Outpolling the likes of steeplechasers/mile stars Brad Barton and Nolan Shaheed, multi-event record-setter Bob Hewitt has been named USATF Masters Male Athlete of the Year. Oregon Bob is an M80 superstar. He set world indoor records in the long jump and pentathlon and three American records (adding the indoor hep). He competes infrequently, but when he does, all stops come out. In fact, he deserves a WR in the 200-meter hurdles but didn’t make the Committee of One cut for the Anaheim convention. In addition, 36 other American men and women are age-division AoYs, according to votes by the USATF Masters Awards Committee overseen by Mary “Aloha” Trotto. Winner of the David Pain Distinguished Service Award will be announced at the USATF annual meeting in early December. Irene Obera was previously announced as overall USATF Masters Athlete of the Year, so she’s also the USATF Women’s Masters Athlete of the Year. (Making the 80-84 age group the hot one this year.) And watch out for next year! She’s reportedly training for the hep will soon add the javelin, HJ and discus to her repertoire. Go, Irene, go! (And congrats to all the folks below, even if you’re in boring age groups below 80.)

A 2009 story on Bob paints a decanut picture:

As a teen, Bob Hewitt idolized Bob Mathias, who had just stunned the athletic world by winning the Gold Medal in the decathlon in the 1948 Olympics — at age 17! Hewitt dreamed of becoming a decathlete, too, and of winning a Gold Medal.

In that he was only an “average” high school track athlete, did not participate in track and field in college, and followed this up with a couple of decades as a self-proclaimed couch potato, it would appear that Bob’s dreams of decathlon glory were dead. It would be obvious to us realists that his window of opportunity was gone. Dreams, however, never die; they just go into a form of hibernation. Such was true for Bob Hewitt.

In his mid-sixties, Bob, an avid tennis player at the time, took in a masters track meet. This rekindled his interest in competing in track and field, and the following year, at age 65, he began his masters track career. In his first track meet, he took second place in the javelin; this sounds like a good start until you learn that he was one of only two competitors in the event.

Bob went on to try his hand at sprinting and jumping events and found that he was an especially good jumper. With encouragement from an experienced fellow competitor/friend, Bob tried more and more track and field events.

After much success, he decided to see if he could master all the disciplines that make up the decathlon — 100m sprint, long jump, shot put, high jump, 400m, 110m hurdles, discus, pole vault, javelin and the dreaded 1500m endurance run (To see masters athletes competing in these individual events, go to YouTube.com and type in “masters decathlon”).

In 2005, now in his early seventies, Bob, on short notice and with limited practice (he’d had no practice at all in two of the events), entered his first ever decathlon competition, but not just any competition. It was the World Masters Athletics Championships in San Sabastian, Spain! In this first attempt Bob surprised himself, and put the other top competitors on notice, coming in third out of 18 decathletes from around the world. Winning the Bronze Medal gave him hope that with some dedicated practice he could finally reach his childhood dream of Gold. And he did!

Bob now holds multiple World and American Records in the decathlon, pentathlon (5 track & field events), the heptathlon (7 track & field events), and individual events, such as the triple jump. He holds the decathlon World Record for his age division, 75-79, with 8,526 points scored last year; this point total is the highest ever achieved by any male athlete 40 or better.

2009 was a banner year for Bob Hewitt as he competed in the 75-79 age group. Here are just some of his results:

• Bob won the USATF Masters Indoor Heptathlon in Kenosha, Wisconsin in March with a record-setting 6,273 points

• Later in March, at the USA Masters Indoor Track & Field Championships, Landover, Maryland, he set a World Record 4,437 points in the pentathlon — winning all five individual events

• At the Huntsman World Senior Games in St. George, Utah in October (where more than 10,000 masters athletes 50 and over competed), Bob, competing in several individual events, won Gold in the triple jump, long jump, 50 and 100m sprints and Silver in the high jump.

Bob is now a Gold-Medal-winning and World-Record-holding decathlete (pentathlete, heptathlete and triple-jump specialist) and is looking forward to competing in more competitions, including the WMA Championships in Brazil as an 80-year-old. His decathlon dream lay dormant for decades, but it didn’t die. He was able to resurrect it because there really is no time limit on dreams!

Have you given up on a dream? If Bob Hewitt of Gresham, Oregon can finally reach his athletic dream in his seventies, then what dream can you rekindle? Could it be in sports, in the arts, in business, in…?? No, dreams don’t have a time limit; they just rest quietly until you are ready for them! Are you ready?