Owen Valley High School
1978 – 1981

Curt Carey the son of a veteran distance runner Carl Carey, Carl was on the winning 1954 Indianapolis Shortridge High School cross country team and placed 16th in the Worlds Veteran Championships in Glasgow, Scotland. Carl got Curt running at an early age and at thirteen Curt could keep up with the pack in most ten milers until the later miles.

Curt continued running every road race in travel distance. One coach said that he would see him ten or more miles from home and he was sure that he would run to return. Curt’s training diary showed 120 – 140 mile a week was not uncommon. The high school coaching staff at South Putnam High School looked forward to him joining their team. However, Curt’s family moved to the neighboring Owen Valley school system in his freshman year, and he ran in the years of the tough southern Indiana cross country competition.

He won the 1980 IHSAA State Cross Country Meet in record time and 80 yards ahead of the runner-up, as it was the first IHSAA 5000-meter championship, defeating future NCAA All-Americans and an Olympic participant. His record was predicted to be broken the next year but escaped by .7 seconds and for the next eleven years no winner came close to Curt’s winning mark on the South Grove layout and although the championships have change sites. He still holds the fastest winning time in an IHSAA Championship Meet.

Late in the fall of 1980, Curt won the Regional 6 and National Age Group AAU Championship. At the Regional 6 Meet, the University of West Virginia’s Coach Hatfield offered him a scholarship and remarked that he had never seen a smoother runner. Then at the National Meet in Cheyenne, Wyoming, he won by 28 seconds in 15:46.2 on a course that was said to be nearly impossible to break sixteen minutes.

Curt took his talents and ran at Purdue University and University of Southern Indiana.
His real joy in running came on the roads and ultra-long-distance races.

CC 1st 1980