Richard Wackar: Rowan's Humble Legend (Final Draft)

College Composition 1 Lee Hopkin
Professor Bateman 3/3/11


Richard Wackar: Rowan’s Humble Legend


On October 24th, 2009, Rowan University conducted a ceremony during halftime of the Buffalo State football game to rename its football stadium “Coach Richard Wackar Stadium at John Page Field.” Thirty-one years have passed since former Rowan coach Richard Wackar left his post, yet his legacy still resounds, more than warranting this honor. The irony of the situation is that Coach Wackar is the last person who would ever invite such recognition. For him, his time at Rowan was all about the service of others.
While Coach Wackar is most well known as the university’s seminal football coach, his legend began well before the reintroduction of the program. As described on the Rowan Athletics website, Coach Wackar’s career began at Glassboro State College in 1956 as a professor of health and physical education. During his first year on campus he assumed the duties of men’s head basketball coach. The following year he began an eight-year stint as men’s head cross-country coach. Coach Wackar’s head football coaching tenure did not begin until 1963, when he had to reinstate a program that had been absent since 1950. Incredibly, in 1965 Coach Wackar took on yet another coaching position as men’s head golf coach, going on to become the only man in NJAC history to win a conference championship in four different sports.
As a result of the Korean War and its conscription, Rowan was unable to field a football team beginning with the 1950 season. It was not until 1963, when Coach Wackar approached President Thomas E. Robinson, that Rowan football got its second chance. Unfortunately, Coach Wackar literally had to build the program from nothing. He was given a $5,000 sum to launch the program, but as he would later say in a Rowan football radio documentary, “that wasn’t a whole lot of money.” He was able to procure some equipment from the Manasquan Sharks, a defunct professional team, and rented a tractor for a day, at a cost of $100. He then proceeded to create his field, which he admits was not entirely symmetrical. As Coach Wackar recalls, “The field was three feet higher on one end to the other, but who would know the difference? Only us. And it was not exactly facing in the right direction.”
Aside from literally building the field and resuscitating the program, Wackar established the program over the course of seventeen seasons as head coach. The highlights during this span were five NJAC division titles, with four consecutive titles won from 1974 through 1977. His philosophy was the “Three yards and a cloud of dust” philosophy, meaning that he would run the ball relentlessly. An assistant under Wackar, and former Rowan head coach, Ted Kershner remarked in the same documentary that “We built a tradition of family . . . We also put a tremendous emphasis on the education. We wanted our kids to graduate.” Coach Wackar eventually went on to amass a record of 65-84-4.
As well known as Coach Wackar may have been in his time, and as well regarded as he is in many circles, I have found that his name is not recognized much among the student body. In an informal survey, I asked ten students if they had ever heard of Coach Wackar. Five of the students said they had heard of the name from the football stadium, but when asked to describe who he was, none of them could do so. When asked about the name Joe Paterno, current head football coach for the Pennsylvania State University Nittany Lions, four of the ten students were able to correctly identify him.
While many students today and in the future will never know Coach Wackar’s contributions to the university, or think of him in the same light as legendary coaches like Joe Paterno, Coach Wackar will never mind this. He is most content with the lives he has touched over the years and the changes he effected. Our current athletic director, Joy Solomen, said in the radio football documentary that “his former players love and support him and always will.” John Bunting, former Rowan coach, said “Richard Wackar is one of the greatest people I’ve ever known in my life. To this day I think of the things that he stands for. The way he coached people. The way he treated people . . . first class all the way.”
A prime example of how Coach Wackar’s humble nature was the ruse necessary to permit the university to name the stadium after him. The Gloucester County Times noted that when the decision was made to name the stadium in honor of Coach Wackar, current coach Jay Acorsi told Coach Wackar that he was going to ask a favor of him later, and for him to just say “yes.” When later came, Jay Acorsi asked Wackar the favor of allowing the stadium to be named after him. Normally Coach Wackar would not want the attention that the naming would bring, but he had promised Coach Acorsi that he would say yes to the favor. When the two men next spoke on the phone, Wackar is said to have called Acorsi a “little rascal.”
During the ceremony itself, Coach Wackar deflected the attention away from himself, preferring to praise those who had helped him succeed. Coach Wackar said “It’s not me. It’s the guys who played on some of the teams I coached. It really is a tribute to them. When I look up there [at his name on the stadium], I see their names, not mine.” Fittingly, Rowan won the game that day against Buffalo State University by the remarkable score of fifty-seven to seven.
Coach still shows himself to be an ordinary man of the people to this day, hosting tailgate parties on the field he constructed, what now serves as Rowan’s practice field. Here he provides friends, alumni, and faculty with coffee and sandwiches all at his own expense. On the exterior and in his own mind, Coach Wackar may be nothing exceptional, but the testimony of those he has touched says otherwise.