May 2025 Alumni Update

Bison,

I remember standing one day in Coach's office, that musty old cell of his on the second floor of Davis Gym. It was sometime in my junior or senior year. Coach was sitting behind his desk, and the photograph below was on his desk. It was just a snapshot, unframed, lying in front of him, in and around a clutter of papers. Before we began speaking about whatever it was he'd called me into his office to discuss, Coach saw me looking at the photograph, taken in May of 1975, when we'd won the East Coast Conference Outdoor Track & Field title, half a century ago this month. Without any prelude, and as if reading my thoughts the way he seemed to read all of our thoughts, Coach said, "You know, Buster, I can see the personalities of every one of you guys in a photograph like that, just from the expressions on your faces." I realized in that moment a sense I'd had about him that had been crystallizing in my mind ever since I first met him in 1973 as a high school senior. He watched us. In every meet, in every workout, in every part of our lives on and off the track, he watched us. It'd seem like a given for a coach in any sport to watch his athletes. But it's not a given. It's a rarity. He watched us. And as a result, he knew us, often better than we knew ourselves, another of his many gifts.