Biography
Basketball at Beloit
John Rosenwald, Beloit College Department of English 1976-2010
Thanks first to Frank McClellan for trying to capture the relationship between the sport of basketball and Beloit College as a liberal arts educational institution. I’ve enjoyed tracing some of the history on my own, but I also know intimately how that history interacts with the story of my wife’s relationship to Beloit basketball due to her three years as head coach of the women’s team.
Although I played basketball from the time I was a teenager, I never had an opportunity to play in any organized league. My high school was an Illinois powerhouse, winning the state championship in 1953, shortly before I entered, and again in 1970, shortly after I left. I played regularly in local pick-up games, and loved to run, but I was a half-miler, not a point guard. The same was true during my undergraduate years at the University of Illinois and my time as a graduate student at Duke. I was pleased to continue participating in unofficial but competitive basketball when I began my full-time academic career at Assumption College in 1969 and then when I began teaching at Beloit in 1976.
From my first days in Beloit I became part of the Noon Ball group that originally played nearly every weekday and later nearly every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. These games also gave me the opportunity to develop strong and positive relationships with many members of the Beloit community: faculty colleagues Emil Kreider and Carl Mendelson, Dean of Students Bill Flanagan, former varsity player John Erickson, staff members such as Everett Henry, community members such as Elmo Ruffin and Clyde Boutelle, women athletes and coaches such as Trinkie Heller and Mimi Walters, and even NBA stars such as Bill Hanzlik, who occasionally joined games with his brother Mark, who played for Beloit in the late 1970s. I watched with great pleasure in 1985 when the Chicago Bulls held their preseason camp at Beloit, and was delighted to be on the court at the same time as a young Michael Jordan, but not surprisingly didn’t have a chance to join any scrimmage. When the college opened the Flood Arena in very early 1987, I believe we Noon Ballers were the first to play a game on the new court. And I continued to participate in those games until my last semester on campus in the fall of 2009.
Noon Ball was a powerful town-and-gown force, providing “townies” a chance to mingle with faculty and students in a competitive but not combatative environment. Especially in a community with a complex racial history, this opportunity was particularly important as a means of creating positive relationships between many black members of the non-college community and mostly white faculty, staff, and students. Toward maintaining this tradition, some staff members and I urged the college to continue its policy of free entrance to the gym for noon ball games, but this tradition did not continue, though if I remember correctly, we were able to convince the administration to reduce the proposed fees for at least a short period of time. Still, instituting a cost to participate was, I believe, an unfortunate mistake.
On a personal level, the most significant aspect of my years playing basketball at Beloit was quite simple. Although we did not begin our friendship on the court, Biology Professor John Jungck and I deepened our academic and intellectual relationship through our many years playing noon ball. I often joke that we met many new students as they looked up from the floor at the 6’5” 350-pound scientist who had flattened them when I, as point guard, had run them through him on a high pick.
Finally, and inevitably, much of my relationship with Beloit basketball emerged during the three years my wife, Ann Arbor, coached the varsity women’s team. They were difficult years, as Ann has recounted in two narratives of her own, but they were also glorious. Many of my male colleagues and friends scrimmaged with Ann’s volleyball and basketball teams. I believe her assistant basketball coach, Tom Montvel-Cohen, was a regular noon-baller. Many of Ann’s volleyball and basketball players were my students. Four of them joined us on the Fall 1978 London Seminar. During at least one of her seasons, I was the primary driver for the team van. The scorebooks suggest that I did much of the scoring for the team. And of course I lived through the stress of games, of practices, and of the at times intense problems of helping to create a women’s athletic program in the face of insufficient support and more-or-less continual opposition.
In order to assist Frank McClellan in his attempt to create a history of basketball at Beloit College, I will enclose with this statement copies of three memos I wrote to various members of the college community, indicating my stances on issues related to that history and to the larger histories of physical education at the college and particularly the movement toward women’s involvement in the athletic program. I would be happy to try to answer any questions that might emerge from any of these documents. I believe Ann might feel the same.
