Celebrate 2012 Weekend
9/19/2012 12:00:00 AM | General
Michigan State Athletics Mission Statement
"We gather and engage our community to teach, support and celebrate our student-athletes in their quest for excellence."
Sept. 20, 2012
Hall of Fame Induction and Letter Jacket Ceremony Photo Gallery
Thursday night, the Michigan State athletics department began the Celebrate 2012 Weekend, by holding the 2012 Hall of Fame Induction and Varsity Letter Jacket Ceremony at the Pasant Theatre at Wharton Center. The event honored Spartans past and present.
Athletics Director Mark J. Hollis was the MC of the evening. After welcoming the nearly capacity crowd, Hollis began by introducing each member of the 2012 Hall of Fame class. One at a time, they came to the stage to watch a video on their MSU accomplishments and address the audience.
Hall of Fame Speeches
Emily Bastel | Clinton Jones | Shawn Respert | Diane Spoelstra | George Szypula
Upon conclusion of the speeches, the focus shifted to the current Spartan student-athletes. A video featuring past letterwinners talking about the honor of wearing their letter jacket transitioned into the respective coaching staffs announcing their students-athletes and managers. In total 158 of the deserving 187 student-athlete and managers were in attendance to receive their jackets from their head coach.
Earlier in the day, the Hall of Fame press conference and reception were held in the Christman Lounge at the Kellogg Center. Each inductee received their Hall of Fame award from Athletics Director Mark J. Hollis prior to the press conference, and posed for a group photo at its conclusion.
Each inductee plaque is now hanging in the MSU Athletics Hall of Fame inside the Clara Bell Smith Center.
Sept. 19, 2012
The Michigan State Athletics Department will "Celebrate 2012" over the next three days (Sept. 20-22). The third-annual event is dedicated to all former and current student-athletes who have provided the department with a storied past and a winning tradition that continues.
The weekend includes the Varsity Letter Jacket Presentation, the Hall of Fame induction ceremony, the announcement of the Varsity S Club award winners, and culminates Saturday afternoon when the Spartan football team hosts Eastern Michigan at Spartan Stadium at 3:30 p.m.
The "Celebrate 2012" weekend will begin Thursday, Sept. 20 with the Class of 2012 Hall of Fame Induction and Varsity Letter Jacket Presentation at Wharton Center's Pasant Theatre. This closed ceremony, which will be attended by varsity sport head and assistant coaches, is for student-athletes who received their first varsity letter during the 2011-12 academic year. In all, 187 student-athletes and managers will receive their letter jacket on Thursday night.
Prior to the MSU student-athletes receiving their letter jackets, the six-member Hall of Fame class of Carl Banks, Emily Bastel, Clinton Jones, Shawn Respert, Diane Spoelsta and George Szypula will be recognized.
2012 Hall of Fame Class press release
Also during this event, the 2012 Varsity S Club award winners and the Varsity S Club Class of 2012 Honorary Members will be honored. This year's Varsity S Club award winners are Jack Beattie (Jack Breslin Award), David Brogan (Hank Bullough Award), Diana D'Angelo (Nell C. Jackson Award) and Ron Mason (Eldon VanSpybrook Retired Coaches Award). The honorary members of the Varsity S Club Class of 2012 are Richard Bader, Matt Gianiodis, Kathie Klages and Bob Skandalaris.
At halftime of Saturday's game, all of the student-athletes who attended the Varsity Letter Jacket Presentation will take the field, along with the Hall of Fame inductees. The Varsity S Club award winners and honorary members will be honored at the end of the first quarter.
"Celebrate 2012" Weekend Events
Thursday, Sept. 20
• Hall of Fame Media Availability - 4:30-5:30 p.m. (Christman Lounge, Wharton Center)
• Hall of Fame Reception - 5:30-6:30 p.m. (Jackson Lounge, Wharton Center)
• Hall of Fame Induction/Varsity Letter Jacket Presentation - 7-8:30 p.m. (Wharton Center, Pasant Theatre)
Friday, Sept. 21
• Varsity S Club Awards Banquet - 7 p.m. (Kellogg Center). Varsity S Club award winners and honorary members will be introduced
Saturday, Sept. 22
• MSU vs. Eastern Michigan - 3:30 p.m. (Spartan Stadium)
• After the First Quarter of the Football Game vs. EMU - Varsity S Club award winners and honorary members recognized on the field • Halftime of the Football Game vs. EMU - Student-athletes who received their letter jackets on Thursday and Hall of Fame inductees honored on the field
2012 Hall of Fame Class - Carl Banks
Online columnist Steve Grinczel profiles former football All-American Carl Banks.
The idea that a person is a product of his or her environment doesn't quite hold true for Carl Banks.
Thanks to interpersonal interactions throughout his life, four years of sub-.500 records at Michigan State didn't prevent Banks from becoming a winner in every sense of the word, which is why his induction into the Michigan State University Athletics Hall of Fame is tinged with a hint of solitude.
"I think it's great, but if I could have a ton of people who really deserved this honor up there with me, it would be even better," said one of the greatest linebackers in Spartan and Big Ten history. "I'm good at taking direction and following directions, and I've had so many really good teachers in my life that played a role in shaping who I've become.
"And by teachers, I'm talking about life teachers."
Banks was so programmed for success at an early age, the racial slurs spray-painted on his Flint Beecher High School team buses didn't embitter him, and being uncoordinated as a teenager didn't prevent him from being recruited by Michigan's Bo Schembechler, Ohio State, Oklahoma and Southern California in addition to MSU.
Beginning his Spartan football career with a 3-8 record under coach Muddy Waters in 1980 didn't discourage him from becoming one of the best linebackers in the league.
A misunderstanding of Banks being a prima donna by then new MSU coach George Perles in 1983 didn't stand in the way of him becoming the team's only captain, an All-American, a three-time All-Big Ten selection and one of the greatest defenders in school and conference history.
An unsatisfying MSU career consisting of an overall mark of 14-29-1 and no bowl appearances didn't deter Banks him from being picked third overall in the 1984 NFL Draft by the New York Giants.
Starting out as the low man on the Giants' linebacking totem pole that included established superstars Lawrence Taylor and Harry Carson didn't stop Banks from: Starting 151 of 173 career games during nine seasons in New York, one in Washington and two in Cleveland; earning two Super Bowl rings with the Giants; playing in the '87 Pro Bowl; being named to the NFL's 1980s All-Decade Team; and having his name added to the Giants' Ring of Honor at MetLife Stadium.
And, the sobering reality of having an illustrious football career come to an end didn't mean Banks couldn't move on to a new challenge as the president of G-III Apparel Group's sports division, which features the Carl Banks Collection. He also works as a broadcaster with WCBS-New York, the New York Giants radio network (WFAN), WNBC-New York, FOX5-New York and Sirius Satellite Radio.
"As with anything that gets recognition or gets an award, there are always a lot of good people who have been supportive and helpful," Banks said. "With me getting to this point, it's no exception.
"I have a great deal of gratitude to a lot of people, but in particular the entire community of Flint, Mich., a lot of great teachers and a wonderful high school coach, Moses Lacy, who instilled in me the value of work ethic and hard work, and then winning, and never compromising my values no matter the circumstances. They served me well during the lean years at Michigan State."
Had Banks not attended the Magic Johnson-Dr. Tucker Basketball camp as a youth, he probably wouldn't have attended MSU.
"I owe Magic Johnson a big thank-you and Charles Tucker has been a friend through so many things and has always been so encouraging," Banks said. "He really was my compass while I was at Michigan State and even post-Michigan State."
Former Spartan players and assistant coaches Sherman Lewis and Charlie Baggett were extremely influential during the recruiting process.
"They sat on my parents' couch and assured them they would be there for me during my career and also make sure I conducted myself in an appropriate manner so I didn't lose my home training," Banks said with a laugh. "That was big to my parents."
Although Banks' relationship with Perles got off to a rocky start, it continues to resonate.
"I don't know why, but I chose Michigan State and Muddy Waters and there were some lean years there," Banks said. "But I never let it shape who I was or how I performed. I never stopped caring about winning and I never stopped valuing a very strong work ethic.
"Then George Perles came to Michigan State and it became such a wonderful experience with him because I learned to understand how to focus my work ethic and I became a little more purposeful on how to do things.
"I wouldn't trade my experience for the world. Some of my best friends to this day are my teammates."
Despite the lack of team success during Banks' Spartan career, things may have turned out differently had he played somewhere else. They have been better, or maybe worse, but certainly not the same, which is why the mark he left on MSU is indelible.
"The hardest decision a recruit can make is whether to choose a school not as popular or as successful as one in state or out of state that's recruiting you," Banks said. "It takes believing that you can be part of a change and a part of a legacy."
Although he never won a Big Ten championship or played in a Rose Bowl, Banks is proud of the impact he had on the success that followed his departure from MSU. The Spartans did win a Rose Bowl with Flint native Andre Rison at wide receiver, and in 2000, the basketball team won a national championship with "the Flintstones," - Mateen Cleaves, Morris Peterson and Charlie Bell.
"I believe that the pipeline of athletes that have come from Flint has made a major contribution to the basketball and football programs," Banks said. "I'm proud to have blazed the trail for them as if to say, yes, Michigan State is good enough."
The communications and writing skills Banks developed at Michigan State as a communication major continue to serve him well as a businessman.
"I cared about going to class, I cared about learning and I cared about getting a degree," he said. "I never thought there wasn't a way. The only thing for me was to keep focused on being the best person and football player I could be so I could represent the school both as a student and an athlete, and making sure everyone around me played as well as they possibly could to have success."
Although the high-water mark for Michigan State football was the 28-23 upset of Notre Dame in 1983, it wasn't all bad.
"It laid a wonderful foundation for me," Banks said. "We had some good things. We had some fun."
2012 Hall of Fame Class - Emily Bastel
Online columnist Steve Grinczel profiles former women's golfer Emily Bastel.
Emily Bastel was eight or nine years old when she launched her bid to become the first student-athlete from the 21st Century to enter the Michigan State University Athletics Hall of Fame.
She didn't know it at the time, but it was during one of the rounds of golf she would attempt to play with her mother, Debbie, in Upper Sandusky, Ohio, at Lincoln Hills Golf Club, the nine-hole course her family has owned since the 1930s.
"My mom tells a great story about how we used to go play and we'd get to about No. 4 before I'd have a little temper tantrum and she'd have to drag me in," Bastel said. "So I was apparently pretty competitive even at a very young age."
Those flames turned into a bonfire after Bastel arrived at MSU as an unheralded prospect.
Four years later, Spartan women's golf was back on the national map and she was a four-time All-Big Ten selection, the 2001-02 conference player-of-the-year and an All-American.
And now her image hangs among the other MSU immortals in the school's Hall of Fame.
"That's pretty crazy," she said. "The one thing that stuck out in my mind about that is I felt I was pretty young for something like this. But, I was obviously pretty flattered."
Bastel has had the good fortune of being able to cultivate her abilities in fertile environments. Her father, David, is the PGA Professional at Lincoln Hills and teacher to her and brother Ben, a former Miami of Ohio Academic All-American.
"My mentor in golf growing up most certainly has been my father," Bastel said. "Our course was built in 1927 and it's where I grew up. My dad is the superintendent and my mom works in the shop. My brother and I worked there. I used to mow greens when I was in high school and work in the shop, and we both sort of did it all.
"It's the epitome of a family business."
It's also where Bastel learned the game and developed the confidence to flourish in Coach Stacy Slobodnik-Stoll's Spartan program.
"I was so ready to go to college when I graduated from high school," Bastel said. "I grew up in a town of 6,000 people and sometimes it was so small and stifling. But now, being able to look back, I just realize the support I've gotten from the people in my hometown and being able to grow up there was such a blessing because definitely it shaped who I am at this time of my life and it shaped my career.
"And being able to have the overwhelming support of loving parents and family was really awesome. I played my first tournament when I was about 11 years old, which by today's standards is probably a late start, but it worked for me."
In so many ways that Slobodnik-Stoll calls Bastel the greatest Spartan golfer of all time.
It all started with being named Big Ten Freshman of the Year in 1999, and she won Big Ten medalist honors the following year. As a junior, Bastel set a school record with a 75.23 stroke average while leading Michigan State to a Big Ten title. And, with a 13th-place finish in the NCAA Championships, she paced the Spartans to a school-best 12th-place finish in the national tourney.
As a senior in 2001-02, Bastel won the University of South Florida Waterlefe Invitational with a school-record 54-hole score of 214 and the Indiana Invitational. She also lowered her own MSU record with a 74.61 average and had top-five finishes in seven events.
"There's no doubt we had a very close team when I was there and I'm still very good friends with a lot of the girls," Bastel said. "From a personal standpoint, my individual win at the Big Ten championships my sophomore year was a pretty incredible experience.
"I'm a superstitious person and one of the things I used to do is if I started a round wearing a certain outfit, I wouldn't remove any clothing. The Big Tens were at Wisconsin that year and I was wearing this black (base-layer) shirt because it was really cold in the morning. But by the end of the day, it was 75-80 degrees, but it was so hot, I would not take that thing off because I was playing well."
Although golf is considered an individual sport, Bastel said nothing compared to MSU winning the league title.
"That was pretty special," she said. "Individual accomplishments are obviously great, but there's no doubt the memories I have from winning team championships are the most rewarding."
While Bastel thrived in the atmosphere created by Slobodnik-Stoll, the Spartans appeared in four NCAA Regionals and three NCAA Championships.
"Stacy is an amazing recruiter," Bastel said. "I wasn't the most highly touted recruit coming out of high school, but she definitely saw something in me. The thing I loved about her and what she was presenting at Michigan State was that she was 100-percent supportive, so she was very similar to my parents in that way.
"She said to me, `If you want to do this and set your mind to it, I will help you and I believe you can do it.' And that's what I was looking for - someone who believed in me."
Bastel also has an amazing gene pool to thank for her athletic prowess. She said nine members of her family have played Division I sports of one kind or another. Her cousin, Caroline Powers, is an All-American on the MSU golf team and the daughter of Buddy Powers, a former Boston University hockey player and current Terrier assistant coach.
After spending the 2002-03 season as a Spartan assistant coach, Bastel went on to play on the LPGA and Futures tours, and accumulated $176,289 in career earnings. In 2011, she returned to coaching as an assistant at Duke and then Florida. She is currently in her first season as the Gators' women's head golf coach, and won her first-ever tournament as a head coach earlier this month at the Cougar Classic in Charleston, S.C.
"Stacy and I remain close and I still talk to her every couple of weeks," Bastel said. "I learned a lot from her from a coaching standpoint. She does a great job of not only mentoring her players, but has formed friendships and relationships that really last, I'm sure in my case a lifetime.
"It's funny because we would never make excuses for ourselves given the weather up North, and now I'm on the other end telling recruits how great the weather is in Florida. But in general, a lot of the core values I had as a player at Michigan State are instilled in my program now. Our program probably resembles Stacy's in certain aspects."
2012 Hall of Fame Class - Clinton Jones
Online columnist Steve Grinczel profiles former football and track & field All-American Clinton Jones.
The Mount Rushmore of Michigan State's 1965 and 1966 national championship football teams is complete.
Of course, George Webster, Bubba Smith and Gene Washington were the first to be immortalized when they were inducted into the MSU Athletics Hall of Fame inaugural class in 1992.
And this year, halfback Clinton Jones was added to the Hall for football and track and field.
So many amazing student-athletes contributed to the remarkable success and enduring fame of those teams, but Webster, Smith, Washington and Jones were the Big Four.
"It means so much to me to be back together with George, Bubba and Gene," said Jones, who was also inducted into the Greater Cleveland Sports Hall of Fame this year.
An All-American halfback as a junior and senior, Jones has been reflecting on the essence of his dual-recognition for nearly a year.
"I've been thinking about this for the past nine months, and my story is about gratitude and mentoring," he said. "This is an opportunity to acknowledge so many people because it wasn't like any one person. I'm representing my teammates and my coaches."
Jones, an All-American sprinter on the Spartan track team as well, is no stranger to honors and awards.
After rushing for 787 yards and 10 touchdowns as a junior on MSU's 1966 Rose Bowl team, the Cleveland Touchdown Club recognized Jones as the nation's most outstanding player by presenting him with the Joe Fogg Memorial Trophy.
His star reached its pinnacle during the halcyon 1966 when he, Bubba, George and Gene led the Spartans to a 9-0-1 record and refused to flinch against Notre Dame in the infamous 10-10 "Game of the Century."
After college, Jones had a successful NFL career and accounted for 5,035 all-purpose yards and 21 touchdowns in six seasons with the Minnesota Vikings and one with the San Diego Chargers.
Looking back, however, Jones realizes he has always considered athletics as a means to an end, even before his days at Cleveland Cathedral Latin High School.
"High school was the precursor and Michigan State was the next phase for preparing me to go out into the world," Jones said. "Life has blessed me with a lot of outstanding mentors.
"This Hall of Fame honor isn't about Clinton Jones. It's about all the people who contributed making Clinton Jones who he is today."
First and foremost is his mother, Emma.
"Without my mother, I wouldn't be where I'm at," Jones said. "She had me when she was 15 years and 10 months old and never made more than a dollar an hour until she was 40 years old. She worked many jobs to put me through school because she had to pay for tuition at the Catholic school.
"She was a father and a mother and very much a taskmaster. I was trained at a very young age that there wasn't any such thing as entitlement. A lot of guys don't know how to cook, sew and clean, and I was doing all that before I was 10 years old. Then, my education in high school was the equivalent of two years in college.
"My athletic mentoring started when I was nine years old when I started boxing and I was trained for four years by Jimmy Reeves, who was the middleweight champion. That was my first sport."
Jones was initially headed to the University of Detroit, which didn't have a varsity track team, until his Cathedral Latin coach, Dick Maribito, steered him to the welcoming atmosphere at Michigan State under the legendary Duffy Daugherty.
In 1966, Sports Illustrated listed Jones among what it called the "streaks" of college football: "Fast and tough and exciting... the newest and brightest twist in a game that has gone all out on attack."
Before playing Iowa in the eighth game of the season, Jones apologized to his teammates for what he called subpar play. Then, he broke the Big Ten single-game rushing record with 268 yards on 21 carries, including touchdown runs of 79, 70 and 2 yards in the 56-7 romp.
"I told them I didn't want to end my last year feeling that I let the team down, or Duffy or my family," he said at the time.
His deference and service to others hasn't changed a bit at the age of 67.
"There were a lot of influential people in my life, who I call unsung heroes," Jones said.
Treasured life lessons came to Jones from every corner of the athletic department, from equipment manager Ken Earley to trainer Clinton Thomas to Sylvia Thompson, Daugherty's executive assistant and later the executive assistant to eight different athletic directors, and venerated administrator Jack Breslin.
Jones even paid tribute to the so-called "White Rocks," who made up MSU's practice squad.
"You know, like the Rock of Gibraltar, that's how the White Rocks were," Jones said. "We had the green team and we had the white team and many of those guys on the White Rocks didn't even letter. But they scrimmaged against us and prepared us for every game. They didn't get accolades and attention for what they've done, but we wouldn't have had the team we had if it wasn't for them.
"These are the guys Gene Washington, Bubba, George Webster, Bob Apisa and Jerry West acknowledged as being so important to our lives. They're a part of our whole family. Guys like Pete Dotlich and a little quarterback named Eric Marshall from Mississippi. They were so unselfish, contributed so much, and were so proud to be Spartans. How can we ever repay our debt of gratitude?"
Before joining the Vikings as a the overall No. 2 pick in the 1967 NFL draft, Jones became engaged in the war on poverty by joining the Office of Economic Opportunity while taking classes at MSU. His immediate goal was to encourage out-of-school and out-of-work young men to join the Job Corps.
After pro football, Jones went to school to become a chiropractic physician in Los Angeles, where he still practices with his wife, Rosielee.
"Sports, football in particular as well as track, were an expedient means to take me to a place that was within myself," Jones said. "When I retired from professional football on my own accord, I wanted a philosophy and a profession that were one in the same.
"I wanted to thank the people who contributed to my life through my contributions to other people's lives. In other words, I just wanted to keep passing it along because I've been very, very fortunate."
2012 Hall of Fame Class - Shawn Respert
Online columnist Steve Grinczel profiles MSU's all-time scoring leader Shawn Respert.
The security of Shawn Respert's place among the greatest Michigan State student-athletes of all time can never be questioned. After all, he scored more points in Big Ten basketball competition than any other player in the history of the league and will likely hold the top spot in the Spartans' esteemed 1,000-Point Club for years, if not decades, to come.
So many of his markers rained down in the form of 3-point field goals from one side of the court or the other in what became unofficially known as "Respert's Corner." And no one will ever forget that Sunday afternoon in Ann Arbor when Respert hobbled off the court in Crisler Arena with what appeared to be debilitating ankle injury, only to score 30 of his 33 points in the second half to lead MSU to a 73-71 victory.
The consensus All-America honors in 1995 put him in even more elite company, but who among Respert's peers deserve credit for starting a time-honored and beloved school tradition?
The way a handful of University of Michigan players disrespected the school's iconic logo at midcourt in a 73-69 victory over the Spartans at the Breslin Center in 1993 ate at Respert for the rest of his career until he figured out a way to right that wrong.
At the end of his introduction during MSU's annual Senior Day ceremony, Respert knelt down and kissed the block "S" in the center jump circle.
"When you're playing your last home game, you have all of these memories that start to come and go," Respert said. "You remember the good times, you remember the bad times, and that was one of lowest points at the time during my sophomore year. We started off with a good preseason, started off the Big Ten at .500 and then we hit a slump.
"For Michigan to come in and beat us in our gym and do the things they did after the game. ...
"Looking back now, you don't make it more or less than what it was - a lot of competitive nature between two rivals. But, you just hate to see guys one-up you and yeah, I remember stuff like that. So being able to get the two wins against them my senior year, and then walking off the court after my final game against Wisconsin with a win, that was just something that came to my mind.
"All the things we went through during those four years of competing, all the ups, all the downs, all the players who'd come and gone, the coaches, my teammates, my family, the fans - I couldn't think of a better way to show my appreciation for people giving me the opportunity to show what I could do."
Respert didn't tell irascible Spartan coach Jud Heathcote, who retired at the end of the season, his intentions, and the inaugural kiss almost didn't happen.
"If he'd know what I was going to do, he would have tied me up in the rafters with the retired jerseys and told me to stop profiling and being a big shot and go do my job," Respert said. "I can hear his words ringing in my ears right now.
"I'm just happy it came from goodness. There were no ill feelings and it wasn't a pre-planned thing. If you look back at the film, I almost kind of continued to walk and then right at the last second I said, `Golly, this is it,' and I caught myself in that moment and kissed the S."
Virtually every senior Spartan basketball player has followed suit ever since.
"It's a part of history now and what I feel my greatest contribution was," Respert said. "It doesn't matter how big you are or how little you are, every senior that had the opportunity to wear that uniform and finish up his last game has a chance to do that. I'm just glad we found something we can call ours and that's a part of Spartan tradition now."
Respert's other grand achievement is what some argue is his legitimate claim as the greatest scorer in Big Ten history, a title currently held by former Indiana great Calbert Cheaney.
It's true that Cheaney scored 2,613 points during his career from 1989-93 and Respert is second with the 2,531 he tallied from 1991-95. However, Cheaney played in 13 more games, including postseason tournaments, than Respert. In Big Ten regular season competition, where Respert and Cheaney played in a like number of games against comparable opposition, Respert still holds the conference record with 1,545 points, 139 more than Cheaney.
"As we've all gotten older and have continued to stick around the game, I've seen Calbert quite a few times and have had a chance to catch up," Respert said. "And the most satisfying thing about it was the respect that we gave to each other. I didn't have to worry about (trash-talking) him about what I did and vice versa. It was just a sense of acknowledgement.
"I tell him that I would have liked to have had the team success he had, and we were by no means a shabby team. And, we weren't losing to shabby teams, with Michigan going to the national championship game twice, Indiana winning the Big Ten championship two years, and then Jim Jackson at Ohio State."
Respert was paid the ultimate compliment earlier this summer while working the basketball camp operated by former U-M rival Juwan Howard. Howard told the campers that Respert took a back seat to no one of that era, which also included Glenn Robinson at Purdue, Wisconsin's Michael Finley, Kendall Gill of Illinois and Chris Webber, Jalen Rose and Howard at Michigan.
"That was one of the biggest eye-opening experiences I've ever had," Respert said. "People now recognize Juwan as a great ambassador of the game and he said I was someone he enjoyed watching and competing against and respected. To have someone who was at the level of those guys acknowledge that I belonged somewhere in that group of great players that came through the college ranks left me surprised, thankful and humbled."
Completely recovered from the stomach cancer that limited his NBA career to four seasons, the former Big Ten Player of the Year continues to contribute to the sport he loves as the Minnesota Timberwolves player development coach. Respert posted a league-best 5-1 record as a head coach in the 2012 NBA Summer League, and while he sees himself wearing a suit and tie on the sidelines for years to come, he doesn't have a specific goal in mind.
"That makes me feel like I'm ready, but I just need to continue to do my role," he said of his summer success. "I remember what it was like when I was at the highest high and what it was like when I was at my lowest low. If these guys play this game long enough, they'll travel the whole gamut, too. I just try to be prepared to help them handle those experiences and to get the most out of it.
"I'm a suit guy now. I'm into my eighth season now back into basketball, and I'll let it determine itself. I never questioned the leadership and experience of some of the guys in the front office, and if they see where I'm supposed to fit, they'll put me in there. I just need to keep being me."
Respert called his days at MSU an incredible time for his family. He and younger brother Mike got to be Spartan teammates, and he provided inspiration for little sister Regina who played on back-to-back state high school championship teams. Respert's father, Henry, and mother, Dianne, reveled in his accomplishments while his grandparents, Willie Ben and Christine Byse, were exposed to a world they wouldn't have ever seen if not for his Michigan State career.
"That was the peak of his life," Respert said of his grandfather. "He really enjoyed the opportunity to see basketball on a bigger stage. Unfortunately, he passed away in '02. I know he would have been so overjoyed to come back to visit a place he called home and see me inducted into the Hall of Fame."
2012 Hall of Fame Class - Diane Spoelstra
Online columnist Steve Grinczel profiles former three-sport standout Diane Spoelstra, who played volleyball, basketball and softball.
As legacies go, Diane Spoelstra's is hard to beat.
"I didn't know losing very much," she said in what may be the greatest understatement in Michigan State University sports history.
Spoelstra not only won a lot, she won big. And, she won big from 1975-78 in three sports: softball, basketball and volleyball.
In 252 games as a starter beginning with the golden days of fall, transitioning through the cold winter nights and ending with the warmth of spring, Spoelstra posted a 194-58 record for a winning percentage of .770.
The only thing that stopped Spoelstra from padding the Spartan record book was summer vacation.
"I just always liked to play sports and was just very natural in any sport I took up," Spoelstra said. "So, I just went for the gusto, as they'd say, because we could do that at that time. I feel fortunate that I could play all three sports because you can't do that now. You'd have to make a choice."
Blessed with a versatile skill-set and immunity to burnout, Spoelstra blissfully moved from one sport to the next without missing a beat.
"You only knew what you knew and I'd just go from one sport to the next," she said. "I never felt it was difficult at all. I just had a passion for all those three sports."
Spoelstra was a first-generation daughter of Title IX, which was enacted in 1972 to provide girls and women with equal access to athletic and educational opportunities. As a student-athlete at East Kentwood High School, Spoelstra picked up the ball, both figuratively and literally, and ran with it to the full extent possible.
Shirley Cook, who competed in field hockey, basketball and track and field from 1955-58, is the only other woman to play three different sports at MSU.
"I was a junior in high school when Title IX happened and we were just starting to play other teams in girls' sports and actually have a league," she said. "And the teammates I had at Michigan State in volleyball, basketball and softball were just really skilled athletes at that time.
"We went to the national tournaments in every sport."
If Spoelstra was forced to choose only one, it would have been tough but she would have gone with basketball even though the highlight of her career came on the softball diamond.
Spoelstra began her hardcourt career at Michigan State in 1976 with former two-sport standout Kathy DeBoer under first-year head coach Karen Langeland. DeBoer currently is the executive director of the American Volleyball Coaches Association and Langeland, who coached the Spartans for 24 years, recently retired as an Associate MSU Athletic Director.
"I had played AAU softball with Karen," said Spoelstra, an operations production manager at Kellogg's in Grand Rapids. "She was always someone I admired and looked up to and was just a good role model to follow.
"And Kathy was an excellent basketball and volleyball player. She brought out the best in me and I'm sure I brought out the best in her. We all came from the Grand Rapids area and played a lot of sports together. In that respect, I'd say those two were the most influential people in my life at that time."
Her two biggest fans were her late parents, Henry and Evelyn, who nearly caught on with the Grand Rapids Chicks of the All-American Girls Baseball League during World War II.
"They traveled with me and watched as many of my games as they could," Spoelstra said. "Actually, my mother was quite an athlete at the time and quite a well-known softball player. There are articles about her pitching no-hitters. She almost got picked up for the Chicks, but she was only 16 and her parents wouldn't let her do that."
With no such restrictions standing in Spoelstra's way, the MSU volleyball team compiled an 82-13 record in her two seasons as a starter, won back-to-back Big Ten Tournament championships, and made two appearances in the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women national tourney.
The 5-foot-10 Spoelstra started 45 of 51 games for the Spartan basketball team and averaged 9.8 points, 4.8 rebounds and 1.5 assists per game during her two-year career. As a junior, Spoelstra led MSU to a Midwest AIAW championship and scored a career-high 28 points in the Big Ten Tournament.
The Spartan softball team had three consecutive 20-win seasons with Spoelstra at third base. As a sophomore in 1976, Spoelstra batted .467 in the AIAW College World Series in Omaha, Neb., which culminated in MSU's only national championship. She went 4-for-4, including a triple, and scored a run in the 6-4 victory against Kansas in Game 2.
The events before, during and after MSU's 3-0 victory over Omaha in the title game still resonate in Spoelstra's mind.
Rain-soaked conditions caused organizers to move the final to a local football stadium equipped with artificial grass "so they laid out a diamond on the AstroTurf and it was pretty nerve-wracking," Spoelstra said. "We couldn't wear our cleats so we wore tennis shoe, which was pretty strange.
"Then, coming back on the bus, a couple of the girls played the trumpet and when one got tired playing the Michigan State Fight Song, the other would start. We didn't have one quiet moment the whole time."
What's certain is that playing three sports increased Spoelstra's odds of accomplishing something relatively few college athletes ever experience.
"It's just the thrill of that one moment when you were the best team in the United States," she said. "It's exciting to have everybody playing their best at that point and winning with your teammates. I never thought being a national champion would follow my life the way it has.
"I still have people say they heard I played softball and was a national champion, and I will say, yes I was. But the sweetest part wasn't that we won a national championship, it's that we won it for Michigan State University. There's a lot of pride in that."
2012 Hall of Fame Class - George Szypula
Online columnist Steve Grinczel profiles former men's gymnastics coach George Szypula.
Maybe George Szypula's fingerprints aren't all over the medals won by the U.S. gymnastics team at this summer's London Olympics. However, its success has been gently rocked by the ripples he created throughout the sport as Michigan State's head coach for 41 years.
We have pioneers like Szypula to thank for the spectacle gymnastics is today.
Long before sparkling pint-sized pixies became the darlings of the Olympic movement, Szypula was laying the groundwork for a sport he first undertook as an ultra-flexible tumbler at the age of 4.
He's now 91.
"They say, `Well, what did you do?' And I say, `You shouldn't have asked because you're going to have to sit here for half an hour,' said Szypula, who resides in East Lansing and could easily regale a visitor with life stories for a day and a half. "I have a picture of myself doing a side somersault which I taught myself, but which nobody did until the Japanese `invented' it at the Olympics in '78.
"I used to say, `Hey, they didn't invent it. I was doing that in 1938."
While attending Temple University, the Philadelphia native was a four-time AAU national tumbling champion and the NCAA tumbling champ in 1942. Temple honored Szypula as its outstanding athlete in 1942 and '43.
From there, the "firsts" roll off Szypula's tongue with such regularity, you almost expect him to say he invented gymnastics, which he did, in a manner of speaking, at MSU.
He was named the head coach of the new Spartans men's program in 1947. Two years later, Szypula guided Michigan State to a sixth-place finish in the national championships with Mel Stout, on the parallel bars, capturing the Spartans' first individual title. In 1958, MSU won a share of its first, and only, national championship.
It was also at about that time that Szypula coached Windsor, Ontario, native and eventual MSU graduate Ernestine Russell, the first female gymnast to represent Canada in the Olympics. She competed in the 1956 Melbourne and 1960 Rome games.
In 1966, one of Szypula's Spartan charges, Jim Curzi, won the first ever Nissan Award, which is the gymnastics equivalent of the Heisman Trophy. Two years later, Dave Thor also won the Nissan while leading MSU to its first, and only, Big Ten championship. Szypula also coached Thor in the 1968 Mexico Olympics, where he finished 24th in the men's all-around and first among American gymnasts.
"I had 48 Big Ten champions and 18 NCAA individual champions," Szypula said. "And for the benefit of the Title IX people, I'd like to say that Ernestine Russell got the first full-ride scholarship for a women's gymnast in college. She's a Canadian, but I still take credit for her."
Szypula throws out names from Michigan State's past as though he just had lunch with Biggie Munn, Duffy Daugherty, Amo Bessone and Fred Stabley yesterday.
"Biggie was responsible for Ernestine's full ride," Szypula said of the late, former MSU athletic director. "He was great."
Szypula also coached the Spartans to their first 252 meet victories, although what matters more to him are the relationships he maintains to this day.
"I'm so proud of the guys who graduated and went on to become lawyers, doctors...," he said. "I'm so impressed with them. They had great scholastic averages, and they had great (gymnastic) averages, too.
"The championships are memories, but I'm touched by these people calling me and saying, `Hey, how you doing?' I keep saying that at 91, maybe they're just checking to see if I'm still around."
Talking to Szypula is like peeling an onion; there's always another layer. An associate professor of physical education, Szypula taught tumbling to a student and gymnast named Don Vest, who became MSU's first black cheerleader.
Szypula's reach soon extended well beyond Michigan State as he, along with the help of his wife June, the gymnastics coach at East Lansing High School for 22 years, spread the word of gymnastics.
"My wife and I both coached and taught all kinds of people," he said. "I ran a national summer clinic and we taught coaches to be coaches. We'd get Olympians in here teaching and coaching, and coaches would come in from all over the country. We did that for almost 15 years. I did feel like I was a pioneer in promoting the sport nationally.
"So oh yeah, I think I played a role. I think men's gymnastics was even bigger in the '50s and '60s. Those were the glory days. Then in the '70s it started to slow up a bit. We contributed to what it is today. I like gymnastics period, boys and girls. I haven't taught any dogs or cats to do handsprings, but we were close at times."
Szypula, who coached the East Lansing High School boys' gymnastics team for 16 years after he retired from MSU in 1988, wrote two books, one on tumbling and the other on trampoline, and co-authored a book on girls' gymnastics with June.
"I never quite got to be the Olympic coach, but I was close," said the 1966 NCAA coach of the year.
Szypula also left his mark on a number of MSU football players including one fellow MSU Athletics Hall of Fame member.
"I worked them pretty hard and so they figured this gymnastics is pretty hard," Szypula said. "I was trying to prove the point that we were tough, too.
"One of the funniest things was when Bubba Smith was in class. I was doing some bookwork and there he was bouncing on the trampoline. I said, `Get off, you're going to kill yourself and Duffy's going to kill me.' And he jumped off through the air, which I didn't like because it was dangerous, and he landed on a mat and threw his arms out like a gymnast.
"I said, `Bubba, you're crazy.' He said, `No I'm not, I'm from Texas. My dad was a football coach and he also taught trampoline, and I'm great.' He always said he was great."
Szypula is now a member of five Halls of Fame, having previously gained induction in the U.S. Gymnastics Hall of Fame, the Temple University Hall of Fame, the East Lansing High School Hall of Fame and the National Polish-American Sports Hall of Fame.
And, he's still doing routines.
"When people at church say, `George, are you still tumbling?' I say, `Yeah, in the garden, but I don't plan it,'" he said.
Players Mentioned
