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46 | April 19, 2018 | The orland park prairie Sports opprairie.com No slipups as Gehrke helps build Moraine Valley sports program PATRICK Z. McGAVIN Freelance Reporter The modern era of sports at Moraine Valley Community College began with a slip of sorts. Newly armed with his master’s degree in business administration from DePaul in the fall of 1972, Doug Gehrke started his career at the Palos Hills community college as a professor of economics. The school was open for five years. The only sports activities were informally arranged pick-up basketball games in open gym. There was a hockey club, and when that coach went off to earn his doctorate, Gehrke volunteered to step in. Then, the act of providence. “It was going to be me and Phone: 630-381-1100 this other guy, and he literally slipped and fell on the ice and injured himself,” Gehrke said. So began Gehrke’s love affair with coaching and his immersion into college athletics. A longtime Orland Park resident, Gehrke is the architect of modern men’s sports programs at Moraine Valley. His imprint remains significant. With nearly 17,000 students, Moraine Valley is the state’s second-largest community college. The school is a competitive member of the Illinois Skyway Collegiate Conference. Richaun Holmes, a forward with the Philadelphia 76ers, played for the Cyclones for one season in 2011-2012. In December 2014, ESPN televised a high school game between Simeon and St. Rita at its facility. The significant contributions of Gehrke were acknowledged Feb. 15 when he was one of five people inducted into the school’s inaugural athletic Hall of Fame. “He is one of the most engaging men you’d ever want to meet,” said Bill Finn, the athletic director at Moraine Valley since 1983. “He has the vision and the personality to get it done, back during a time when there was not a lot of money in the program. He understood the benefits and notoriety to a college of having a sports program.” Gehrke grew up in Blue Island. Because of family and work obligations, he never played organized sports. By the time he entered college, he had grown to 6-foot-5. He Designed With You In Mind HOMER GLEN Our open floor plans allow you to customize your home to fit your dreams and desires. Ranch and 2-story townhomes feature a first floor master along with additional bedrooms. Townhomes worth the drive, and the ultimate in easy-living luxury. Ranch and Two-story Townhomes FROM THE LOW $400’s Located on the East Side of Parker Rd. at 146th St. (across the street from Culver Park). Sales Office is at 14640 Aster Lane in Homer Glen. Open Fri. – Tues. 11-5 or by appointment. Moraine Valley’s first athletics Hall of Fame honorees (standing, from left) are Rosie Geraci, Ephraim Eaddy, LaVetta Mitchell and Orland Park’s Doug Gehrke. Seated is Kay Schneegas. PHOTO SUBMITTED was a very skilled shooter in basketball, and he played four years, from 1964-1968, at Blackburn College, a liberal arts school in Carlinville. “Most of the shots I took were from what now would be three-point range,” he said. His shooting prowess opened other doors at Moraine Valley. Everything fused together. His short stint coaching the hockey team helped elevate student awareness of the possibilities of an intercollegiate sports program. Seeing his own shooting skills at the gym in October 1975 caught the attention of some administrators. It was a blur of activity, Gehrke said. “They asked me on Oct. 15, and we had our first game scheduled for a tournament in St. Louis on Nov. 1,” Gehrke said. He recruited a ragtag collection of kids he saw playing. In that first year of competition, the team finished 1-16. “Our president told me, if you said the record really fast, it does not sound that bad,” he said. By 1978, he was a fulltime professor, the basketball coach and men’s athletic director. His colleague, Kay Schneegas, a fellow inductee, handled the women’s sports. Within four years, Moraine Valley had five men’s sports programs. Gehrke saw a natural correlation between economics and sports. “The pivotal thing was when Fred Gaskin [president from 1982-to-1991] and Burt Odelson [chairman of the Board of Trustees] recognized that sports would be a great way to market the college,” Gehrke said. Basketball started the push, and programs in tennis, baseball, golf, soccer and volleyball followed. Gehrke made many of the original coaching hires. With his three small children and a full-time teaching responsibilities, he gave up his coaching and athletic department responsibilities. His last hire, Bill Finn, has broadened the culture that Gehrke started. His humor and self-deprecation were legendary, according to Finn. “We were playing Illinois Valley College, and the original gym had a rubberized floor,” Gehrke said. “[The surface] was dark gray, and back then there were no bleachers. Finn’s coaching the team, and the floor was dusty, and I went out there to mop it off. I saw the athletic director from Illinois Valley, and I started talking to him about organizing some games for the next season. He didn’t recognize me. He goes up to Finn and says, ‘Your janitor just tried to schedule a game.’ “That is how underfunded we were back then.” Sports remains a nerve center of Gehrke’s family and life. His three children were standout athletes at Sandburg. His daughter Jean Please see Moraine, 43
opprairie.com Sports the orland park prairie | April 19, 2018 | 47 fastbreak THURSDAY MORNING QUARTERBACK With Cube leaving, Naperville company hopes to fill void JEFF VORVA/22ND CENTURY MEDIA 1st and 3 SOME NUMBERS REGARDING MORAINE VALLEY COMMUNITY COLLEGE’S SPORTS PROGRAM, WHICH WAS BUILT UP BY ORLAND PARK’S DOUG GEHRKE (ABOVE). 1. 1 MVCC athletes who have gone onto the NBA. Former Lockport standout Richaun Holmes is a player on the 76ers. 2. 4 Nicknames the school has had over the years - the Titans, Runnin’ Rebels, Marauders and the current nickname, the Cyclones 3. 1 Games broadcast by ESPN in the school’s gym. The national sports station aired a Simeon/St. Rita game in 2014 there and Kentucky coach John Calipari was there to watch St. Rita prospect Charles Matthews. Jeff Vorva j.vorva@22ndcm.com I learned something new last week. Minnesota has worse weather than we do, and it’s really screwing up outdoor high school sports. But that’s not what I learned. I learned that the Minnesota State High School League is allowing its baseball and softball teams to play two five-inning games on a given day or to play one seven-inning game and one five-inning game on a given day so that they can get a decent amount of games in. Soon thereafter, I saw a replay of a state championship football game in Kansas and a center launched a snap into orbit and the punter chased it down and ran like heck to get close to the line of scrimmage. It wasn’t a first down, but it was an entertaining play nonetheless. I found that Minnesota nugget information and saw that cool play within five minutes of nosing around LISTEN UP “He is one of the most engaging men you’d ever want to meet. He has the vision and the personality to get it done, during a time when there was not a lot of money in the program.” Bill Finn - the athletic director at Moraine Valley on Doug Gehrke the meridix.com website. Meridix is kinda, sorta like the soon-to-be demised High School Cube site, which offered a ton of high school sporting events for free. Cube is getting gobbled up by the National Federation of High Schools, which generally charges for its content. The Naperville-based company has been around for more than a decade and has not gotten the attention the Cube has gotten, especially when the Cube affiliated itself with Chicago daily newspapers over the years. With the Cube leaving, Meridix wants to become a bigger player in the video game. Meridix founder Tyler Feret said that his company had thousands of clients in all 50 states and abroad and well over 100,000 videos. So this is no fly-by-night venture. There are many platforms to choose from. Professionals can sign up and swoop in. Radio stations can use the audio-only feature. Booster clubs can broker deals with the company. Mom and dad can take videos from their camcorders or cell phones. Most of the content is free. If there is a charge, it’s because the people hosting the video are charging for it. Those who want to put up videos can put them up for What 2 Watch Boys Track - 4:30 p.m., April 26 • Sandburg hosts the Pete Struck Invitational. Fans can use cell phones and camcorders to record content for Meridix.com. JEFF VORVA/22ND CENTURY MEDIA free but there will be advertising. Some hosts choose to pay some money to zap the advertising so its customers can watch the event ad-free. “We are open to just about everybody,” Feret said. “It really runs the gamut. It could be a parent with an iPhone at a Little League game to a professional production setup for radio and TV stations. We deal with athletics departments and administrations directly at some of the schools but we’re not limited to that. Most of our customers are a third-party to the school. We can make an arrangement with any type of customer.” There is a variety of stuff to see on the site, but not a whole amount from our area. Sandburg, Andrew and Tinley Park do not have content on the site. In Orland Park, there are some Vikings hockey games from 2014, as well as a “mope” named Tim Maher who calls himself “The Big Guy” interviewing Orland Sparks boss Joe Tholl — also in 2014. Before the interview, Maher gave a stern speech to students about hitting the books and called himself a “mope” for not taking his own schoolwork back in the day. The sparser Tinley Park INDEX 42 - Athlete of the Week 42 - This week in... content only had one entry. It was a 2013 interview conducted by the selfproclaimed “mope” with a group of Tinley Park Bulldogs coaches. The site is not perfect. Like with Cube, sometimes you never know what you will get. Feret is a Naperville Central graduate who played JV tennis. I decided to check out what kind of Central content was on his site. There was an entry called Crosstown Classic, which was supposed to be a football battle between Central and bitter rival Naperville North. Please see Vorva, 43 Compiled by Sports Editor Jeff Vorva, J.vorva@22ndcm.com.
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