Runner From The Sticks Clicks Versatile Walk-On Kunkel Gives Idaho Track A Lift

As a runner, Curtis Kunkel has made a career of coming from nowhere to upset more highly regarded opponents.

In his case, it is almost literally true.

Two years ago, Kunkel walked on to the University of Idaho track team from tiny Avery, Idaho - known primarily to fly fishers and elk hunters as the last place to get a beer before plunging into the wilds of the Bitterroot Mountains.

Formerly a thriving logging and railroad town on the St. Joe River, Avery had shrunk to the point that, when Kunkel moved there in the fourth grade, he had his father for a teacher every year.

“I spent five long years in his class,” Kunkel said.

It is so remote he had to drive 50 miles to go to high school in St. Maries.

“That would discourage you from extracurricular activities,” Idaho track coach Mike Keller remarked dryly.

While Kunkel ran track at St. Maries, worked his best time at 800 meters down to 1 minute, 59 seconds and placed at state two years, “athletically he’s very young,” said UI assistant Wayne Phipps. “All the running he’s done for us so far is still less than most seniors in high school.”

“I don’t know the last person who came through Avery who even went to college, let alone compete on an athletic team,” said Kunkel, now a junior majoring in resource recreation and tourism.

Keller remembers Kunkel as a gangly freshman with a mechanical stride who tried out for the team a month after school started.

“I just dropped by the dome one day, searched around for the track office, went in and introduced myself and told Keller I’d like to give it a shot,” Kunkel recalled. “At the time, I didn’t even know if you could walk on. I wondered ‘How do they go about making a team?”’

Soon enough, Kunkel displayed a quality that endears him to coaches: He’s ready to run when it counts.

On a hunch, Keller took Kunkel to the Big Sky indoor championships in Bozeman as a freshman. He ran a personal record in the preliminaries and finished second in his heat. In the finals, he was seeded 15th but ran another PR and finished fifth.

Last year, Kunkel again ran PRs in the heats and finals, lowering his time to 1:51.6, and finished third. The Vandals won the Big West championship.

“He never says a word,” said Keller. “You tell him to run 4x800 or 4x600, he just goes out and does it. I’d like to have about five walk-ons just like him. He’s that kind of a guy.”

Phipps sees a huge upside. Shin splints limited Kunkel to 5 miles of running per week last year and have forced him to do much of his training on a bicycle this year.

“He’s able to run very little, probably an eighth of what a typical 800-meter runner would run,” Phipps said. “If he could get a year with just typical training he could take that one more huge step up.”

Fiery shins or not, Kunkel loves a competitive challenge.

“He loves running the 400,” Phipps says. “He’ll run anything from 55 indoors up. But what he really wants to do is long jump.”

Argued Keller, “Three people in the world think he’s a long jumper - “his mother, his father and him.”

But with a day’s work on the runway, Kunkel jumped 21 feet this year. He’s thrown the practice javelin 185 feet, and he picked up a tennis ball in the Kibbie Dome and fired it over a banner hanging from the ceiling.

“Everyone on the team has tried it by now,” said Kunkel, “and nobody can get it over the banner. Not even the throwers.”

His wide-ranging talent is the latest manifestation of a family trait. In the late 1960s, Kunkel’s father, Joe, took part in an intramural decathlon at Washington State University. About 150 people competed, including many out-of-season WSU athletes, and Joe Kunkel won.

“He got a trophy for it,” said his son. “He just picked it up a couple of years ago. They had it in the trophy case in Rogers Hall.”

This past indoor season, Kunkel ran on Idaho’s 4x400 relay that had one of the top times in the nation.

“We’ve got a guy from Nigeria, and two guys from Zimbabwe on the relay, three guys who are at the world championship level - and here he comes in from Avery,” said Keller.

“I think it’s cool there’s such a diversity of cultures here. It’s really enlarged my cultural background,” Kunkel said. “I’d like to take some of these guys up to Avery and show them where I’m from.”

If he’s inclined toward paybacks, he could leave his teammates up there in the woods.

As a freshman, Kunkel tried to follow the Vandals distance runners on a long run over the Arizona mountains near Tucson. He fell behind and, in the desert heat, figures he almost died before he finally staggered off the mountain.

“I had no water,” he said. “My tongue was sticking to the roof of my mouth. I was looking for vultures.”

Sympathy was not forthcoming. Instead, teammates hung a nickname on him that has stuck to this day: Cactus Kunkel, the Desert Warrior.

A more fitting memorial may be the fact that as a freshman Kunkel was the only in-state member of the UI team. Now there are 14 Vandals from Idaho.

“I wanted to show that a walk-on, let alone one from Idaho, could be good,” Kunkel said.

UNIVERSITY OF IDAHO MEN HOPE TO KEEP CHAMPIONSHIP STREAK ALIVE No college team in the region is on quite the roll the University of Idaho men’s track team can claim. The Vandals take aim at a fourth straight conference title when the Big West Conference championship open Friday in Boise. It’s a streak of almost numbing consistency - except that the conferences seem to change yearly. It includes the 1997 Big West title, the 1997 Mountain Pacific indoor championship and the 1996 Big Sky Conference outdoor crown. The Vandals also won the Big Sky outdoor in 1995, but finished third in the 1996 Big Sky indoor. “It all started back in Boise (in 1995),” noted UI coach Mike Keller, “and so the old-timers on the team want to go out the same way - wearing the old uniforms.” But Keller said the Vandals, who cruised to a 35-point victory last year over Utah State, “will need some help this time.” This time, the Vandals don’t have 1997 Big West athlete of the year Tawanda Chiwira, who accounted for 25 points last spring but broke his leg during the indoor season. And Keller doesn’t know how much he can count on sprinter Jason St. Hill, who is nursing a knee injury. But the Vandals do have the conference leaders in seven events: Felix Kamangirira (46.20 in the 400), Derek Klinge (1:49.32 in the 800), Hugo Munoz (7-3 in the high jump), Chris Kwaramba (53-6-1/4 triple jump), Jeff High (192-0 hammer) and Oscar Duncan (225-1 javelin), plus the 4x400 relay team (3:07.19). “On paper, (Cal Poly) San Luis Obispo is the favorite and I’d say we’re second,” said Keller, “with Utah State very close. There’s not going to be but about 20 points from first to third, so every point counts. “We’re only in 13 events, so we’re going to need some people to hammer Utah State and San Luis Obispo in those other events.” The Idaho women, fifth a year ago, have a fine 1-2 combination in the sprints in Humrei Thompson and Katharine Hough, but no distinct favorites - unless either of those two can knock off Cal Poly’s Tamatha Jackson.