Rolland Romero

Sport: Track and Field

Induction Year: 1974

University: Loyola

Induction Year: 1974

In the 1931 Louisiana state high track and field rally at Baton Rouge , Rolland Lee Romero of Welsh took fourth place in the hop, step and jump.

A year later, in the Amateur Athletic Union national championships and Olympic Trials at Palo Alto , Calif. , Romero was second in the same events. That made Romero the 17-year-old “baby” of the team that represented the United States in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics.

Between those performances, Romero had to beg two Loyola University coaches to give him a scholarship – and talk track coach “Tad” Gormley into giving him a shot at the hop, step and jump.

Romero went to Loyola as a hurdler, but a couple of nasty spills in his first year of collegiate competition ended his hurdling career.

His father, Veilier Romero, raised enough money operating a grocery store to pay for Rolland’s tuition in the fall semester of 1931. But the money ran out when the spring semester arrived, and Rolland had to beg football coach Clark Shaughnessy and Gormley for a scholarship.

When Gormley asked him which foot he jumped from in the broad jump (now called the long jump), Romero replied, “Either one.”

Then he proved it didn’t matter by jumping 22 feet, 8 inches off his left foot and 22 feet, 10 inches off his right foot.

He told Gormley he could beat anybody on the Loyola squad in the hop, step and jump, and backed up his boast with leaps of 46 and 47 feet.

A few weeks later, Romero first attracted national attention with a meet record leap of 49 feet, 10 ½ inches in the Southern AAU junior championships. It was the best performance by any American in 19 years.

Another Louisiana athlete, Sidney “Snaky” Bowman of Hammond and LSU, beat Romero by one inch in the national AAU meet and Olympic Trials with a leap of 48 feet, 11 ¼ inches.

The previous year, Bowman’s younger brother was one of the three athletes who finished ahead of Romero in the state rally at LSU. Ralph Newell of DeQuincy set rally records in both the broad jump (23-9) and hop, step and jump (47-3), with George Bowman of Hammond and Nathan “Buddy” Blair of Sicily Island finishing 2-3 ahead of Romero. (Later, both Blair and Romero won national AAU titles.)

To say the least, Louisiana athletes were on a roll in the hop, step and jump. In three consecutive Olympic Games (Amsterdam in 1928, Los Angeles in 1932, Berlin in 1936), eight of the nine U.S. berths in the hop, step and jump went to Louisiana products. Between 1932 and 1943, Louisiana athletes won 10 of 12 national AAU titles in the event. But “Snaky” Bowman and Romero were the only American triple jumpers who made two Olympic teams during that run.

Bowman set the national interscholastic record with 49-1 in 1928 and Billy Brown, who competed in the Berlin Olympics before his senior year at Baker High, broke it in 1937 when he set a record (49 feet, 7 ¼ inches) that stood for 27 years.

One reason for the dominance of Louisiana athletes in the event, which is now called the triple jump, was the fact that Louisiana was one of the few states that included it in high school meets. But Romero, the Bowman brothers, Brown, Blair, Lloyd Bourgeois of New Orleans and Dudley Wilkins of Crowley ranked among the best triple jumpers in the world.

Romero told sports writers that he developed his leaping ability “by jumping over alligators, creaks and rice swamps.”

He was a member of the first football team at Welsh High, and scored the first (and only) touchdown in the team’s first game – a victory over Ville Platte. But Romero didn’t blossom in track and field until his senior year, when he won district titles in the 120-yard high hurdles, broad jump and hop, step and jump.

In the state rally, however, he had to settle for fourth place in the hop, step and jump and fifth place in the high hurdles.

For a few weeks in 1936, Romero was the world’s only 52-footer in the hop, step and jump.

He got off his historic 52-foot jump in the Texas Centennial Games at Dallas . But he wasn’t credited with the world record because Naoto Tajima of Japan broke the record in the Berlin Olympics six weeks later with a leap of 52 feet, 5 and 15/16 inches.

Romero had a longer jump in the finals of the 1936 Olympics, but it was disallowed when German officials ruled he drug a spike across the scratch line. Romero had to settle for fifth place.

That wasn’t the first time a foul cost him a world record. Earlier in 1936, he lost credit for a 51-foot, 9-inch jump when he over-ran the take-off by the smallest fraction of a toe mark.

Throughout his career, Romero had more trouble hitting the takeoff board than he had out-jumping his opponents – even in international competition. In the 1936 Olympics Trials, he fouled on his first three attempts. With only one attempt left, he moved his takeoff mark back two feet and moved into second place with a leap of 48 feet, 10 inches.

Despite the disappointments in a few major meets, Romero earned All-American honors four years in a row. “I find it a lot of fun,” he said of track and field, “and a good way to see the world.”

In 1935, he broke the national AAU meet record (which had been set by world record holder Dan Ahearn in 1913) with a leap of 50 feet, 4 7/8 inches.

Romero, who also excelled in football at Loyola, was a charter member of the Loyola sports Hall of Fame. He was inducted into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame on Feb 18, 1974, and died on Nov. 25, 1975.