Column: Old memories flood back with championship reunion
FB: Valpo's 2000 PFL champs reunite for 25th anniversary at Homecoming
I’ve often told the story that if Bryce Drew didn’t knock down a 3-pointer against Ole Miss in the 1998 NCAA men’s basketball tournament, I probably never attend Valparaiso University.
Well, if “The Shot” provided me with a path to Valpo, “The Catch” provided me with direction.
Let me explain.
Valparaiso’s run to the Sweet Sixteen was the push I needed to apply to the school. I was already locked in to attending Concordia Wisconsin in the fall of 1998, but I followed the media attention Valpo continued to get through the following season.
By the time Lubos Barton and the “Young Guns” led the Crusaders back to the NCAA tournament, I knew I wanted to transfer to a school with big-time (bigger than Concordia anyway) Division I athletics. Valpo was it.
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Still, I wasn’t immediately all-in on pursuing a career in sports journalism. I arrived at Valpo for my sophomore year in 1999 with dual interests. I wanted to get on the air on the campus radio station. It was something I got a taste of at Concordia and I fell hard for it. I loved picking the music, I loved picking the topics, and mostly, I loved talking on the air. It gave me a rush.
It’s the same rush I found in my first love.
Theater.
I was cast in my first play in third grade and I ate it up. I played the Fox in a version of “The Tortoise and the Hare.” While my classmates wore different colored shirts to identify their characters, my mom rented a full-blown fox costume and I immersed myself in the role. This continued for years.
I spent my high school summers working with a teen acting troupe at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater and my initial college inquiries were based around theater conservatories. Wisconsin-Milwaukee only admitted students into their program in odd-numbered years, so I was out of luck for my hometown school. DePaul was an option, but I got cold feet after I landed an audition.
I settled on Concordia and was cast in a handful of shows during my freshman year, including as the Mad Hatter in a wild version of “Alice in Wonderland.” I was told by the head of the theater department that they had selected “The Nerd” as the first show for the following season and they did so with me in mind as the lead. A role that had been played by Rowan Atkinson and Mark Hamill felt like a dream, but I had already made my decision to transfer to Valparaiso. It’s a decision that tormented me for the better part of a year.
Valparaiso launched the 1999-2000 theater season with an intriguing show entitled “Trumpets and Raspberries.” I auditioned even though it was a commedia dell’arte show and I’d never acted with a mask before in my life. I didn’t make the cut.
I was crestfallen. I had never not been cast in a show before. Here I was, 150 miles from home, far from the familiar stages of Concordia and my other Wisconsin haunts.
WVUR-FM became my stage. I threw myself at Valparaiso’s campus radio station and joined the sports staff. I was soon running studio broadcasts for a variety of sports and I started feeling that same familiar rush again. I met Todd Ickow and realized that he was a performer just like I was. Instead of Shakespeare, his script was sports. I wanted to learn those lines as well.
I didn’t give up theater overnight. I dusted myself off after the Trumpets experience and I auditioned for an Anton Chekhov show entitled “Light and Shadow.” It was directed by Andy White, a superb theater professor at Valparaiso. The late John Steven Paul was cast in the show, and sharing the stage with the head of the program was a thrill.
The show reignited my love for the theater. I joined Alpha Psi Omega, the national theater fraternity, at Valparaiso, and I continued to act. I was splitting time between the airwaves and the stage going into my junior year when I was cast in “Summer and Smoke,” a play by the great Tennessee Williams.
The show was helmed by a guest director from Chicago and that had all of our attention. Delivering a good performance for her could open the doors to get on stage in the city. The dream. I was cast as the father of the lead character. My role was that of a Southern doctor who fears his son is throwing away his future, culminating in an furious exchange between the two of us. I aged myself and I adopted a proper southern accent, all while learning to channel anger into my performance.
The director came from the school of method acting, a style that I didn’t embody. She didn’t just want my character to hate his son, she wanted me, the actor, to hate Barry, the actor playing my son. It was very uncomfortable.
In the midst of rehearsals, I was picking up more responsibility at WVUR. I had moved up the depth chart as a broadcaster. Karl Berner, the brilliant producer for Valparaiso’s ESPN Productions for the last eight years, was the WVUR Sports Director at the time and he surprised me with the news that I’d been selected to travel to San Diego to call the Valparaiso football game on Oct. 28, 2000. I’d never flown anywhere for a game before and I’d never been to San Diego either. I was elated.
While happiness was flowing through me, the anger on the stage wasn’t. I just couldn’t find the emotion that I needed. The director originally gave us Halloween weekend off from rehearsals - which I was going to use to go to San Diego - but she changed her mind at the last minute. I was told to be at a weekend rehearsal or else I’d be replaced in the show. This was in a pre-9/11 world where you could change the name on a plane ticket without much hassle. I didn’t go to San Diego.
The rehearsal was just me sitting next to the director in the audience while my then-girlfriend practiced her kissing scene with the actor playing my son. Maybe it was 15 minutes, maybe it was two hours. It was torture. This was the furthest place I could be from sunny San Diego.
My blood was boiling and I suppose that meant director got her wish when she asked if I felt anger toward the other actor at the end of the rehearsal. She was certainly included in that anger.
I got back to my dorm room and heard that Valpo beat San Diego on the road. Valparaiso would be hosting Dayton the following week and a victory would mean a share of the Pioneer Football League championship. It was a huge game and I wanted to be involved somehow. Studio. Sideline. Color Commentator. Play-by-play. I’d take anything.
I got another rehearsal.
Maybe it was previously scheduled. Maybe it was another audible called by the director to emotionally manipulate me. Honestly, I’ve blocked a lot of it out. What I do remember was sitting in the Green Room in the basement of the Valparaiso University Center for the Arts listening to the broadcast on my Walkman.
Jeff Aspito, who lived down the hall from me, was dominant. He ran in a touchdown and he threw for nearly 250 yards while earning another PFL Offensive Player of the Week award. He threw a late touchdown to John Schulte that served as the game-winning play in a 16-15 victory.
I ran around the VUCA screaming my head off. I was elated Valparaiso had won a share of its first conference football title in 31 years.
No one around me cared. Not the guy playing my son. Not my then-girlfriend. Not the rest of the actors in the show. They were all busy trying to find the motivation for their characters.
I found mine.
On Nov. 4, 2000, I made the decision that I was done with theater. I performed in the show the following weekend and after the curtain dropped for the final time, I bid adieu to my first love. I haven’t been on stage since.
Two weeks later I was in the studio when the Valparaiso men’s basketball team beat Ohio State in the Great Alaska Shootout and five days after that I traveled with Ickow to Milwaukee to call my first men’s basketball game.
I don’t know where life would’ve taken me had Bryce Drew not hit that shot, but I’m glad he did. It got me in the door at Valparaiso. If John Schulte doesn’t catch that game-winning touchdown pass against Dayton to win a PFL championship, I really don’t know how things turn out for me.
Missing that moment at Brown Field made me realize I didn’t want to miss any others.
I haven’t missed many since.
The 2000 Valparaiso football team was back on campus on Saturday for Homecoming weekend and I loved every second of it.
Seeing guys like Aspito, Brian Brisco, Tom Byrne, Brian Custy, Adam DaSilva, John Doorhy, Bryan Hollermeier, Mark Kaiser, Bradley Outlaw, Russell Pozen, Marrial Shields, John Tsahas and Carl Youngblood come back to campus was something special.
Some guys stopped by for a few hours while others flew in for the weekend. Everyone picked up right where they left off a quarter century ago. The years may have piled up, but they were slowly stripped away with each round of drinks and each hilarious story. Suddenly we were 20 again.
The 2000 tailgate outlasted that of the football parents and all the Valpo fraternities and sororities. Once the sun set, the party moved to Duffy’s (formerly Jackson’s), the site of plenty of shenanigans at the turn of the century. The mood was more subdued than the parties of the past. Names from the roster would come up and someone would chime in with an update. There were toasts to the lost and laughs with the living.
I obviously wasn’t on the football team when I was in college, but they never treated me as an outsider. We all lived in the same dorms together and all I ever wanted to do was tell their stories. I got a crash course in journalism while covering that team. Doorhy remembered the title of a piece I wrote about him back in the day and I can think of no finer compliment.
If Schulte drops that touchdown pass, there’s probably no reunion. Then it’s just another team in a long history of teams that doesn’t get a shot at a second life. But he did catch that pass and the guys did return to campus and it was a great memory that will stay with me for a long time.
If you have any fond Homecoming memories from your return trips to Valparaiso, feel free to share in the comments below.
(Photos courtesy of The Torch, Tom Byrne and myself)
I truly enjoyed reading your story. A High school graduate of Port Washington, Wisconsin I had my heart set on playing at a Big 10 school. The reality set in and Valpo Football sent me a letter of interest, and I was hooked. Our 1972 team has gathered at homecomings and other satellite locations. I also spent some time behind the WVUR mic as I covered basketball games during the 1970’s with fraternity brother Steve Huber.
What a great story, Paul! Keep sharing these memories.