In an effort to distract thought from this year's basketball team, here's another "look back." The '80s is an era that is difficult to write about. It’s difficult because I was as close to the program as anyone could be who was not on the University payroll. I saw first-hand how difficult it was to compete in athletics without the support of the University’s administration. (Gene Budig)
In the early 1980’s, I joined a local KU support group in Kansas City called the Hawks Club. The main purpose was to sell KU football season tickets. Heading into the 1984 season, I had become president of the Hawks Club and took the leadership position seriously. As a club, we sold the most season tickets ever. My involvement in the Hawks Club was my first opportunity to get close to the program and the players. My son, Jason, was a budding little league quarterback and placekicker. In the spring of 1983 I met Bruce Kallymeyer, the K.U. placekicker. That summer, Bruce volunteered to work with Jason. Because Bruce was from the Shawnee Mission area, I drove Jason across town to Shawnee Mission East to meet on their football field. Bruce was 20 minutes late, apologizing because he had been helping to complete the harvest of his parents’ asparagus crop! Opening up a big net bag full of footballs, Bruce and Jason kicked, and I shagged balls! I wanted to pay Bruce for his time, but he was adamant about not jeopardizing his eligibility. Bruce, by the way, kicked 78.6 percent of his career field goals and in 1981 set the K.U. single season record of 85.7%.
A year later, we worked with kicker Dodge Schwartzberg. His dad was president of Lawrence Paper Co. In 1985 the K.U. kicker was Chase Van Dyne, again from Shawnee Mission. Jason had a chance to work with Chase, too. That winter, at halftime of a K.U. basketball game, Chase spotted us and came up to our seats to say “Hi.” I was so often impressed with the quality of young men on the K.U. football teams.
Unrelated to KU, but a good kicking story is one involving Jan Stenerud, the All-Pro kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs who had retired in 1985 after finishing his career with Green Bay and then Minnesota. While on a business trip to Green Bay, I stopped by a Packers practice and was standing outside a chain link fence. Jan was off kicking by himself. I yelled, “Hey, Jan, I’m from KC.” He walked over to the fence and said, “What the heck are you doing here?” We had a brief conversation. Back in K.C. the following summer, I was in Jan’s office to buy a kicking tee from him for Jason. (Jan had developed and was selling his own branded tee.) Jason was a left-footed kicker, and Jan didn’t have in stock a standard left-footed tee. So he gave me a taller, non-legal, 3” high tee saying, “The refs will never notice. Heck, I wore baseball cleats on my plant foot in Green Bay and the refs never noticed!” And the high school refs never notice Jason’s 3” tee!
