Rockhurst Centennial

I got to take in some of the festivities on Friday night for the Centennial celebration. First, the Helzberg School had an open house and honored Marian Nigro, who was the administrator for our Executive Fellows program for many years. Dozens of Fellows alumni have fond memories of Marian and she certainly left her stamp on the program. Memorabilia -- mostly collected and saved by her -- were laid out for the open house. The most memorable were the caricatures drawn for each class -- each alum would find their drawing in the class picture that was displayed. God bless Marian who passed away earlier this year.

Also walked the grounds with my youngest children and then took in the volleyball match. The volleyball was great entertainment and Rockhurst won 3 straight games for the match. As we walked to our car we took in a snippet of the soccer game taking place right in the middle of all the hub-bub of the evening -- a great venue. The team managed a tie and Coach Tocco was honored at a reception right afterwards.

Here is the interesting thing: Coach Tocco was back at school at 7:45 a.m. the next morning, to teach his Accounting class. This after a long game that went overtime and reception that went right up to midnight. And even though he probably wanted more sleep, he would say he loved to do both things. Besides having student-athletes at a smaller school like Rockhurst, we have coach-academics who do well in both areas. Not bad at all.