Remembering Bill Russell's 1954 record-setting performance at Mackay Stadium

Bill Russell, who died Sunday at age 88, was sports' ultimate winner.

The legendary basketball star and American icon won two NCAA basketball championship, an Olympic gold medal and a record 11 NBA titles. But before achieving that glory, he was a winner inside Nevada's Mackay Stadium.

Ten months before securing his first NCAA title on the hardwood as a member of the San Francisco Dons, Russell, who towered at 6-foot-10, came to Reno and leaped over a high jump bar set at 6-5, setting a Mackay Stadium record on May 1, 1954. The previous best had been set 26 years prior when San Francisco Olympic Club's Henry Coggershall cleared a bar set at 6-3, at the time a Far Western Conference record.

This was before Fosbury Flop was created in the late 1960s and became the predominant form of high jumping. Before then, high jumpers used the straddle technique, and few were better nationally than Russell, who was a record breaker in track and field and basketball. Russell's Mackay Stadium record — and this was the original Mackay Stadium, which opened in 1909, and predated the modern version, which was built in 1966 — lasted only one year.

On May 7, 1955, Johnny Mathis, Russell's Bay Area high school rival, bested his buddy with a leap of 6-5.5 at Mackay Stadium, half an inch higher than Russell's jump a year earlier. Then a member of San Francisco State College, Mathis would go on to become one of the most successful crooners in U.S. history, selling 400 million records worldwide to make him the third-best selling artist of the 20th century, behind only Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra.

Of all his life achievements, being able to beat Russell still stands out.

“I beat his high jump record in Nevada,” Mathis told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2019. “I’m very proud of it. But I think that’s the only time.”

Russell was the superior high jumper and among the top 10 in the country, but on this day, Mathis, who at 5-7 was 15 inches shorter than Russell, proved superior. Despite his future lying in music, Mathis was one of college's top high jumpers and a borderline Olympic-level athlete. His rivalry with Russell dated back to their high school days with Mathis attending San Francisco's Washington High and Russell at Oakland's McClymonds High, a separation of only 15 miles.

"I’m 5-8.5 in height," Mathis told the Nevada State Journal's Ty Cobb after his Mackay Stadium jump.

"He’s 5-7.5," his head coach, Ray Kaufman, fired back, adding "That’s what our school P.E. records show."

While Mathis would go on to win acclaim with his voice, Russell's athleticism continued to shine. He would become the winningest athlete in American sports history, capturing back-to-back national titles in basketball in 1955 and 1956, also earning Olympic gold in the 1956 Melbourne Games. The No. 2 pick of the 1956 NBA draft, Russell won 11 NBA titles in 13 seasons with the Boston Celtics, taking home five Most Valuable Player awards to boot. He was the NBA's first Black coach, winning two titles as a player-coach. He was equally accomplished as an activist and pioneer in the civil rights movement, earning the Presidential Medal of Freedom, as awarded by Barack Obama, in 2011.

Despite never playing Nevada in basketball during his three seasons at USF, Russell did put on a show for a Reno crowd. That 1954 meet at Mackay resulted in a Nevada win over USF, but nobody doubted Russell was the best athlete on the track that day. In addition to his landslide win in the high jump, he also won the broad jump and was the anchor runner in the Dons' mile relay victory. He placed third in the javelin.

“Russell presented a good crowd in Mackay Stadium with its finest taste of high jumping in many a year,” the Reno Gazette-Journal read after the meet. “The rangy Don sophomore, who reaches six-nine in height and handles it with the grace of a natural athlete, soared over the bar at six-feet-five inches to outdo his nearest competitor by seven-and-a-half inches.”

Mathis' record jump stood for a decade before Nevada's Otis Burrell broke it with a leap of 6-8.5 in March 1965 in a meet against Mathis' alma mater, San Francisco State. One year later, the new Mackay Stadium opened, and Burrell set the high jump record there, too, with a jump of 7 feet. That same year, Burrell won two NCAA high jump titles, sweeping the 1966 indoor and outdoor championships.

While Mathis and Burrell's athletic glory peaked in college, Russell's masterful Mackay performance was only the start of his greatness. One of the most meaningful athletes and men in modern American history, Russell's one day in Reno ended as a footnote in his athletic career. But those in attendance that day witnessed one of the great winners doing what he did best.

“If you want to take a look at the biggest track athlete in captivity, take a jaunt up to Mackay Stadium tomorrow afternoon,” Ty Cobb wrote in the Nevada State Journal in advance of the meet. “The Dons will depend upon Bill Russell, who is taller than some pole vaulters can jump. When he gets those long legs unwound Russell can really explode.”