SAN BENITO - ACU track and field legend and three-time Olympic gold medalist Bobby Morrow has competed in hundreds of stadiums across the world.
But none of the stadiums he's ever been in have carried his name.
Until next week, that is, when the new San Benito Independent School District stadium is named Bobby Morrow Stadium in honor of the district's most famous graduate. For the past 60-plus years, San Benito High School has played in Greyhound Stadium, but that will all change starting next week when the new stadium is opened.
Morrow Stadium - a 12,000-seat stadium with a grass field - was scheduled to have opened last week, but heavy rains in the Rio Grande Valley region postponed the completion of construction on the new stadium. So the Greyhounds played one final game in the old stadium, beating Brownsville Rivera, 58-20, last Friday.
The dedication of the school district's new stadium will be Friday, Oct. 13, when the Greyhounds take on Valley powerhouse Los Fresnos in a district contest. Morrow is scheduled to be on hand for the dedication and a possible halftime ceremony honoring the former Greyhound.
"This is a tremendous honor, and it should be a great weekend," Morrow said from his home in Sealy. "I've seen the stadium in various stages of construction, and it's a beautiful facility. Those kids at San Benito are going to have a great place for football and track and field.
"They've got a nice new track around the football field, so they're already way ahead of where I was when I was at San Benito," he said with a laugh. "All I had in high school was an old dirt track (that his father had to level every day before practice), and then I went to Abilene Christian and all we had there was an old dirt track."
Morrow played football and basketball and ran track and field at San Benito from 1950-54 before joining Oliver Jackson's track and field squad at Abilene Christian in the fall of 1954. A halfback on the football team, Morrow said the Greyhounds "won their share of games." He's most looking forward to a Thursday evening reunion of some of his high school teammates in Harlingen.
"I haven't seen some of those guys since we graduated from high school," Morrow said. "Time really gets away from you when you stop and think that it's been more than 50 years since I graduated from San Benito High School."
Morrow said he would be joined at the dedication ceremony by "70-75" members of his family, as well as Paul Petty, one of his San Benito coaches who is flying in from Florida for the ceremony.
After winning Texas sprint titles as a junior and senior at San Benito High School, Morrow turned down scholarship offers from Southwest Conference members to enroll at Abilene Christian in 1954.
In 1956, after his sophomore season at Abilene Christian, Morrow won gold medals in the 100, 200 and 4x100 relay at the Olympic Games and was named Sportsman of the Year by Sports Illustrated. He was the first man since Jesse Owens to win both the Olympic 100 and 200.
Morrow set a total of 17 world records in the 100 and 200 and as a member of ACU and U.S. relay teams. He won 80 of 88 collegiate races, received the Sullivan Award as amateur athlete of the year, and was named to at least seven Halls of Fame, including the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame.
He was often called "the world's fastest human" and "the greatest sprinter of all time."
"He had the most phenomenal career I guess that a sprinter has ever had," Jackson said of Morrow, who in May 2005 was named the ACU Athlete of the Century, and last year was named the school's Track Athlete of the Century.
