PARIS — In the middle of an unpretentious, working-class neighborhood in Long Beach, Calif., is a century-old public school with a remarkable claim to fame.
Woodrow Wilson Classical High School churns out Olympians at a pace that other high schools around the country can’t match.
The last time that Wilson didn’t have an athlete at the Summer Olympics, Harry Truman was the President of the United States, gas cost 26 cents a gallon and credit cards hadn’t been invented yet. Alumni of Wilson have competed at every Summer Olympics since 1952, with the exception of the 1980 Games that the U.S. boycotted.
Hanging from the walls of Wilson's gymnasium are more than just state championship banners or jerseys of athletes whose numbers have been retired. There are also an array of banners celebrating the 30-plus alumni who have made the Olympics in everything from track and field, to swimming, to volleyball, to baseball, to rowing, to water polo.
High jumper Rachel Glenn and water polo player Max Irving added to Wilson’s reputation as an Olympic sports powerhouse by qualifying for Paris 2024. Glenn, a first-time Olympian, reflected on Wilson’s 72-year streak on Friday after she narrowly missed qualifying for the Olympic high jump final in front of a capacity crowd at Stade de France.
“I think it speaks volumes about the school and the coaches,” Glenn said. “The coaches are definitely very tough. They’re not lenient at all. If you’re on BS, they’re going to call you out and be like, ‘What are you here for?’ They take it seriously.”
Administrators at Wilson have previously reached out to the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee to see if the Long Beach school has produced more Summer Olympians than any other high school. USOPC spokesperson Jon Mason told Yahoo Sports that his organization has “never been able to truly verify this fact.”
“The true Olympic stat keepers can get really granular,” Mason said, “but they just don’t keep a high school stat.”
Wilson's Olympic streak began with a self-described "street rat" whose first dives didn't make headlines but did make the Long Beach police blotter. Pat McCormick would do cannonballs off a Long Beach bridge, splashing the occupants of the boats coming back into the harbor.
As it turned out, McCormick was better at diving than she was cannonballs — a lot better in fact. She swept the Olympic gold medals in women’s springboard and platform diving in Helsinki in 1952 and then did it again in Melbourne in 1956.
Many of Wilson's subsequent Olympians have played water polo and other aquatic sports, no doubt a byproduct of the school's proximity to the now-demolished Belmont Plaza Olympic Pool. The famed 1 million-gallon mid-mod masterpiece hosted the U.S. Olympic swim trials in 1968 and 1976, served as a training site for Los Angeles 1984 and is a place where Michael Phelps, Natalie Coughlin and Aaron Pearsall all once swam.
On dry land, Wilson has also emerged as a track and field powerhouse. The school’s most accomplished alum was once the standard bearer in the women’s 400-meter hurdles before fellow Americans Dalilah Muhammad and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone redefined what was possible in the event.
Lashinda Demus smashed high school records and world junior records. She won a trophy case full of gold medals at the NCAA, U.S. and World Championships. Next Friday, she will at last be awarded the Olympic gold medal from London 2012 after Russian hurdler Natalya Antyukh’s victory was wiped out due to evidence of doping.
Echoing Glenn, Demus told Yahoo Sports that Wilson’s success in track and other Olympic sports “starts with the coaches.”
“The coaching staff had the love for it,” Demus said. “It’s all about coaches who are willing to take a chance and quite honestly a downgrade in pay because they have a love and a purpose and a passion for their sport.”
Good coaches built winning programs. Winning programs produced Division I talent. And now Long Beach-area athletes flock to Wilson in Olympic sports the same way that football players favor city rival Long Beach Poly because of their decades-long history of producing NFL draft picks.
To Demus, Wilson’s public school status makes the success all the sweeter. After all, this isn’t IMG Academy pulling the best athletes from all over the country.
“The majority of athletes and the kids there are actually local kids from Long Beach,” Demus said. “That makes it even more special.”
Before Glenn showed up to Wilson as a freshman in 2016, she says she had barely high jumped before.
“I did it at 8 years old with no coach,” Glenn said. “You know how you do it for fun? I was 8 years old. Let’s go jump over the bar.”
At Wilson, the track and field coaches quickly recognized her talent in the high jump and the 400 meter hurdles. By the time she graduated, she was a state champion in both.
Demus is now a high school coach herself in Southern California at Culver City High. She models her own program after Wilson’s.
“You create this environment where the kids expect to be successful,” Demus said. “I learned that from being at Wilson.”
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