EDITOR’S NOTE: St. Joseph-Ogden will induct five new members into its Hall of Fame on Sept. 15, 2023 at halftime of the school’s homecoming football game against Chillicothe IVC. The new inductees are Brian Allen (Class of 1993), Jerry Hewerdine (teacher and coach), Marvin Lee Flessner (Class of 1951), Susan Pensinger (teacher and coach) and Randy Wolken (Class of 1968). Today’s profile: Randy Wolken.
By FRED KRONER
Life is filled with “what it’s.”
There are choices we didn’t make.
There are decisions we’re glad we made.
In retrospect, it’s almost always easy to see the solution to a problem that was troubling at the moment.
It’s when we can reflect that we can say ‘Wow,’ either in a positive or a negative tone.
Imagine, however, if just one decision was different at a pivotal point in your life.
Years later, you were not:
–the winningest high school softball coach in state history;
–the coach of teams that won 35 regional championships in a 39-year span;
–the coach who directed 31 consecutive teams to 20-win seasons;
–the coach who had a field named in his honor.
St. Joseph-Ogden’s Randy Wolken doesn’t have to imagine any of these scenarios. They are all a factual part of his coaching past with the Spartans.
And yet, he was oh-so-close to missing out on these magnanimous accomplishments.
In the summer of 1979, Wolken interviewed for vacant positions teaching English and coaching boys’ basketball at SJ-O.
He had an idea in advance that he had an edge over many of the candidates.
“Supposedly 50 people applied for the basketball job, but not that many could teach math,” Wolken said.
Bob Yeazel, who was then the high school principal, spearheaded the search committee.
“He said, ‘We’re tying the softball (coaching) job to basketball,” Wolken recalled. “I told him I had never coached girls.”
Yeazel was ready to conclude the interview.
“He said, ‘so you don’t want to apply for the job,’” Wolken continued, “and I said, “oh no, I do.’”
Wolken, who was 28 years old, was already formulating a plan as he prepared to become the first softball coach in SJ-O history.
“I thought I would get out (of softball) after a couple of years,” he said, “and he would be happy (that the program was up and running).”
When that self-imposed two-year period arrived and the 1980-81 school year ended, Wolken talked it over with his wife, Lana.
“It didn’t overlap (with basketball) and I told her I kind of liked it,” he said. “The girls were so much different.
“They listened and wanted to do things the right way.”
He made the decision to stay with the softball team.
“I used a lot of knowledge I learned in baseball as far as relays and cutoffs,” Wolken said.
The school district made a decision of its own before the third SJ-O softball season began.
The softball team, which played an abbreviated seven-game schedule during the fall in Wolken’s second year as coach (compiling a 4-3 record), would play a spring schedule in order to be able to compete in the IHSA post-season tournament series.
The 1981-82 Spartan team captured an unlikely regional championship in its first year of eligibility. Seeded ninth in a 16-school field, SJ-O won four games, thus starting a streak of regional crowns that extended past the three-decade mark.
“We won the first 72 regional games we played,” Wolken noted.
In its fourth year of spring participation (1984-85), Wolken directed the team to the first of nine state-finals appearances. In its eighth year of spring participation (1988-89), SJ-O captured the first of six state trophies, placing fourth while totaling 31 wins.
While softball was emerging as a perennial state power at the school, the SJ-O boys’ basketball team was building a winning tradition.
Under Wolken’s guidance, the Spartans had 18 seasons of records that were .500, or better, in his 23 years on the sidelines, nine 20-win seasons, six regional championship seasons and five holiday tournament titles.
He is also the school’s all-time winningest coach in boys’ basketball, compiling an overall record of 405-231.
His exploits as a coach – as well as his exploits as a four-sport letterman who accumulated 11 varsity letters at SJ-O – are the reasons Wolken will be one of five inductees into the SJ-O Hall of Fame at halftime of the school’s homecoming football game on Friday (Sept. 15).
“It will be very emotional for me,” Wolken said. “It is such a great honor.”
Wolken is already a member of the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame (2002) along with the Illinois Coaches Association Hall of Fame for softball (2004).
Former Spartan players said one key to Wolken’s softball success was his innovative abilities.
“He was an early adapter to a lot of things that were to come in softball,” said 1991 graduate Amy Scharlau Lewis. “The left-handers (converted from hitting right-handed), the slapping and bunting game were fairly new.
“He was thinking outside the box and got that into the (SJ-O) system. He was not specifically set in his ways. It was, ‘How can we be better?’”
Wolken didn’t require – but encouraged – talented young players to bat left-handed to give them an extra step on their start while heading to first base.
“I switched a lot over (to the left side) that had speed and skill,” he said. “If the parents were against it, I wouldn’t do it.”
Andrea Coursey (Jones), who graduated in 2017 with a state record for career runs batted in (244), said her former coach was able to walk a difficult line.
“He pushed us and he challenged us, but he made softball fun,” Coursey Jones said. “We looked forward to practices and to the games.
“He celebrates you if you win, but is never satisfied and keeps pushing you. He got the best out of his players. I wouldn’t have played at Illinois State without him.”
Short-term success for coaches can occur when a talented group of athletes attend at the same time. Long-term success only happens when all the building blocks are in place.
Wolken knew exactly where to start.
“The key in softball is to have great pitching,” he said. “If you just pitch during the season, you won’t be a very good pitcher.
“You have to develop pitchers in the winter.”
For years, he brought pitchers into the gymnasium at the same time he was conducting practice with the boys’ basketball team.
“He built a little mound and had it all measured out (to simulate throwing in an actual game),” said Scharlau Lewis, an infielder who took her turn catching pitchers in the winter.
“We had three pitchers and one permanent catcher, so I caught the pitchers a couple days a week,” she added.
In-season, Wolken tried to leave no stone unturned.
“We worked a lot on fundamentals,” Wolken said. “We worked on base running and sliding almost every night, sliding away from the bag, how to round the bag (after a hit) and on defense.”
He prepared in advance.
“He was very focused,” Scharlau Lewis said. “He came in with a written plan for practice every day. He had a lot of energy.”
When Wolken’s players stepped into the batter’s box during practice, there was one requirement.
“Everyone had to be able to bunt,” Wolken said. “You have to practice it to do it. One of the main things we did was work on bunting.”
Wolken was able to successfully maintain the balance of working with boys for three months and then spending the next three months coaching girls.
“There’s a distinct difference,” he said. “Boys, if they get mad, they have it out right there and get it settled.
“With girls, it’s more behind the scenes and that used to drive me crazy. You have to be a little careful how you chew the girls out.”
Scharlau Lewis saw both sides.
“He was very aware of the differences in coaching boys and girls,” Scharlau Lewis said. “I kept stats for boys’ basketball, and he was willing to (verbally) go after boys.
“He had a gentler approach with the girls. He wasn’t afraid to give praise. If correction was needed, he did that, too, but he always tried to be constructive.”
There are three dates that stand out from Wolken’s softball coaching tenure.
The first was June 3, 2006, when SJ-O edged Casey-Westfield, 1-0, in the Class 2A state championship game. It was Wolken’s lone state championship team.
The only run scored in the fourth inning when Jessica Redden’s single knocked in Sarah Thompson. Right-hander Morgan Finn fired a five-hitter and made the margin hold up. She struck out eight for a 31-6 Spartan team. The outcome at East Peoria was official at 8:43 p.m.
On April 26, 2014, the SJ-O softball field was dedicated as Randy Wolken Field. That same Saturday, the Spartans swept a doubleheader from Momence.
It’s not likely he will forget that date.
“It was the day after my birthday,” he said.
Almost exactly three years later, Wolken recorded the 1,000th softball win of his storied career, a 17-0 triumph over St. Thomas More on Thursday, April 27, 2017.
By next spring, Randy Wolken Field will be relocated from its former location several hundreds to the west, where the baseball team played its home games until 2022.
The new softball field will have turf and will be bigger. The distance to the outfield fence will be 200 feet as opposed to 190 at the former location.
“I liked our old field, but with the turf, it’s progress,” Wolken said.
Besides his state championship squad, two other teams stood out.
“All nine starters on the 2012 team had (college) scholarships,” Wolken said. “Four were Division I.”
The 2018 team, Wolken’s final one as a prep coach, also had four Division I players in the lineup.
While Wolken had plans for many aspects of softball, there was one where he was not so firm.
In 2018, it came to him that it was time to step aside, ending his tenure as the school’s only softball head coach during the first 39 years the sport was offered at the Champaign County high school.
“I was wondering how I would decide,” Wolken said. “I just had that feeling that it was my time.
“Lana talked to me and said I needed to get an even 40 (years as coach), but I don’t regret it.
“I like watching – I go to three or four games a year – and don’t miss the coaching.”
At the high school level, there’s a changeover of players every four years, if not sooner. Wolken had a variety of assistant coaches as well, but four were dedicated long-term staff members: Aaron Allen, Bob Biehl, Dave Richmond and Leonard Winchester.
“The success was due to him and the staff he kept with him,” Coursey Jones said. “It was an honor and a privilege to play for one of the greatest coaches in the state.
“Once you start playing for him, he made you feel welcome. You feel like a team, not seniors versus freshmen.”
Wolken’s coaching prowess made his SJ-O HAll of Fame selection a no-brainer in the fifth year after his retirement. His credentials as an athlete at SJ-O could have qualified him as well.
Wolken, a 1968 SJ-O graduate, was a three-year letterman in football, basketball and baseball as well as a two-year letterman in track as a sprinter in his freshman and sophomore seasons.
“Football was my favorite sport in high school,” said Wolken, a quarterback who not only earned All-Area laurels but also landed a spot on the Chicago Daily News Little All-State team.
“We ran the option and I could read defenses fairly well,” Wolken said. “A lot of my success in high school was due to my quickness and working hard.
“I tried to do all of the little things.”
He was given the opportunity to try out at Eastern Illinois University as a football walk-on, but declined.
“With my size, 130 pounds, I knew that was probably not a good idea,” Wolken said.
Just months after graduating from EIU, Wolken started a four-year stint teaching mathematics and coaching three sports (baseball, basketball and track) at Gifford Grade School.
That was followed by a three-year stopover at Armstrong, where he again taught math, and was the boys’ basketball coach. After serving as an assistant for one year, he was the head coach for two years.
“My job,” he said, “was to coach the freshmen, sophomore, JV and varsity. One year, I coached 65 games.”
The school’s former head coach, Bob Bezely, agreed to help at practice, but did not want to coach in the games.
“It’s a good thing I was young,” said Wolken, who was 26 when he earned his first head coaching assignment.
He knew his calling early in life.
“In eighth grade, I wanted to coach,” he said. “I didn’t know what sport, but I knew that to coach, I had to teach.
“I love sports, and love working with other people and teammates.”
Beyond the wins and losses, the championships and the near-misses, Wolken hopes his former players carry one other memory with them.
“I hope they enjoyed themselves, enjoyed the full experience,” he said. “It should not be like a job.”
Just a job well done. And, without any “what ifs.”
