The Penn Stater Magazine

Our May/June Issue–Including Your Phys Ed Memories–Is En Route

April 20, 2011 at 5:48 pm Lori Shontz 3 comments

As we put together our May/June issue—which arrived in our office yesterday, so it should be appearing in your mailboxes soon—I had a lot of flashbacks to my personal defense class.

That’s because our cover story, Muscle Memory, features your memories from phys ed classes. So of course that made me think back to my own experiences.

I took a class from assistant fencing coach Wes Glon—he of the 12-time NCAA champions—and learned to truly appreciate a sport I had known nothing about. I loved my only 8 a.m. class in four years of college—ice skating—because my teacher, Betz Hanley ’67g, blasted the Olympics theme music every morning, making it impossible to stay sleepy and disinterested.

But the class I really remember is personal defense with then-wrestling coach Rich Lorenzo ’68, ’75g, who was both incredibly kind and incredibly serious about making sure that all of us women learned practical ways to defend ourselves. We didn’t even sweat in the first couple of classes, while he reviewed tips to keep ourselves safe that didn’t involve physical force.

Eventually we progressed to, shall we say, kicking an assailant “where it counts.” Class was in the wrestling room, so we practiced on the wrestling dummies. Which were incredibly heavy. I kicked one over one day, and after a brief celebration, I tried to put it back in position. It was so heavy, I couldn’t. It took four of us to right the dummy, and I left class that day confident that I could take on any potential attacker.

A couple of weeks later, I was in the room in another capacity—a Collegian reporter covering the wrestling team. As I waited to interview Coach, I watched practice, and I noticed one of the wrestlers flipping a dummy on its back over and over and over. He was barely sweating. He was also the smallest wrestler on the team—Ken Chertow ’89, who competed at 118 pounds. Sure, he was an Olympian and All-American, but he was a lot smaller than most attackers, I figured.

When I told Coach that, he laughed. “That’s why the goal of this class is to teach you how not to get in bad situations,” he said. “And not to be overconfident.”

Which were good points. That I still remember those tips today—and use them—shows how valuable his class was.

You’ll find two other meaty pieces in the new issue, as well:

—A Q&A with biologist Chuck Fisher, who is studying corals on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico to determine how they—and other sea life—have been affected by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which happened one year ago. Fisher began his research in the Gulf more than 25 years ago, so he brings a long-term perspective that government agencies have found invaluable.

—A remembrance of former Merrill Lynch CEO Bill Schreyer ’48, who died Jan. 22 at age 83, and who transformed Penn State with his philanthropy, notably when he and his wife, Joan, committed $55 million to the Schreyer Honors College.

Let us know when you get your magazines, and let us know what you think!

Lori Shontz, senior editor

Entry filed under: College of Health & Human Development, Eberly College of Science, Smeal College of Business, The Penn Stater magazine. Tags: Betz Hanley, Chuck Fisher, Deepwater Horizon, physical education, Rich Lorenzo, Wes Glon, William Schreyer.