Wiseman is impressed his Midgets accomplished so much despite having so little
BY DEAN CRIDDLE
Wayne Wiseman hasn’t blown a whistle or raked a long jump pit for almost three years. But the longtime Freeburg High School cross country and track and field coach hasn’t been forgotten.
Anything but.
Wiseman received the ultimate honor on Jan. 9, when he was inducted into the Illinois Track and Cross Country Coaches Association Hall of Fame.
Wiseman, who retired from coaching and teaching in 2007 after 32 years at Freeburg High School, was one of seven coaches inducted into the Hall of Fame during the annual ITCCCA Clinic at Oak Park High School.
“It’s a terrific honor,” said Wiseman, 59. “But I just happen to represent all those kids, the coaches and the school. If my good friend Gary (Henning) hadn’t gotten sick in 1988, he would have been the man going into the Hall of Fame.
“I just happened to be in the right place at the right time.”
There were 115 nominees for the class of 2010. Criteria included at least 20 years of service and solid character.
“There must have been 250-300 people at the banquet,” Wiseman said. “It was really nice. I kept looking around and was thinking that this is strange. I mean, what’s a Southern Illinois boy doing up here with all these big boys.
“But I when I looked at my bio compared to some of the other people, I thought, well, maybe we do belong up here and so do some others that I know. Guys like former Wesclin coach Keith Hall; he should be up here. And Mark North at Sparta deserves to be up here in the future.”
Remarkable record
With Wiseman serving as head track and field coach for 17 years, Freeburg won 17 straight boys Cahokia Conference championships and 16 of 17 in girls.
The Midgets also were among the top small school cross country programs in Southern Illinois.
Wiseman was the Midgets cross country coach for 32 years. The Midgets earned statewide recognition when Wiseman guided his 2003 and 2004 girls track teams to back-to-back state titles.
Widely accepted as the greatest Class A girls team in state history, the 2003 Midgets shattered the state record with 86 1/2 points on their way to the state championship.
In 2004, Freeburg won it again with 76 points. In 2005 Freeburg placed third.
“People up there were still talking about the ’03 team. We scored in every field event, with Megan Alberts winning the shot put,” Wiseman said. “We placed in the low hurdles, we placed in the medley relay, Allison (Alberts) won the 800 meters and Bubba (Brenda) Whitworth won the 400 and Katie Weber was third. And we were the first Class A school to run under four minutes in the 1,600-meter relay.
“That team was loaded. I didn’t tell the girls this, but I knew after the prelims on Friday that there wasn’t anyway anybody was going to beat us simply because of the number of entries and the high-caliber athletes we had in the finals. The second year, we were dynamite as well. Things just didn’t go quite as well.”
Whitworth, a two-time winner of the Class A 400 meters state title, said Wiseman was a motivator and knew the right buttons to push to ignite the Midgets’ powerful track machine.
“Coach Wiseman was fair but he could also be tough when he needed to be,” Whitworth said. “If you didn’t have a good practice or didn’t perform maybe as well as he thought you should at a meet, he would let you know about it the next day at practice.
“What made him such a good coach is that he had a knack of knowing where each athlete’s best events were. Of course, we had a lot of very good athletes during that three- or four-year span and that helped. But he knew what events to put each athlete in.”
Wiseman also had his share of outstanding boys who excelled at the state level. Greg Hill owned the Class A state track meet record for the 1,600 meters for 25 years, Jon Reagan won back to back state titles in the high jump in 2003-04 and Neal Trentman won three medals at the 1990 state meet.
All in all, Wiseman-led athletes won 64 state medals, including 11 state championship medals. Freeburg also won 12 sectional track and field championships.
Fond memories
Wiseman was joined at the Hall of Fame banquet by his wife, Debbie, and friends Gary and Tami Henning.
During his acceptance speech, Wiseman talked about his days at Freeburg with fond memories.
“I talked about the facilities at Freeburg. You walk into Oak Park and they’ve got two or three gyms and an indoor track,” Wiseman said. “At Freeburg, we’re still running on asphalt. If you had a home track meet, you had to drag it,and if you had a cross country meet, you had to cut the grass. That made me feel even better because we were able to accomplish so much with so little.”
The Wisemans now live near Nashville, where Wayne spends time traveling, fishing and playing golf. The Wiseman’s have two sons, Brian and Roy.
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