The Observer, April 18, 2008
Volume XL, Issue 25
Case's track dedicated to former Case coach Bill Sudeck
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The scene is Howard Johnson's restaurant, a diner where students would stop to get breakfast near the Case Institute of Technology's campus. It's the fall of 1961 and James Wyant, a freshman, is standing at the register, ready to pay for his meal, when a man approached him.
"Are you a freshman?" he asks. "Have you run some?"
Wyant told him yes, that he was a freshman at Case and that he was a runner in high school. Wyant, who would eventually become the captain of CIT's cross country team, had no intention of running track or cross country in college. His plan was to hit the books hard and get his degree.
The man who approached Wyant was Bill Sudeck, the track, cross country, and assistant basketball coach at CIT. Three years later he would be promoted to head basketball coach. Sudeck told Wyant the date, the time, and the place of the first cross country practice. When he didn't show up, Sudeck called on the phone and asked him again to run. "That was his way of recruiting me," said Wyant.
Sudeck, who died of cancer in 2000 at the age of 74, is an iconic figure in Case athletics, an institution within an institution who led teams at CIT and later at CWRU for a total of 46 years. Sudeck said that the greatest thrill in coaching is when former students who have become successful in industry, law, or medicine come back years later to say thanks. He wanted his teams to prepare his students for life after college.
"[Sudeck] always told us 'don't kick a sick dog,'" said Wyant. "Once you beat someone, in athletics or in business, you treat them with respect."
That lesson and others served Sudeck's athletes well. Wyant, for one, became a pioneering researcher in the field of optics, a branch of physics that deals with the properties of light. He's published over 150 papers on holography, multiple wavelength interferometry, and vertical scanning interferometry. In the early 1980s, he founded the WYKO Corporation, which designs and sells instruments for precision surface measurement.
He sold the business in 1997 and is now the dean of the College of Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona, which boasts two Nobel Prize winners in physics.
Next weekend, he will be returning to Cleveland to attend the dedication of the outdoor track that surrounds Case Field, which will be formally named "The Coach Sudeck Track." Wyant made the naming happen after making a significant donation to Case.
Wyant's gift
Long before there was an indoor track on campus, Wyant and his teammates trained outdoors during the winter months. "I remember when I was running in the snow and ice," he said, "I thought if I made some money later on, I'd come back and help the athletic department."
He did and he is.
The bulk of Wyant's $250,000 contribution, which was finalized in January, will go toward the proposed North Campus Fieldhouse, a key piece in the university's plan to upgrade athletic facilities on the north side of campus.
The fieldhouse would be located in the open space between Nobby's Ballpark and Case Field's north end zone.
In the athletic department's view, the fieldhouse is instrumental in keeping up in the ongoing facilities arms race driven by schools' desires to attract both top students and top athletes. Universities compete not only on the field and in the gym, but also with each other's fields and gyms. Another University Athletic Association institution, the University of Chicago, opened a new 150,000 square-foot, $51 million athletics center in 2003.
"It's important to have recreation and fitness facilities where we have the majority of our students," said athletics director Dave Diles. "[Case's] peer institutions have been aggressive, as we have been."
The fieldhouse would serve the sports played on the north side with a weight room, locker rooms, coach offices, and medical facilities. The proposed facility would also have three classrooms, and a large workout room, which would serve Northside students who get the entire workout they need walking to Veale.
The Wyant gift also pays for the script that will line the track, which will read "Coach Bill Sudeck Track." The inscription will be on both of the track's turns, as the straight-aways are covered by tarps during football games. There will also be two plaques that dedicate the track to Sudeck, "our friend and mentor," in memory of Wyant's wife, Louise.
The remainder of the Wyant gift will establish an endowment to support the Sudeck Outstanding Student Athlete Award, an annual award that will be presented to one student, male or female, who "epitomized the Case Western Reserve University student-athlete." The honoree is selected based on academic and athletic accomplishments, and leadership on campus.
The idea to name the track after Sudeck came from Gary Pillar, the assistant athletic director for development, and Wyant responded positively to it. "I'm very happy to be able to make the gift to name the track in his name. It gives me a good feeling," he said. "I wish I would have done this while [Sudeck] was still alive."
Track and cross country alumni who played under Sudeck will be attending the dedication. One, Doug Leary, who was inducted into CWRU's Athletic Hall of Fame in 1997, was deeply impacted by Sudeck. His father, Art Leary, hired Sudeck and Doug knew the coach growing up. Said Doug, "He lived to coach. He worked 16-hour days. Coach Sudeck created an atmosphere where you loved competing for him."
"After my father, [Sudeck] is the most influential man in my life," said Leary. "I bet you'd have 200 or 300 people that will tell you the same thing."
