When middle-distance runner Greg Dalzell was competing for KU, in the 1980s, it was a special time to be a Jayhawk track-and-field athlete. From 1975 to 1983, men’s track and field won seven indoor and seven outdoor Big 8 Conference championships.
Dalzell, b’86, was there for three of those titles, but the third one—the 1983 indoor conference championship—was extra special.
“It was my first really good performance at the conference level,” recalls Dalzell, who was then a sophomore. “I led off a relay in the opening event. We ran really well, and it was great for setting the tone for the rest of the meet. I felt proud being able to contribute to the win.”
A generous alumnus funded commemorative rings for the team, something that hadn’t happened with the two previous championships.
“That and my letter jacket were my most prized possessions,” Dalzell recalls. “I wore that thing like a wedding ring; it never came off.”
Until it did. In 1988, during a late-night ocean swim in Newport, Rhode Island, where he was attending a fraternity brother’s wedding, Dalzell’s prized possession slipped from his finger. He didn’t notice the loss until the next day, as he rushed to return to New York City, where he worked on Wall Street as a currency trader.
“I didn’t know where exactly on the beach I’d lost it, and I had to get back to the city, so I didn’t look for it,” Dalzell recalls. “I was pretty bummed.”
For 37 years, the ring was a misplaced memento of an athletic achievement that grew even more meaningful with the passage of time: That 1983 title, Dalzell notes, is still the most recent conference championship won by a KU men’s track team. The ring was also an important piece of the Dalzell family’s singular Jayhawk track-and-field legacy. Greg’s father, Art Dalzell, d’55, g’64, was a standout on KU’s 1953 NCAA championship cross-country team and a Big 7 conference champion in the 880. Greg’s daughter, Dorie Dalzell, b’18, also ran for KU, earning All-Big 12 and Indoor Female Freshman Indoor Track Athlete of the Year honors in 2015. All three Dalzells served as team captains, a distinction Greg believes is unique not only to the track-and-field program, but also to KU sports as a whole.
So when he received a call this summer from Trish Powell, KU Alumni’s office coordinator and indispensable problem-solver, Dalzell was understandably taken aback to hear that she had his long-lost ring.
“I think he was shocked,” Powell says, “that someone had found it.”
That someone was Glenn Lawrence, a Rhode Island State Police retiree and dedicated sports fan whose son competed for the U.S. Military Academy’s track-and-field team at West Point. Lawrence discovered the ring while helping his girlfriend sort through the possessions of a deceased friend, a beachcomber who had enjoyed roaming Ocean State strands with metal detector in hand.
Intrigued, Lawrence used the details carved into the ring, including the year and last name, to fuel some search-engine sleuthing that confirmed Dalzell’s KU connection. He then reached out to KUA, where Powell searched the alumni database to confirm up-to-date contact information existed for Dalzell.
“Trish explained she couldn’t connect me with Greg directly, out of respect for his privacy,” Lawrence says, “but she said, ‘If you mail the ring to me, I’ll make sure he gets it.’”
And she did. Soon after Lawrence’s package containing the ring and a letter to Dalzell arrived at the Adams Alumni Center, Powell shipped it to Dalzell, who now lives in San Francisco—completing a coast-to-coast journey that, fittingly, included a brief layover on Mount Oread, where the ring was first worn with such pride.
“It’s an amazing feeling,” Dalzell says. “I never expected to see the ring again, so to get it back after all this time is really cool. Everyone along the line had to go out of their way to make this happen. It’s just amazing how nice people can be.”
Steven Hill is associate editor of Crimson & Blue.