The 2024 Summer Olympics officially began Thursday in Paris. If you casually watch the Olympics — I admit that I’m one of those casual watchers — you associate American success in a handful of events. Basketball, swimming, gymnastics, a few track events.

I should associate track more American domination because Georgia used to do pretty darn well in it. By Georgia, I do mean the state. There was a 24-year period that saw 12 Georgia women excel in women’s track.

Georgia’s contribution to women’s track and field during that era is remarkable, really.

Anyone around my age can look around and see women’s athletics everywhere. Most everyone a generation or two older will remember their competitive high school athletic offerings as pretty minimal: cheerleading, basketball, maybe a bit of tennis. If you’re not from Georgia or South Carolina, probably not the basketball. Or if you’re from Columbus, Macon, Savannah, or Fitzgerald, you can also nix the basketball.

So where were these track wonders coming from?

The Georgia Interscholastic Association (GIA), the league for African American schools during the days of segregation. Not that the GIA was as well-funded as the Georgia High School Association. There wasn’t a mandate against playing basketball outdoors until the mid-1960s because many schools had no other option.

Unless they were major metropolitan schools, many GIA schools had basketball, maybe a bit of football and perhaps track. In this area, it seems that schools either did baseball or track during the spring, but not both. Tifton’s Wilson High was a baseball school.

The GHSA did not sponsor a women’s state track meet until 1968. The GIA formed the backbone of the title, with the first five champions ex-GIA schools.

History is rich. The events that happened. What they represented then and what they mean now. That’s true on many levels.

I am a sportswriter. I am a sports researcher. I have always been motivated into finding information not previously well known and by putting puzzle pieces together. A series of 2002 articles on the GIA lamented the incompleteness of information. That knowledge will never be complete, but football champions are 100% known, as are nearly all basketball. Track is making headway. Details are dicier.

We know a bit of how well the Olympians did at their high school state meets. Coverage is quite spotty for the Class AA schools — the largest classification in the GIA — to darn frustrating for Class C. Jesup’s Wayne County Training was the most dominant team regardless of class and thankfully The Jesup Sentinel earns a gold star for their coverage of tWCT, later known as Northside. That’s much better than papers in [more towns than you’d think] who seemed to show no interest in their local schools.

Todd Holcomb, who writes for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, identified 12 Olympians from 1948-72. Albany’s Alice Coachman predates the GIA meets. Catherine Hardy, who ran in the 1952 Games, hasn’t been spotted yet in any 1940s meets, if her school of Carroll County Training participated.

Four 1956 Olympians ran at Georgia high schools: Margarett Matthews and Mildred McDaniel, both of Atlanta’s Howard; Lucinda Williams of Woodville in Savannah and Isabelle Daniels, from Carver High in tiny Jakin.

Available results show McDaniel winning high jump in 1952. Matthews was a triple winner in 1953, in the 100-yard dash, the broad jump and as one leg of the 440-yard relay. Williams won the 50 and 100 for Woodville in 1955.

Daniels earned second in the 50 and 100 in the combined Classes A, B and C meet, then won the 50 in 1954 as A, B and C were split. Carver competed in Class B. Daniels was said to set a new state record in 1954.

Howard had another Olympian in 1960, Annie Smith. Shirley Crowder of Washington (Atlanta) ran in Rome that year as did Martha Hudson, who had gone to Twin City High. Twin City reflected its representation of the cities of McRae and Helena, which are now combined.

Individual results are especially currently lacking for Smith’s and Crowder’s era, though we know Crowder was a three-time state champ in 1956, possibly four. Crowder won the 50, the 100 and the baseball throw, and was likely a leg on the 440 relay team.

Baseball throw was indeed a state championship event. Women did not run long distances at the high school or Olympic level then. This helped to even out the number of events. Its ease and cheapness of staging no doubt was a plus to the GIA. Early state meets also featured a girls basketball throw and a boys football throw. Girls were permitted to throw the shot put and discus at GIA state meets.

The other 1960 Olympian, Hudson, was already a superstar.

Fort Valley’s newspaper mentioned her national success in recapping the 1957 meet. Hudson won the 100 for Twin City in the 1957 Class B meet and was on the 440-yard relay team that earned gold.

Wyomia Tyus (Fairmont of Griffin) and Edith McGuire (Archer, Atlanta) both competed in 1964 and Tyus also competed in 1968 in Mexico City.

McGuire won the broad jump and 100 in 1961, but it wasn’t enough for Archer to place in the top three as a team. Tyus’s Fairmont was runner-up in 1962 as she won the 100, was second in the 50 and on the runner-up relay team.

Fairmont was runner-up to Central of Newnan, a women’s track dynasty team. That was the school of Mattline Render, an Olympian in 1972.

Render won the 50 and 100 in 1963, then repeated in the 100 in 1964 as Central won both titles. Render might have been on the 440 team that won in both years.

Holcomb said the 12 women won nine gold medals over those 24 years of Olympics, with three silver and two more bronze.

Two won in high jump, Coachman and McDaniel, the same event McDaniel won for Howard. Matthews and Smith were gold medalists in long jump, an event we know Matthews won at least once at GIA state. Crowder won in hurdles. McGuire earned gold in the 200 in 1964 after being edged by Tyus in the 100. Tyus had three golds, that 100 over McGuire in 1964 and another in 1968. In 1968, she was also on the first place 4×100 team.

The GIA meets were key for many. Success there led to spots in the prestigious Tuskegee Nationals, which had college and prep divisions. There, many were spotted by college recruiters. At that time, the best women’s track programs hailed from Tuskegee and Tennessee State.

It’s been fun whenever I’ve been able to spot them on the microfilm or in scanned editions on Newspapers.com, or Georgia Historic Newspapers. The work to find these bits and pieces are frustrating, but more than worth it when you think you can add something else to the historic record that hadn’t been listed before.