Daniel Larson:
So, with that, I want to welcome our two presenters this afternoon. First is Adam Levin, Brandeis Class of 1994, and sports information director with Brandeis Athletics, as well as Surella Seelig, who serves as the outreach and special projects archivist at the Brandeis Archives. All the imagery you'll see in the presentation was sourced from both the archives as well as Brandeis Athletics, and tells the story of the legacy of sport at the university. Adam will kick things off, and then Surella will speak a bit about the work of the archives. And both are happy to take questions and comments, which you can enter in the chat box down below, and they'll get to those at the end of each of their presentations. I know we have many alumni athletes who are joining us here, and I'm sure there are many great stories to be shared, as well. And Surella will share a bit more about how you can share your stories with the university archives to ensure that those stories are preserved.
Daniel Larson:
So, one final note, this event is being recorded, so if you know of others who wanted to attend but could not make it, this recording will be made available on the Brandeis Alumni Association YouTube channel in the coming days. So, thank you again to all of you for joining us, and with that, I'll pass it off to Adam.
Adam Levin:
Hi, everybody, and like I said, nice to see a bunch of familiar faces in there. I'm going to share my screen. And I was wasn't sure what sort of audience we were going to be bringing in, so tried to do as much of a broad appeal across as many different sports as I possibly could.
Adam Levin:
So, from the start, Abe Sacker knew that athletics would be an important part of the entire college experience, both the student athlete and the young Brandeis University. And he said in the history of the university, a host at last, that they were reluctant to start with football as a sport among the initial offerings, but with the addition of Benny Friedman as the team's first coach and the program's first athletic director, that was a key decision in adding football as one of the first sports. Benny was a former quarterback of the University of Michigan, and he turned pro. Played with the Detroit Wolverines and was one of the National Football League's first great passers. New York Giants owner, Tim Mara, purchasing the entire Detroit team so that he could get Benny to the Big Apple in order to appeal to the Jewish demographic.
Adam Levin:
By the time Abe Sacker hired him to be the coach in '80 at Brandeis, Benny was running a summer camp in New York, and he took the Brandeis job with the understanding he'd be able to continue his camp over the summers. In the early years, Benny was sent around the country to recruit players to the school and donors for facilities, and he was very successful at both endeavors. If you are interested in learning more about Benny Friedman, highly recommend Murray Greenberg's '77 book, The Passing Game. Murray was a three sport stand out for Brandeis in the '70s in soccer, basketball, and baseball.
Adam Levin:
The university's first ever football game was a freshman game against Harvard in 1950. Brandeis won that game 21 to 13. Unfortunately, the freshman games aren't generally acknowledged by the NCAA, so the program's first varsity game came in 1951. Overall, teams were successful, winning three more games than they lost between 1951 and 1959. The most successful team in program history is the one you see there, the six and one 1957 squad. One of the challenges at the time, of course, was the NCAA didn't have the current divisional structure with Division I, II, and III, so there was an understanding that many games were played between smaller teams at smaller schools. But the Judges schedule throughout the years featured powerhouses including Boston College and the University of Miami. The 1957 team's wins included UMass, Northeastern, and New Hampshire, and it earned that squad place in the Hall of Fame.
Adam Levin:
The two gentlemen there, the captains holding the ball on the front, are a couple of legends who passed away at an early age. Number 78 is Charlie Napoli, who's named graces the trophy room in the Gosman Athletic Center and is on several of our annual awards. And number 30 there is Maury Stein, who also has his name on our annual awards that are presented. The program was discontinued in 1959 as the university's admission standards increased. According to Sachar, members of the football team were felt to be underperforming in the classroom. Brandeis didn't want to dramatically increase its enrollment to cover for that under performance, and the difficult decision was made to discontinue the program. Benny stayed on for three years as an AD until 1963. And as we see from the ones who are joining us here today, Benny's players always stayed faithful to him and were instrumental in getting him elected to the pro football Hall of Fame in 2005.
Adam Levin:
Program did produce two successful professionals, Bill McKenna, who had a six year career in the Canadian Football League, and Mike Long, who played tight end for the Boston Patriots in the American Football League in 1960, just before the AFL merged with the NFL. One of the biggest factors of the early years of Brandeis Athletics, you can see on the left there was Joseph Lindsay. Lindsay made his money in liquor and the horse racing industries, and he was well-connected to the Boston area thanks to his works with Jewish Memorial Hospital, which closed in the early 2000s. Lindsey helped raise money for the entire university, but was especially interested in helping out the Athletic Department. And it's the pool, you can see the illustration there, that bears his name. You can see there's a crowd from one of the very first meets held in the pool. Building also house squash courts and administrative offices for the department.
Adam Levin:
Once brand agents were able to do their swimming on campus, instead of at the local Y or Boys Club, as Abe Sachar put it, a host at last, they started a varsity program. The swimming and diving came into its own in the 1970s, starting when they hired Coach Jim Zotz in 1978. He retired in 2010 and was inducted into the Brandeis Hall of Fame in 2016. He's still on the athletic staff as a physical education instructor. Coach Zotz mentored 20 All-Americans, 67 New England champions in his tenure, but he's especially proud of the academic standing of his athletes. His team's earned College Swimming Coaches Association Team Academic Awards 44 times in his tenure, and the Brandeis women have now been honored with that award in 57 of the last 59 semesters, as they earned at this most recent fall, and 12 of the last 15 for the men. In this past fall in 2020, both squads were on the top 25 in Division III in GPA.
Adam Levin:
The men's basketball team, excuse me, was fairly successful from the get-go under the coaching of Harry Stein, who's a New York coach who was brought in by Sacker, who was able to recruit successfully on a national basis. He brought in players from all over, including our all-time leading scorer, Rudy Fenderson, who scored at 1,700 points from Indiana, and then he was also recruiting locally. Here we have-
Anton Lahnston:
Hubie LeBlanc.
Adam Levin:
Hubie LeBlanc, I'm sorry. Thank you.
Ron Carner:
From Waltham. He lived in Waltham.
Adam Levin:
Yeah. From Waltham. Completely spaced out. Thank you. Hubie passed away a few years ago, but was a long time coach after he played for the Judges, and they were part of... in the '50s from the very beginning, and the '53/'54 Hall of Fame team put together a 14 game winning streak that helped gained the program some notoriety with wins over BU, BC, and the University of Miami. While in 2021, Brandeis and NYU are UAA and Division III rivals, in 1957/'58, the Judges to feed the Violets, who were at the time a big time program in Madison Square Garden, 94-88. That '57/'58 team ended up being the first Judges squad to qualify for the NCAA tournament after defeating teams like Maine and Providence.
Adam Levin:
The team has had success throughout the years, qualified for NCAA championships three times in the 1970s and four more in the late 2000s. And not surprising, but throughout the years, the Judges had three different coaches who played for the Boston Celtics. Casey Jones, recently passed away, coached a team from 1967 through 1970, and he was one of the first Black coaches in the NCAA. Bob Brannum coached the team from 1970 to 1986. He was an enforcer on those red hour back teams. It also had Casey Jones. And most recently, Chris Ford on the left there, he was known for hitting the first three pointer in NBA history, and he was the Judges coach in 2001/'02 and '02/'03 seasons.
Adam Levin:
The women's basketball team has also existed from the beginning. Benny was a strong proponent of women's sports. Even at the time, the game was a six on six game with, you can see in the background, there's a group of women playing on the other side of the court because women were playing three offensive and three defensive players. The '55/'56 team was the first undefeated season of any sport in school history. And then they were coached by Anna Nichols, and future Brandeis leaders, including Board of Trustee Emeritus Rena Olshansky, and future Hall of Famer and contributor, Ruth Porter Bernstein, who still frequency program's alumni game. The current team is led by Carol Simon, who's currently the longest tenured women's basketball coach in the university's athletic association, having been on the sidelines now for 34 years. Her team went underwent a Renaissance in the first decade of the 2000s. They won back to back ECAC tournaments. Kind of a regional Division III version of the NIT tournament that's held at Division I. They then went to four straight NCAA tournaments, including reaching the Elite Eight in 2010 when that photo on the left is taken.
Adam Levin:
The tennis program started in the late 1950s, but their '58/'59 team is one that will live in Brandeis lore, both for its coach and one of the players who went on to become more well-known outside the sport. When looking for someone to lead the team, Benny Friedman reached out to the Boston Herald, and he found a young reporter on the right there, who was just getting started in tennis, by the name of Bud Collins. Bud coach the Judges for four seasons, including an unbeaten year in 1959, but when he left Brandeis, he took a job at the Boston Globe and went on to much greater fame as a journalist on print and in TV. He was known for his flashy trousers and insightful player nicknames, and he's a member of the International Tennis Hall of Fame, and the press center at the US Open in New York city bears Bud's name. On that first team of Bud's, there on the left, was none other than the famed counter-cultural icon, Abby Hoffman. He wasn't necessarily a top player on the team, though he did play number three singles on on the Judges' ladder. Captain of the club before the team arrived, but decided that Martin Zelnick who helped to recruit Bud to campus would be the captain. That didn't sit so well with someone who's regard for authority was known to be less than stellar. On Hoffman's death, Bud told Newsday, "He played a conservative style, never attacking at the net. He was a retriever running down balls, but he took it seriously." Years later, the Brandeis tennis was successful in the late 1980s, as Noel Occomy won the NCAA Division III title as a junior and helped the team win the UAA championship as a senior, and become the first ever team from New England Division III to qualify for the NCAA tournament.
Adam Levin:
The women's team was established as a varsity program a year or two after the men, with student coaches the first few years. The women success was mostly been on an individual basis. Brenda Harrison... Brenda Schafer, rather, and Ronnie Yellen there, were a successful doubles tandem. Brenda also won a New England singles championship in 1977 when she again played against Division I, II, and III players, including Harvard and, again, Boston College. And more recently, Carly Cook went to the NCAA individual tournament three times and was a five-time Division III All-American.
Adam Levin:
Baseball has been part of Brandeis' tradition from the very beginning, as well. This photo was taken from the 1977 runner-up team. The team didn't have a ton of success in the '50s and '60s, although Fred Martin, 65, he was named the MVP of the Greater Boston League as a senior when he struck out an astonishing 27 batters in in a 12 inning game. Brandeis Baseball really became successful under Coach Tom O'Connell in 1972, and three years later, 1975, he brought them to their first winning season in 1977. Like I said, this photo, the team was the national runners-up in Division III, and which is still the best finish in program history. And O'Connell's predecessor was Pete Barney, who continued the baseball team's success, reaching 12 NCAA tournament in 34 seasons. And this is the 1999 squad that also reached the Division III World Series. The second team to ever reach that level. Baseball team has also produced the most professionals of any team in Judges history, including our only major leaguer, Nelson Figueroa, class of '98. Nelson spent 18 seasons in the majors, minors, and abroad, and nine of those came with six different major league teams, including his hometown Mets, the team who drafted him after his junior season, and also the team for whom he pitched the first complete game shutout in the history of Citi Field.
Adam Levin:
Fencing also has a long history as a varsity sport at Brandeis, although the NCAA only held the men's championships until 1970s. The appropriately named Liesl Judge was the first coach in the women's team history with a fascinating story. Liesl coached the Brandeis women from 1955 until 1981. She was a native of Germany and was a member of that country's Olympic fencing team in 1936. But she was barred from competing in the Berlin games because of her Jewish father. Judge and her family, they fled Nazi Germany and arrived in the United States in 1938, and she led Brandeis to 60 New England championships and a second place finished at the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women's National Championships. And that was a precursor to the NCAA for women's sports. Fencing is unique at Brandeis currently because of its status as a national collegiate sport, and people sometimes call it a Division I sport because we compete against the likes of Notre Dame, Ohio State, and Penn State, where obviously we're not giving out scholarships like those schools do.
Adam Levin:
Brandeis has hosted the NCAA championships four times, the first in 1994. This image was taken in 2004. And the most recent time was in 2016. Fencing also boasts. The second of Brandeis' two highest profile former athletes, Tim Morehouse, class of 2000. Tim was the NCAA saber fencer of the year as a senior, and four years later, he was an alternate at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, and four years after that as a part of the full team. He became Brandeis' first Olympic medalist, helping the USA saber squad earn silver as part of our remarkable comeback over Russia in the semifinals.
Adam Levin:
The men's soccer team has also been around since the start of athletics at Brandeis. The early teams were populated with many weaned scholars, soccer still being a much more international sport at the time. It's certainly grown in popularity here. That included a 1960 squad that finished with an undefeated 11 and 0 season. That season was a bit of an outlier in the early years, but in 1972, the then athletic director, Nick Rotis, hired Mike Colvin, who you can see there, as the program's eighth head coach. And he went on to remain on the sidelines into the 21st century, serving 44 years with the Judges. He led the team to their first team national championship in Brandeis history, winning the 1976 title in overtime against Brockport State College. The winning goal in that game was scored by Cleveland Louis. You can see the two there with the trophy there. Still the program's all-time number two leading scorer. Louis is the older brother of Olympic track and field legend, Carl Lewis. And Cleveland had broken his nose earlier in the game, but he returned to produce the game-winning goal on a header.
Adam Levin:
Covin led the team to four more final fours, finishing... or three more final forests, finishing as the runner-up in 1984. We were third place in 1981 and in 2016. Colvin retired after the last final four appearance, but his long-time assistant coach and successor, Gaye Margolis, returned the team to the final four the very next year. And that's where this photo is from. Sam Vinson scored the team's first goal that year.
Adam Levin:
Not to be outdone in terms of the longevity in the department, the women's soccer team has only had one coach who's actually coached a game at this point, Denise Dallamora in the back row, right. Coached the Judges' first squad in 1980, and she retired in the winter of 2019. She coached the first Brandeis women's team to ever make it to the NCAA tournament, and that was just eight years after the program had started. The team has had up and downs for the next decade or so, but they made the tournament seven times between 2010 and 2019, including a final four birth in 2016. Denise retired as one of only four NCAA women's soccer coaches to have spent 40 years on the sidelines. Once she retired, one of her former players, Mary Shimko, took over the reins. Mary, unfortunately, had her first season as a coach delayed because of the Coronavirus. Later this year, Denise, Mike Colvin, as well as Bill Shipman in fencing, and Pete Barney of baseball, will all be inducted into the Hall of Fame this coming October.
Adam Levin:
Another sport that hit it's stride, so to speak, in the 1970s and early '80s, was the track and field and cross country teams. With the addition of Norm Levine in 1964, the Judges went from taking student athletes from other programs and turning them into runners, to actively recruiting around the Boston area. Norm was known for being able to convince students from all backgrounds to bring their running talents to Brandeis. He led had the men's cross country team to nine top 10 finishes at the NCAA championships between 1974 and 1984, including Brandeis' second ever national team champion in 1983, and that's the group seen here. And 1985, or 1985, Mark Beeman won the individual national championship. With 24 appearances at the national level, the men's cross country team, at the NCAA championships, the men's cross country team ranks third amongst all Division III teams.
Adam Levin:
On the women's side, Brandeis has made five trips to nationals in cross country, with a pair of six place finishes, including into 2018, and that year Emily Bryson, '19, wrapped up a remarkable career. Emily was a nine-time All-American, four times in cross country and five times in track and field, including winning four national championships in four different events, the 1,500 meters, the 3,000 meters indoors, the 5,000 meters, which is winning their championship outdoors and anchoring the winning distance medley relay team as a senior. And Emily is not even the most decorated track and field athlete in program history, and that honor goes to Eleena Zhelezov, '95. She's one of only two NCAA athletes in any division to have one the same event indoors and outdoors four years in a row with her triple jump. She also won a long jump as a freshmen, making her a nine-time national champion.
Adam Levin:
Volleyball was one of the last varsity sports to get started, coming into play in 1976 as varsity, and they were coached by Mary Sullivan for the first 21 years of its existence. Program put together some 20 win seasons in the late 1990s, but really came into their own in the 2000s, when they reached 70 ECAC tournaments and won back to back titles, including 2006 and 2007. They were coached by Michelle Kim. Volley ball has produced a pair of Division III All-Americans in Lorraine Wingenbach Maxwell, and Emma Bartlett, who was honored just three seasons ago for her playing.
Adam Levin:
There are a few discontinued sports at Brandeis other than football. I didn't touch much on those. There are football, golf, lacrosse, wrestling, and sailing. None of those teams ever really put together a ton of sustained success. Every few years, I get asked by an intrepid Justice or Hoot reporter why Brandeis doesn't sponsor contact sports like football or lacrosse. And first thing I do is ask them if they've ever been to any of our soccer matches or UAA basketball game, because there's as much contact there as there is in any premier league game or NBA game. But I let them know the sports are discontinued for any variety of reasons, not because of any vast conspiracy theory.
Adam Levin:
Lacrosse and wrestling ended because just a lack of interest and unable to maintain rosters that they were able to be competitive. And golf and sailing were eliminated as varsity sports, unfortunately, during the 2008 financial crisis. A lot of these sports still compete on and off as club sports. Sailing has been able to keep it going since 2008, but some of the others, as the interest comes and goes on campus... Excuse me. They continue to participate on the club level.
Adam Levin:
So, that is my portion of the presentation, so I'm going to turn it over to Surella, who will talk about the archives and how you can help them out. It's all yours.
Surella Seelig:
Hi, everybody. I'm going to share my screen, also, so just give me a second and bear with me if it goes awry. These are some things that are more in the ephemera category of materials that we have, and I'll just go through some of them. This is one of my favorites. This is the women's basketball blazer, and we have one of them. And it's in, actually, it's in decent shape. These are some of the football programs, and I love the art on these. And we've got a little piece from Brandeis track here, as well.
Surella Seelig:
And so, if you ever come into the archives, if you're ever interested, we are always delighted to help you, and we are always delighted to, whether you're sure what you want to see, whether or not sure of what you want to see. And if you ever are interested in donating any of your Brandeis materials, please get in touch. The name and contact information of my colleague, Maggie McNeely, who's a university archivist, soon to be the collections archivist, she has been in charge of really... She has been the university archivist for quite some time and has beautifully grown our collections in the university archives side of things, which is actually how we have a ton of those football programs.