Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/797655
before the basketball game unless it was a quality opponent or Pitt. Speidel, whose tenure ran from 1927 through 1964, became a collegiate wrestling legend, and all of the five coaches who have followed him pro- duced winning teams and championship wrestlers, with Bill Koll (1965-78) and Rich Lorenzo (1979-92) achieving a sta- tus almost equal to Speidel's. What's true now is that an untold number of the fans who were in Rec Hall through the Speidel-Koll-Lorenzo eras are still there today. Bill Winterburn is one. He was the manager on Speidel's national champi- onship team and through the years has rarely missed a home match. Monte Christensen, a former Penn State pro- fessor, and Warren Hafner, a retired uni- versity administrator, are two others. Former lettermen like Joe Humphrey (1954-56), now a famous fly fisherman, and Norm Palovcsik (1970, '71, '73), who recently retired after 24 years as the principal at Bald Eagle-Nittany and Central Mountain High School, are reg- ulars. Jerry White, one of my seatmates near the students (sitting on a mat adja- cent to the matches), drives over from Mansfield with a friend. On my other side is Bob Winters, an octogenarian liv- ing in Hendersonville, N.C., who treks even farther two or three times a year just to watch his favorite team in his fa- vorite sport. I don't believe anyone in attendance can top Bud Meredith, who for decades was Penn State Athletics' ticket man- ager before retiring in 2015. Yes, it was part of his job at one time. And yes, his office was once just a few steps from where his seats have been for years, in the balcony near Rec Hall's main en- trance. But he has a passion for the sport that predates his Penn State career. "It started in the early '50s," Meredith recalled. "I was at every match in the '53 NCAA tournament when it was held at Rec Hall. I was about 13 years old and went with my dad, who was the manager at Western Union and worked during the matches. My mother was an avid fan, too. Back in those days, the general pub- lic couldn't get into Rec Hall. They really didn't sell tickets to the public. It was mostly all Penn State people. I grew up on wrestling and then wrestled in high school. Next to football, it's probably my favorite sport. "Rec Hall only had a little over 5,000 seats, and the '64 expansion took it up to about 7,200. Of course, we lost seats over the years because we changed the protective style of the bleachers. Right now, we're only permitted theoretically [to have] 6,500 people in the facility. Years ago, when we used to host the PIAA wrestling championships, we would have in excess of 8,000 people in here. They didn't restrict us that much on the track, and we would pack them four- or five-deep on the track. "Crowds have always been decent, but we didn't sell out every event as we do now. At one point, wrestling became very nondescript. It was a dancing match and we even had a guy playing an organ. It got to a point where it was bor- ing. Everybody was wrestling defen- sively. They changed the rules a bit and made it more interesting. Cael has done a great job of making it a fun sport to watch now when they're going after people every match, and [because of] the number of falls and takedowns you see." The Penn State wrestling crowd is far different from the ones that attend the other indoor sports events. I see some of the same faces at men's basketball and hockey and women's volleyball, such as Pat Daugherty, the popular owner of The Tavern Restaurant, and Don Barney, one of the standout linemen on Rip Engle's first football teams in the early 1950s. Loyal alumni comprise a large segment of Penn State's attendance figures for athletic events, and except for football, wrestling and hockey's Roar Zone, stu- dent turnout is sporadic. What separates wrestling from every other sport is the large number of non- Penn State alumni among the specta- tors, and especially the fathers with their sons of grade, middle and high school age. Overhearing the fathers and sons talk throughout the matches re- veals a passion for the sport, perhaps nurtured by participation themselves in school or simply the result of the social environment back in their hometown. In some areas of Pennsylvania, scholastic wrestling is as popular as basketball, if not more so. "Pennsylvania has produced the most NCAA All-Americans in 15 of the past 16 NCAA tournaments," said Palovcsik, who, since 1981, has been publishing a well-received, six-times-a-year newsletter on Pennsylvania and inter- collegiate wrestling called PA Wrestling Roundup. "The strength of the youth and middle school programs feeding into the high school programs results in the dominance of collegiate wrestling on the NCAA level. The NCAA basketball records could not support a strong Pennsylvania dominance." The unusual and widespread nature of Penn State's wrestling fan base is evi- dent by comparing its booster club membership with three other prominent Nittany Lion indoor sports. Some booster clubs have special memberships for families and/or other categories with varying discounts in annual dues. The following figures are for current total memberships (excluding students) as of early March: TOTAL SPORT MEMBERSHIPS MEMBERS Wrestling 1,602 3,187 Men's ice hockey 183 183 Men's basketball 286 806 Women's volleyball 425 735 Certainly, the wrestling numbers are so high because of the success that Sanderson has brought the program since taking over in 2009. If the men's basketball team was winning Big Ten ti- tles, consistently going to the NCAA tournament and frequently selling out the Bryce Jordan Center, the team's Hoops Club would be, proverbially, going through the BJC's roof. From what I've been told by several group leaders, Penn State's booster clubs began taking shape in the late 1970s and early '80s. When the wrestling club started in 1980, it had between 25 and 50