What puts little Embarrass, Minn., on the map these days is frigid weather: It hit 35 below last week.

But for a few glorious years in the early 1950s, Embarrass, a remote Finnish immigrant enclave on the eastern edge of the Iron Range, was setting other records: Ray Nevala in the quarter-mile, Warner Wirta in the mile, Casey Salo in the pole vault. All state champions.

They also were part of a track team that routinely beat much, much larger schools and placed third in the state tournament back when all high schools competed against each other regardless of size.
Sportswriters dubbed them the Flying Finns, and they're being celebrated on Sunday with photos and speeches at the 71st Annual Laskiainen festival in Palo, near Embarrass.
Someone is sure to point out that the most amazing thing about the Flying Finns was that they had no track tradition.
In fact, there was no track.
What sort of magic made this happen? What made the Finns fly?
Last week, Nevala and Wirta joked that sisu played a role. It's the Finnish word for stubborn perseverance or "guts." But then the twinkle vanished and their eyes turned moist when they started talking about the real reason for their success: their beloved coach Niilo Edward Hendrickson.
The 87-year-old Hendrickson will be at Laskiainen, a testament to the power of one life to transform many.
Molding champions
An Embarrass native, Hendrickson ran competitively in the U.S. Army and at the University of Minnesota. In 1947, he returned home to teach and to coach basketball. He asked permission to also start a track team. Administrators said they had no money.
He started it anyway, scouting the schoolyard for talent. Kids were amused.
"We knew deer tracks and cow tracks, but most of us had never seen a running track," Wirta said.
"I used what we had," Hendrickson recalled. "We marked off a track on the playground. We ran on a gravel road."
All meets were "away." Hendrickson and a parent or two drove the boys in their cars. The young coach spent summers at track meets and coaching clinics, dissecting methods of the winners.
But there was something else, something beyond his talk of ankle flexibility, knee lift and mechanics.
"He had an uncanny way of making us perform beyond our abilities," Nevala said. "You didn't want to let him down."
Said Wirta: "He motivated us mostly by example. He had his sweat clothes on, and he'd train with us. It was like he was part of the team."
The "Flying Finns" nickname was in homage to Finland's Paavo Nurmi, the legendary distance runner who won 12 Olympic medals in the 1920s. Hendrickson had the nickname embroidered on the team's silk jerseys.
Embarrass grew to love its team. Townspeople traveled to meets.
Eino Johnson eventually donated material and equipment to build a
cinder track at the school. Parents told kids to stop doing chores and run.
"Never in the history of Embarrass had the sense of community been greater," wrote Marvin Lamppa, a team member who went on to become a coach and historian.
Local stars emerged. Wirta, whom some locals good-naturedly
called the "Flying Finndian" because he's half American Indian, won the state cross-country championship in 1951 and the mile in 1952.
What a good job'
In 1953, Nevala, only 5-foot-6, broke a 13-year-old state record in the quarter-mile and won the state title. He remembers "every second" of the championship race, including the swear word he heard another runner utter when it became clear Nevala couldn't be caught.
"He timed the race perfectly," Hendrickson said. "He ran out of gas exactly at the finish. None of it was chance."
After the race, Hendrickson found his champion and said, simply, "What a good job," they recalled. When Nevala returned home, his dad cradled the championship medal in his hands and echoed the coach's stoic compliment.
The next year, Hendrickson was recruited to coach at Edina. Using an aluminum pole Hendrickson bought to replace the tamarack sapling with which he'd learned to pole vault, Salo became the Embarrass school's last state champion in track and field.
The school closed in 1970 and was later torn down.
Where are they now?
At Edina from 1954 to 1984, Hendrickson coached more individual state champions than any Minnesota track coach. He had three state championship teams. He was inducted into the Edina Hall of Fame and Minnesota Track and Field Hall of Fame. He's retired and lives in Virginia.
Wirta graduated from Kansas State Teachers College, where he was a track star. He taught school until the 1970s, when he got a
master's degree and developed a mental health program for American Indian veterans.
Now 74, retired and living in Duluth, Wirta said he probably
wouldn't have gone to college if Hendrickson hadn't taught him to run. "I don't know where our energies would have gone without Ed,"
he said.
Nevala, 73, said track kept him from quitting high school. After a hitch in the Army, he worked as a shovel operator in iron ore and coal mines. He retired in 1990 and lives in Aurora. When Nevala still was a young man, his father died of cancer at 55. At the funeral, Nevala walked to the casket and placed his medal in his dad's hands.
Fifty years later, he says it might be the best thing he ever did.
His dad, and his medal, are buried in Embarrass.
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Larry Oakes - 1-218-727-7344