Blue White Illustrated

TITLE TOWN Wettstone turned PSU into a national power, guiding the Lions to nine NCAA crowns. MEN'S GYMNASTICS GENE WETTSTONE 1913-2013 Hailed as one of the most important figures in Penn State's long athletic history, Gene Wettstone died July 30 in State College. Wettstone, who turned 100 in July, guided the Nittany Lions to nine national championships, 13 Eastern Intercollegiate Gymnastics League crowns and more than 200 dual meet victories during his 36 years on the staff. His gymnasts won 35 individual national titles, and he sent 13 athletes to the Olympics, including two future members of the U.S. Gymnastics Hall of Fame: Greg Weiss and Armando Vega. Wettstone himself was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1963. "Gene Wettstone touched the lives of numerous Penn State studentathletes and countless others throughout the gymnastics community," Penn State athletic director Dave Joyner said. "He is viewed as the John Wooden of college gymnastics and was very highly respected worldwide in the gymnastics communities. Coach Wettstone was a great person and an outstanding tutor who brought Penn State and collegiate gymnastics to the forefront. He will be deeply missed by Penn Staters and many others around the world." An elite gymnast at Iowa, where he won Big Ten titles in the pommel horse, high bar and all-around, Wettstone came to Penn State in 1939, launching a program that would soon become one of the country's best. He coached the Nittany Lions to their first national title in 1948, and they went on to claim three in a row from 1959 to 1961. He won his final NCAA championship in 1976, the year of his retirement. Wettstone, who also coached the U.S. Olympic team in the 1948 and 1956 Summer Games, was known for his perfectionism. "Gene was very, very much a stickler for making things clean and sharp," current Penn State men's gymnastics coach Randy Jepson told The New York APPRECIATION | LOU PRATO Wettstone's showmanship enlivened Penn State sports Gene Wettstone may have been the greatest coach in Penn State's long and successful sports history. Certainly, no Penn State coach has ever matched his myriad accomplishments. It was not just what he did in competitive collegiate and AAU gymnastics meets and the Olympics that built his legacy, but also what he did to instill school spirit over several decades. From 1939 until his retirement in 1976, Gene was a dynamo on the gymnasium floor and off it. If you ever met him, you might not have realized it because his low-key person- ality hid the fertile mind of a showman. In the 1940s and into the early 1970s, Wettstone turned gymnastics into the most popular winter sport on campus. Other sports may have had their rabid followers, but Wettstone attracted a diverse cross-section of the populace – students, faculty, townspeople and farmers – to his various events, and they often filled Rec Hall to its rafters. There were not only dual meets with regional and sometimes national rivals, but also Olympic trials and NCAA championship tournaments. He made Rec Hall an international showcase, with exhibition meets against teams from such countries as Japan, Sweden, the Soviet Union, China and Bulgaria. His own Olympic gymnasts, like Jean Cronstedt and Armando Vega, were as popular on campus as any athlete. What he may be remembered for most by the older generation are the circuses he produced from April 1939 until the early 1940s, with trapeze acts, rope climbers, flying rings, clowns, a circus band and a effervescent ringmaster played by Penn State's extroverted boxing coach, Leo

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