Your story isn’t gone forever.
I was afraid that your Phi Psi 500 moment in the sun might have been lost forever but the Penn State Daily Collegian has just finished digitizing all of their back issues (there was a gap from 1977-87 that was incomplete for the longest while). Guess what made the archives?
From the April 14th, 1986 issue, on page two…
Craziness was the norm at this year’s Phi Psi
For some of the runners the event was a true family affair. Larry Fall, class of 1972, has run in the race approximately 15 times, and has won the masters division in the past (UL note to Collegian writer: I won the hole damn thing too). This year, however, his brother Ron, 14 years younger, ran against him in Saturday’s race.
“I’ve heard about this race for years, now I’m going to challenge him in my first time running it” Ron Fall said.
But experience paid off in the long run as Larry Fall best his brother by about two minutes.
“It’s a pain for about 1o minutes, but from then on it’s great. I’ve met some of my best friends here at the Phi Psi 500” Larry Fall added.
I feel much better now that I know the results of the race are preserved for posterity sake.
BTW – Some added notes culled from the results piece at the end of the article:
My buddy Randy Woolridge (mistakenly spelled Woolrich in the article) won the masters in a pedestrian 8:10 time (when in shape I usually finished around 7:00 with my best time 6:35 recorded as a master).
The third place masters finisher in the race was Dave Barsda, who was a former employee of mine from Harrisburg. Dave came up from Harrisburg to see me (I had moved to CT a couple of years earlier) and run in the race.
The remark about meeting some of my best friends at the rate was quite true and reads even more eerily when I realized that I’m still in touch with three of the students who ran on the team that placed second in the race. Eric Brugel, along with his brother and sister, worked at the Tavern. He comes back to State College for an annual golf tournament that I play in. Tim Flynn, is the wrestling coach at Edinboro University.
The most successful of the bunch though is Chris Bevilacqua, who went on to make millions in the sports and TV business. Chris went to work for Nike out of college – he’s the one that started the first Nike shoe and apparel contracts with college programs. He left Nike to work for Major League Baseball for a while, then started his most successful venture College Sports Television, aka CSTV. CSTV was eventually bought out by CBS which put considerable coin in Chris’s pocket. He worked for CBS for a while as the head of the regional sports programming but then left to go out on his own. He’s currently working on some soccer/TV startup deal but I’m not privy to the details. However, on that spring Saturday, some 21+ years ago, Chris was just another beer jugging, pavement pounding College student out to have some fun.
