Baldwin-Wallace track and cross country coach Bill Taraschke believes it was his calling to be a coach and teach college athletes.
View full sizeBaldwin-Wallace track coach Bill Taraschke talks with 1993 Division III 100-meter hurdle champion Jenniffer Green.BEREA, Ohio — To look at Bill Taraschke, you would never mistake him for a runner. He is, after all, 68 years old, and certainly a few steps slower than he ever was when he was a discus thrower at Ohio University. He was never the kind of coach who would run laps with his athletes, not even when he first started coaching at Baldwin-Wallace 26 years ago.
Baldwin-Wallace men's and women's track coach for 26 years; cross country coach for 19 years.
Has led 47 B-W teams to Ohio Athletic Conference championships (including 2009 women's cross country).
Named OAC Coach of the Year 33 times.
Named NCAA Division III Great Lakes Region Coach of the Year 12 times.
Named NCAA Division III National Track Coach of the Year twice (1997 and 2002).
His women's teams have captured 16 of the past 21 indoor championships and had 15 consecutive from 1988-2002.
His women's outdoor teams have won 16 of the past 26 OAC championships.
A two-time MAC discus champion at Ohio, received bachelor's degree in 1964, master's degree at Southern Illinois in 1966, and a Ph.D. from Toledo in 1984.
He and wife, Denny, are parents of three grown children.
-- Jodie Valade
Division III Track and Field Championships fact box
"He is not a runner, but he knows what you need to become a good runner," said Hannah Purdy Budic, OAC cross country runner of the year 1999-2001 at Baldwin-Wallace.
No, Taraschke is not a runner, but he is most certainly a teacher in every sense of the word, a coach who has instilled a sense of family in his cross country and track teams at B-W. He has gathered 47 OAC titles during his time at the helm of the teams, been named OAC coach of the year 33 times, and NCAA Division III Great Lakes Region Coach of the Year 12 times.
To say he is a runner might be a mistake. But to say he was destined to be a coach and is passionate about instructing young athletes is more precise.
"You don't survive in this business until the age of 68 because of just doing a job," said Eric Schmuhl, a former B-W runner and now an assistant coach for the team. "He's passionate about what he does."
Taraschke, who is the meet director for the NCAA Division III championships at B-W's George Finnie Stadium this weekend, said he became a coach because he felt a calling.
"It sounds hokey," he says now. "But I felt that was my calling to work with young people and help them grow and mature. Coaching and teaching seemed to be the obvious outlet."
He earned a Ph.D. to help with the teaching part through the classroom -- he still teaches two classes a semester for B-W's Division of Health and Physical Education -- and began coaching track to help him connect with athletes.
From the start, he wanted his teams to believe they were more a family than a group of athletes on the same team. He told his kids to think of each other as brothers and sisters, of himself as a father, and his wife, Denny, as a mother -- the kind who will serve homemade cookies to the kids during the season.
"We were a family on that team," said Budic, who met her husband, Tim, on the team. "He kept us together as a family."
The Tressel Field Track in the George Finnie Stadium is a special place for the defending Division III national 400-meter hurdles champion Cory Beebe from Salisbury University in Maryland.
"While competing in a meet in this complex in high school, I met my coach [Kevin Lucas] for the first time," said Beebe, a Medina High alumnus. "He was the coach at Heidelberg at the time and so I went there to start my college career. When he got the job at Salisbury, I went there with him."
Lucas has since left Salisbury to become the head women's coach at Mount Union, but this time Beebe stayed put. Nonetheless, he got the chance to return to the Cleveland area with the national meet in Berea. "This is always a special track for me to run on," said Beebe, who had the third best preliminaries time (5/100ths of a second from the first and 2/100ths from the second best qualifying time) in Thursday's prelims and easily qualified for Saturday's finals.
Host Baldwin-Wallace was able to claim an All-American on the first day of events with Kevin Phipps talking fifth in the hammer throw.
Phipps also qualified in the discus and will throw again Friday.
North Olmsted native Steve Price had a busy day Thursday and will be as busy today competing for B-W in decathlon, which completed the first pentathlon of two Thursday, leaving Price in position to place and attain All-American status by the end of the day today.
Price stands ninth, doing less than normal in his best event, the long jump, but making up for it in the shot put with his best showing of the season.
Case Western's Obinna Nwanna had a sterling day in decathlon, finishing the day in third place with 3,712 points, 74 behind leader Kurtis Brondyke of Central College (Iowa). Price has 3,516 points. Nwanna moved up from seventh after two events to third after five.
Berea native D'Arcy Hlavin finished ninth in her heat of the 1,500 run, short of qualifying to Saturday's final for B-W.
— Norm Weber
He teaches lessons off the track as easily as he does on it. When Budic was injured her freshman season, for instance, Taraschke still invited her to cross country camp and made her feel included with the team. When she fretted about whether she would qualify for nationals one year, he quietly informed her of his confidence in her abilities.
"Hey, Hannah," he said one day after a long practice. "I'd really like to try this new restaurant."
"Uh, OK," she responded, confused about why Taraschke would broach the subject at an odd time. "Where is it?"
"It's in Spokane," he said.
That year's national meet was in Spokane, Wash., of course.
"He would never come out and say, 'You're going to make it to nationals,' Budic said. "But that was his way of making me feel calm before the meet."
For Schmuhl, Taraschke has been an instructor on the track and in the office as the assistant coach strives to learn as much as he can from the veteran mentor.
"I tell our kids if they keep acting and behaving the way they are, I can coach until I'm 100," Taraschke said. "I'm having way too much fun doing what I'm doing."
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: jvalade@plaind.com, 216-999-4654