Ten Questions: Gary Black, Hall of Honor Member

1.   What song immediately brings back memories of Penn State?

2.   Who was the biggest team clown during your track years?

3.   What was your best PSU Track or XC performance?

4.   What is your best Coach Groves memory?

5.   What was your favorite haunt/watering hole in State College back in the day?

6.   What was your least favorite workout? 

7.   What was the best place you lived while at PSU?

8.   What is your most embarrassing moment while attending Penn State?

9.   What exercising do you currently do?

10. What was the best home football game you attended? 

1.     1.   Rock lobster.  Played at every major track/x-c party for my freshman through first Sr. year, but usually not until everyone was in the “proper frame of mind”.

2.      2. Team clown……….hmm, weren’t we all?  Hard to single one out, but Close & Chumley& Steve Black, or Ted Lyon & Ricky Garcia come to mind as best groups.

3.      3.  My best performance at PSU?  I think my imitation of a distance runner over a six year period should have earned me an Oscar.  To quote Churchill (sort of), “never has one person with so little done even less for almost no one”.

4.       4. Best Coach memory suitable for public airwaves:  A few of us were standing around, talking with Coach  before a workout at the track, when Ricky Garcia walked up.  Due to some perceived transgression, Coach whipped out a starter’s pistol and shot Ricky.  We all jumped about 10 feet in the air, and then proceeded to double over in laughter.

5.      5.   Favorite watering hole always depended on the night and the special.  Bucket or case of rocks at the Skellar, 7 beers/buck at the Saloon come to mind.  Actually, I’m surprised ANYTHING comes to mind.

6.       6.  Least favorite workout was the 10 quarter repeats we did every Monday outdoors my freshman year.  And just in case Snyder, Wyatt, Rapp, and Scharsu were having an off day and not hitting every one under 55, Mangan was always there to make sure the last 2 went in sub 46. (or so it seemed at the time to those of us left to contemplate how to untie our shoes without touching the cookies we’d just tossed).

7.       7..  Best place I lived was my second Sr. year, when I lived at home and, because my family had moved (I received a Christmas card several years later, explaining why they had left and where I could find them), I had the place to myself.  I mean a whole house for free!!!  Life has only gone downhill since then.

8.       8. Ok, there were an awful lot of them, but one of the worst had to be my freshman year, at an indoor meet at Lehigh.  Turns out I had forgotten my running shoes (some trick, because I probably owned nothing but running shoes back then) and had to warm up and down, in hiding, in my leather dress shoes, so that Coach wouldn’t see me and invent a new word for f@*kup that would have made even him blush.

9.       9.  I do not exercise anymore, but instead have chosen a transcendentally meditative lifestyle.  I have been assured that, on my death bed, I will receive total consciousness.  So I  got that going for me, which is nice…..

10.   10.  PSU vs. Pitt, 1973.  PSU Senior running back John Cappelletti vs. Pitt Freshman. running back Tony Dorsett.  PSU won, and Dorsett put on a good show.