mileage."
His first shot at running cross country came his sophomore year. His first meet was at Razorback Golf Course — a bad experience, he says. "It was a four-lap race," he recalls. "They started at the top of the hill and finished at the bottom of the hill. When I went through the finish line I counted that as one."
That actually, he learned, was onehalf of a lap. "On the last lap I passed people right up to the varsity," he remembers. "When I came through what I thought was the fourth lap I was told there was another mile and a half to go."
He thought, oh, no. "I just spent everything," he says. "I tanked that last lap. It was horrible. I was dying. Everybody I passed passed me and then some."
He said he never thought about stepping off the course. McDonnell, he said, bragged on him for not doing so. "He called it gutsy," said Efurd.
That quality, which he said his parents instilled in him — and something else — motivated him. "There were times I look back and said what in the heck am I doing here?" he said. "But I had this drive: I always wanted to break a 4-minute mile."
He thought he was going to before he graduated. He ended up running 3-minute, 48-second 1500-meters five times his senior year. That’s equivalent to a 4:04 mile. "I couldn’t get past 3:48," he said. "I thought if I could get below a 4-minute mile I could go to the Olympics. That was always in the back of my mind."
Winning national championships also inspired him and he says that tradition works on the state level at Rogers, as well. "I know it does," he says of winning 12 state titles. "Those kids want a ring. Just to have a chance to win a state championship is a pretty big motivator for a lot of kids."
Efurd was nominated for the HOF by Becky Hames, who noted that Efurd has coached 81 All-State cross country runners and helped 25 athletes receive college scholarships.
A colleague, Joe Spivey, said Efurd brought to Rogers "the same level of intensity and competitiveness that he was exposed to while running for the premier college track program in the U.S."
Roger superintendent Janie Darr said "Carlton has demonstrated that he is willing to go above and beyond to help our cross country teams win state championships."
Fellow inductee David Swearingen, whose youngest two children ran under Efurd, said, "When one looks at his record there is no doubt Carlton is the top cross country coach in Arkansas."
Denny Westbrook, Bryant cross country and track coach, agrees. "Coaches around the state envy his ability to always have his athletes ready to compete," Westbrook said. "Coach Efurd is always humble in victory and gracious in defeat, which is not very often."
One of his former runners, Hayley Hames, agreed with Westbrook’s assessment. "If you build it they will come," she wrote in a letter of support for Efurd’s nomination. "Coach Efurd built a tradition and we came. We came at 6:15 in the morning and again at 3 in the afternoon. We came on Saturdays when there were no races. We came in the summertime when there was no school. We ran nine miles. We ran up hill, we ran down hill.
" He knows how to motivate runners. " And, she adds, win championships.
