Wake Forest Athletics News
100% Cotton - Moving On June 10, 2004 If golf had a draft, outgoing Demon Deacon Bill Haas would be the number one pick. Haas closed out his remarkable Wake Forest career with a second place finish at the NCAA Championships in Hot Springs, Virginia. Since his graduation last month, Haas has been named first team All-America and received both the Jack Nicklaus Award and the Ben Hogan Award - each representing the nation's top collegiate golfer. Along the way, the nephew of head coach Jery Haas and son of former Deacon and current 50-year-old-thorn-in-the-side-of-the-PGA-young guns Jay Haas set an NCAA record for stroke average and a new Wake Forest standard with ten individual titles. Bill is and will continue to be one of the finest representatives Wake Forest University will ever have. He's class. And not because he makes golf look so easy. He's humble and checks his ego before competing, speaking, being. His parents and coach can take a lot of credit for that. But so can he. He's not a kid anymore. Nor a member of the Wake Forest golf team. But he will always be a Deacon. A tip of the cap to George Greer who ended a 17-year career as head baseball coach recently by announcing that he had accepted a position with the athletic department's development staff. George won three ACC titles in his tenure and about as many games as estimated batting practice pitches in his career - which is in the neighborhood of 1.5 million. That's according to former Wake Forest star baseballer and mathematician Billy Masse. The soft-spoken Greer steps aside as the winningest coach at Wake Forest in any sport. Greer cited "the opportunity to stay at Wake Forest" as a major factor in making the move out of the dugout. And for those you out there contemplating a gift of some kind to the Demon Deacon athletic department, don't be surprised if Greer soon knocks at your door and waves you around third toward home. Thanks for all of your years, Coach Greer. Giant earth and turf movers have scorched the landscape outside the windows of the Mark C. Pruitt Football Center on campus. Workers are in the early stages of completely redoing the football practice fields and making way for two new bermuda grass fields and one covered with the latest in grass-like artificial turf. Progress. Ron Wellman and Jim Grobe continue their effort to raise the standards and facilities of the football program so the Deacs can better compete with ACC and national opponents. It will be continually exciting to see this trend move its way toward Groves Stadium over the years to upgrade that facility which has tremendous potential at its current location. Wake Forest will never have the biggest football stadium. It doesn't need it. But a spruced up, packed Groves Stadium will help the Deacons gain an advantage they deserve. As we pack our bags and move out into a summer break, I must admit that I'm still disappointed that Smarty Jones wasn't able to win horse racing's Triple Crown. He was the favorite and the underdog at the same time. He became more of the former and less of the latter with each race he won, and after longshot Birdstone ran down the rags-to-riches chestnut colt to steal the Belmont, I was reminded why sport of any kind is so intoxicating to most of us. You have to run the race no matter the odds. Here's to the race. See you in the fall on the radio. |