Blue White Illustrated

PRATO FROM PREVIOUS PAGE tant sports editor as a junior. Wrestling was a coveted beat because there were only four winter varsity sports in the late 1950s, including gymnastics and indoor track, after boxing was dropped in 1955. The Collegian staff also was smaller than today, but still competitive, and I was fortunate to be covering wrestling. I didn't know until recently that Phil also backed into wrestling when he was first turned down as an assistant manager of the basketball team in his freshman year. We didn't realize until we were into it that we were lucky. Penn State's wrestling and gymnastics teams had become campus favorites, thanks primarily to their dynamic and talented coaches, Charlie Speidel and Gene Wettstone. Since returning from World War II, Speidel had turned the wrestling team into a perennial national contender and the best team in the East. From 1950 through '56, his team lost only five dual meets, setting a school record of 34 undefeated dual meets from 1951 to '54, and also finished first (1953), second (1955) and third (1954) at NCAAs. During this stretch – before I became the beat reporter – he also had produced four individual NCAA champions and five runners-up, while also winning three Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association team titles with 15 individual champs. Wettstone was having similar success with the gymnastics team in the 1950s. The team's head coach since 1939, he led the gymnasts to their first national title in 1948, and won two more in 1953 and '54. He would go on to win two more in the 1950s – and eventually finish with an NCAArecord total of nine before retiring in 1977 – with 20 athletes capturing individual NCAA titles in that decade. Meanwhile, Penn State's basketball team, which had gone to the NCAA tournament in 1952, '54 and '55 – finishing third in '54 – had started to slide, posting a 12-14 record in the 1955-56 season. The decline into mediocrity would continue the rest of the decade, with just one decent sea- son (15-10) in 1956-57. The students, who comprised nearly all of the winter sports fandom back then, lost their interest. In that era, the athletic department often scheduled evening doubleheaders at Rec Hall, with wrestling or gymnastics leading off and basketball supposedly the main event. More often than not, the students would pack Rec Hall for the wrestling or gymnastics meet, then leave in droves for the fraternity parties as the wrestling mats or pieces of gym equipment were being removed for the basketball game. Because Friday and Saturday were date nights, the fraternity brothers often wore coats and ties, with their dates equally primped up. Phil Petter still laughs when he talks about it. "Wrestling was at 7 and basketball at 8:30," he recalled. "We would set the mats up at 3 o'clock in the afternoon and often have a full house by 4:30. The fraternities came in and blocked out seats and had box dinners ready for everybody. For the big matches you couldn't get into the place. The students made up most of the audience, as opposed to today when the audience is made up mostly of old people like me." Petter also remembered that Penn State's president, Eric Walker, was one of the biggest fans in those days and would usually sit at the scorer's table at Rec Hall. That's where he was for the last dual meet of 1958 against archrival Pitt. The Lions had upset Pitt the previous year in Pittsburgh, halting the Panthers' 26match winning streak, and they had another great team in '58, losing only to Iowa State. The match was tied at 11-11 when the Lions' struggling heavyweight, Ray Pottios, a fraternity brother of mine, shocked the lessthan-capacity crowd with a 4-2 victory in the decisive final match. Penn State had upset Pitt again. "Walker was sitting next to me at the scorer's table, reading the Manchester Guardian, when Pottios won the match," Petter said. "He threw the paper up in the air and ran out to the mat, and he helped the mob carry Pottios off the mat. It was quite a sight." I had not been much of a wrestling fan in high school but I became a big fan as a sophomore and covered the Penn State team through my junior and senior years, including when I was sports editor in 1958-59. I traveled with the team whenever I could and even covered the NCAA tournament in Pittsburgh in my first year, March 1957, when Johnny Johnston, a 130-pound junior from Clearfield, became Penn State's sixth individual national champion. I became friends with many of the wrestlers like Johnston, and on the road they treated me like one of their own. What really made the wrestling team so much fun for me and Petter was Speidel. He called everyone he met "Doc." That way he didn't have to remember names, and everyone began calling him Doc, too. "Doc was the most unforgettable man I ever met," Petter said. "He was a showman and had a great sense of humor. There's a term in Yiddish called 'hamish,' which means 'good people,' and Doc was good people. He looked after his team and he always made you feel good." Speidel could be a prankster, too, and he liked to tease everyone, particularly young Collegian writers. One of Petter's best memories of Speidel was at Lehigh during a dual meet in 1958. "The place was packed with students from the stands to the mats, with students all around us on the floor," Petter said. "He tells me to get two big buckets of water for each end of the bench. I had no idea why. Well, as the Lehigh students crowded around, he couldn't see the mats. So he would tip the buckets over on the floor and the students would scatter because they were getting wet, and now he could see the mats. It was funny." After graduating, I drifted away from wrestling, while Petter continued his intense interest. He still attends as many Penn State matches as he can, driving over from his home in Williamsport. "It's still a great sport to watch," he said, "even if the atmosphere is different from those crazy student days when I was the manager."

• Cover