Women’s sports pioneer from Kansas, an Olympian at 17, dies at 73 after cancer battle
Before there was Kansas high school girls track and field, before there were girls sports in high school at all, she was setting records.
Janell Smith Carson, a pioneer in establishing organized sports for high school girls in the Sunflower State, died Saturday after a battle with cancer. She was 73.
Smith Carson was born in Texas but attended Fredonia High School in southeast Kansas. As a junior there, she represented the U.S. in the 400-meter dash at the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.
She was just 17.
A year later, while still at Fredonia, she was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated.
Smith Carson was a two-time national AAU champion in the 440 yards and 400 meters in 1964-65. A year before she went to Japan for the Olympics, she qualified for the Pan-American Games in the 80-meter hurdles.
Her high school records, set on cinder tracks, have rarely been broken in more than 40 years. Her 400-meter time of 52.3 seconds remains the best for any high school-aged girl in Kansas. And as she got older, she earned records in the long jump and 70-yard hurdles, too.
After high school, Smith Carson went on to Emporia State, where she unofficially represented the Hornets in the first NAIA Indoor Track and Field Championships long before the advent of Title IX in college athletics. She won the 60- and 440-yard dashes.
Smith Carson graduated from Emporia State in 1969 and was inducted into the university’s hall of fame in 2010. She has also been inducted into the Kansas State High School Activities Association Hall of Fame and Kansas Sports Hall of Fame.
After her athletic career, Smith Carson spent 35 years in the education field. She taught in Arkansas City, Parsons, Erie, St. Paul, Galesburg and Springfield, Missouri.
“I, like many athletes and many woman athletes, consider myself a pioneer, and I hope I inspire young girls to follow in my footsteps and to not be afraid to follow their dreams,” Smith Carson said at her Kansas Sports Hall of Fame induction in 2009.
This story was originally published July 27, 2020 at 3:55 PM.