Meet Geneva’s newest Hall members
High school means different things to different people. The three latest inductees into Geneva’s Athletic Hall of Fame, however, are united in their feelings that being a Viking transcends the playing field.
“I think being a Viking is about being part of an outstanding community and a tradition of excellence academically,” said 2002 graduate Katy Lindenmuth Green, a former Academic All-Big Ten soccer player whose 91-year-old grandfather, in from the family’s Kansas farm, will be among her well-wishers at Saturday’s induction.
Enshrined along with the 2002 Daily Herald All-Area Girls Soccer Team captain will be Derek Swanson, star football tailback out of the Class of ’86; and Kurt Wehrmeister (Class of ’75), the veteran public address announcer who instead of rattling off the celebs will be one himself.
“Really,” Swanson said, “it’s just a sense of acceptance and community.”
He would know. A lifelong Geneva resident who expert Wehrmeister said was perhaps the top back coached by Hall of Famer Jerry Auchstetter, Swanson maintains contact with many of his former classmates. Swanson has a son, Luke, in Geneva Middle School, and a daughter, Quincy, in her freshman year at Geneva.
Drop a local name and Swanson’s likely shared a huddle or had lunch with him or her. Geneva principal Tom Rogers was his quarterback as a junior; Swanson ran for a then-school record 2,958 career yards under Auchstetter and returned as an assistant under current Vikings coach Rob Wicinski. He helped basketball coach John Barton win a regional title and set school relay records under former track coach Mike VanDeveer. Michael Ratay, the best Vikings back since Swanson, gave his son an autographed football after the 2008 Class 7A title game.
A “great friend” of Batavia football coach Dennis Piron, Swanson was a camp roomie of Aurora Christian’s Don Beebe when both were at Western Illinois, where Swanson also met his wife, Jodi.
“It is kind of a small world, and it is kind of neat to see a lot of these guys who have stuck around,” said Swanson, a home remodeler and former Illinois State Scholar who not surprisingly remains active in youth coaching and on the Geneva Academic Foundation.
“We really do keep a super-close bond with our friendship, and it’s been wonderful,” he said.
Of Wehrmeister, Swanson said: “I remember his voice all the time.”
Easy to remember, when a person calls more than 500 football and basketball games over five decades. In a career that’s spanned six Geneva athletic directors, as a senior in 1974 Wehrmeister pestered activities director Chic Williams to let him announce the starting lineups for varsity basketball.
“In January of 1975 he said, ‘Are you ready to do a whole ballgame?’ And I said, ‘Oh, yeah,’” said Wehrmeister, who while curtailing full-time duties still takes the mic for select games, such as last year’s football opener and homecoming games. Just this Tuesday he called a boys basketball game to polish his stentorian tone.
“It’s been fun,” said Wehrmeister, who since 1991 has been director of communications and public affairs for Moose International.
“It’s gotten to the point where I’ve gotten to call the names of several sons of fathers whose names I called 25 or 30 years ago. That’s been kind of neat.”
A former sports editor of The Geneva Republican, Wehrmeister will be presented by fellow journalist and Geneva classmate Rick Nagel. The announcer is also pleased to hear that Auchstetter, Williams and Bob Schick, the athletic director when Wehrmeister first started calling games, will be at the induction ceremony. They are men whose character are exemplified by such current Vikings coaches as Wicinski and Phil Ralston, Wehrmeister said.
Athletics, he said, is “a classroom that teaches that if you keep a cool head in adversity things will work out for you. If you apply yourself and do more than you thought you could, good things will happen for you. I think those are the lessons that Coach Auchstetter and Coach Schick taught.”
Katy Lindenmuth, who married fellow Wisconsin Badger athlete Scott Green — son of NFL receiver Ron Green — learned those lessons playing Vikings volleyball and soccer.
She earned one all-conference volleyball honor and two all-state honors in soccer while leading the Vikings to a record of 81-11-7 and a third-place Class AA finish in 2002. She went on to become Wisconsin’s soccer freshman of the year and a two-time All-Big Ten pick who finished as the Badgers’ all-time leader in starts with 90 and in games played with 92.
“Really, what I think about with soccer and sports is I think about all the friends that I played with,” said Lindenmuth Green, who had two teammates, Ashley Felter and Becca Bald, as bridesmaids in her wedding last August on the Kansas farm. Katy’s mother, Nancy, grew up on that farm. Now, she works as Geneva’s administrative assistant in athletics.
Katy, who lives in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood and is a special-education teacher at Wilmette Junior High, is still active in soccer. Winning never gets old, and she won a coed rec league title in the city on the same team with Geneva graduates Greg Brinkman, Eric O’Reilly and Matt Soper.
Like Wehrmeister, she said she felt humbled when notified she’d been chosen for the Geneva Athletic Hall of Fame. After all, she was just doing something she loved, with her friends from the neighborhood.
“(Geneva’s a place) people want to be a part of, and there’s a lot of family history that people want to come back to and experience,” she said. “And I think athletics is a part of that.”
Gone viral
On YouTube you can check out a wild shot of former Kaneland basketball (and football) player Daniel Helm, now at Chatham-Glenwood High School.
Playing Lincoln at the Glenwood/Meier Winter Classic on Jan. 20, an inbounds play under Lincoln’s basket resulted in a loose ball headed out of bounds.
The hustling Helm sprinted toward the sideline. As he sailed out of bounds he flipped the ball backward with his right hand, attempting to save it to a teammate. A tad strong, the ball instead glanced off the backboard and went through the basket, a shot you couldn’t duplicate if you tried.
Bowling for honors
Following up a previous item, on Jan. 19 St. Charles East’s girls bowling team won the Upstate Eight Conference River Division, led by Allison Heuer with both the high series (771) and the top two games (298, 278).
The Saints and runner-up St. Charles North dominated the standings. East’s Heuer, Angela Solis, Katherine Sulaitis and Vicki Banas and North’s Bobbi Jo Buhlman, Katie Gustafson and Ashlee Ellerbusch occupied the top seven slots, with North’s Ashley England and East’s Emily Brown in ninth and 10th, respectively.
The two St. Charles teams and Kaneland venture to the DeKalb sectional on Feb. 4, where they’ll vie for downstate berths against the likes of Marengo, DeKalb and Sycamore.
As you read this, male bowlers may already be rolling at the boys state finals at St. Clair Bowl in O’Fallon.
At the Jan. 21 Lake Park sectional, coach Jeffrey Fett’s North Stars earned a second-place finish behind Lake Park to qualify for a team berth downstate.
Headed by Kyle True’s 1,311 pins, St. Charles North seniors True, Ben Buhlman, Jeremy Kummet, Russ Hodges and Kyle Slinker and sophomore Isaac Marshall got them there. Senior Derek Rayner and junior Jake Sidotti are also on the squad.
doberhelman@dailyherald.com