Alma Mater

Dave Lombardi, a 10th grader at Phoenixville High School, admires the two Super Bowl rings won and worn by Neal Olkewicz of the Washington Redskins. Olkewicz, 31, a middle linebacker who has been with the Redskins since 1979, is a Phoenixville graduate. He spoke to students at his alma mater at a special program March 12. He will receive a third ring - for the Redskins' lastest Super Bowl victory in January.

When Cheltenham High School graduate Wallace "Wally" Triplett became the first black athlete to be drafted and play in the National Football League, making history was the last thing on his mind. He wanted the paycheck. "My dad said, 'Boy, sign that [contract],' " Triplett, 85, said. The then-22-year-old boarded a train in Philadelphia to begin playing for the Detroit Lions against a 1940s backdrop of racism and Jim Crow laws. Triplett made $4,800 in the year he became one of the first to integrate pro football.

Fans didn't know what to expect when Kevin Givens was named Academy of the New Church basketball coach in 1997. Eleven seasons later, Givens has turned his alma mater into one of the East Coast's premier programs. The Lions (7-1) are ranked second in Southeastern Pennsylvania by The Inquirer. They also are the 10th-best team in the East region, according to USA Today. That wasn't always the case. "There were some long nights," Givens said of the early days. "It was frustrating because you had some guys who just liked playing basketball.

It may have seemed a little like the early 1980s to John Oates, one half of the pop-soul duo Hall and Oates. There was an excited audience in the dark waving flickers of light. There were yells and screams as Oates sang "Sara Smile" and one fan asked the singer to autograph a body part. But yesterday, Oates was visiting North Penn High School, his alma mater. The audience wasn't made up of peers, but of students born long after Oates' biggest hits. The flickers in the dark weren't lighters; they were cell phone cameras.

Bishop Eustace Prep has named alumnus Bob Falconiero as its new boys' basketball coach. He will replace Marty Bricketto, who resigned earlier this year. Falconiero, a 1976 graduate, is a member of the school's athletic Hall of Fame. He played on three state championship teams and scored more than 1,000 points in his career. Falconiero starred in college at Lafayette, where he was named an academic all-American and earned a spot in the school's Hall of Fame. "It's a thrill and an honor to return to my alma mater as basketball coach," Falconiero said.

Reggie Lawrence said it was strange. But it was familiar, too. There was Lawrence, on the sideline in another playoff game, watching his team take another step toward another sectional title. The weird part for Lawrence, Willingboro's well-traveled and much-accomplished coach, was the team on the other side of the field. It was the first time he had coached against Camden, his alma mater. There was something special about the other head coach, too. "We used to walk to school together every day," Lawrence said of Camden coach Durwin Pearson.

It was that time of year. Not the mad rush for the holidays, but time for parents to begin the campaign to find the perfect school for their child. My son and I set out for our journey to Blacksburg, Va., to the one and only Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University - Virginia Tech. Here I was taking my son on the same trek to my alma mater that I had made 29 years earlier. For my son, this would be his initiation into adulthood. Just as my life had begun an exciting transformation on that campus, now my son will have his opportunity in June 2012 when he enters Virginia Tech as a transfer student from Gloucester County College.

Dave Rauer, who wasn't rehired as the Eastern girls' soccer coach because the school wanted someone who taught at the high school, didn't stay out of coaching long. Rauer was named this week as the new girls' soccer coach at Sterling, his alma mater. The Inquirer's coach of the year in 1997, he went 143-103-14 in 14 years at Eastern. "The fact that I attended Sterling had something to do with me getting back in coaching," said Rauer, a 1970 Sterling graduate who will remain a history teacher at C. W. Lewis Middle School in Gloucester Township.

Township Commissioner Joseph P. Possenti Jr., past president of the Penn-Delco school board, is ready to take on a new role as Sun Valley High School's head football coach. The Penn-Delco board is expected to approve the move this month. But Possenti is already talking with players at his alma mater in anticipation of next week's preseason football camp. Possenti, 32, a 1983 graduate of Sun Valley, would replace Rick Stroup, who resigned last month. Stroup, who was named head coach in 1994, previously coached linebackers at West Chester University.

Ed Pinckney, the newest assistant basketball coach at Villanova, said he wasn't necessarily looking to get into college coaching. "It was more this specific job," Pinckney said yesterday after being named formally to Jay Wright's staff. "It was something special that I couldn't pass up. If it was maybe another school, I probably would not have considered it at all. " The outstanding player of the 1985 Final Four was with his new boss yesterday at a golf outing hosted by another Villanova alum, Howie Long.

THE FAN in the black jacket sitting in the first row behind the Illinois State bench was displaying admirable restraint. The fan was Sixers coach Doug Collins, an Illinois State graduate. "Obviously I'm an Illinois State alumnus, but Philadelphia is my home now," a smiling Collins said at halftime of Thursday night's game at Drexel. Collins is Illinois State's most illustrious basketball player. He was the Sixers' first-round draft choice in 1973. Illinois State's home court is named after Collins and his No. 20 is retired.

The college basketball season gets under way Friday with a game at a Europe military base, two more aboard Navy ships, and another featuring a reshaped national champion playing in a brand new building. No. 14 Michigan State plays Connecticut, in its first game since the retirement of coach Jim Calhoun, at Ramstein Air Base in Kaiserslautern, Germany. It's the first game between Division I teams held in Europe. Then it's on to the decks for No. 4 Ohio State against Marquette on the USS Yorktown in Charleston, S.C., and Georgetown facing No. 10 Florida on the USS Bataan in Jacksonville, Fla. No. 3 Kentucky, the defending national champion with a heralded freshman class, plays Maryland in the first college doubleheader at the new Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y. Also, one of the sport's shrines reopens.

Leon Paul Weiss, 87, of Merion, former chairman of the department of animal biology at the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, died Tuesday, Oct. 16, at home surrounded by his wife and children. He had been in ill health and died of pneumonia. Dr. Weiss was a medical doctor who spent his career in research, teaching, and writing, focusing his work on cells and tissues of the immune system and the hematopoietic organs, which produce blood. After serving in the Army Medical Corps, Dr. Weiss taught at the medical schools at Harvard and Johns Hopkins Universities.

THERE'S an interesting idea at the heart of the locally shot "Backwards": What happens when a person falls short of something she's trained for her entire life? Unfortunately, this nugget of an idea is drowned out by a saccharine-sweet romantic comedy mixed with a "Hoosiers"-plus-crew subplot. Abi (writer Sarah Megan Thomas) is a rower on the U.S. Olympic team. We meet her just as she has been relegated to alternate for the second time. She freaks, throws down her oars and quits, leaving her listless at her mother's suburban Philly home.

VILLANOVA GUARD Tony Chennault has been granted a hardship waiver by the NCAA and will be eligible to play for Villanova this season. Chennault decided to transfer from Wake Forest this spring so he could be near his family in Philadelphia. He will have 2 years of eligibility. "The Chennault family has been dealing with so much this year," Wildcats coach Jay Wright said in a statement. "Tony's mom has faced health issues and his brother, Mike Jay, died tragically earlier this month.

After five seasons as boys' basketball coach at Friends' Central School, Jason Polykoff is leaving to become an assistant at Penn. "In the last couple of years, I've been thinking about making coaching a full-time gig," he said. "While it's tough to leave Friends' Central, which has been like a second home for me my whole life, this is something I'm really excited about. " Polykoff, 28, went 113-28 (.801 winning percentage), won two Friends Schools League championships (2010 and 2011)

PITTSBURGH - West Virginia took a 75-mile bus ride to town. Gonzaga flew more than 2,200 miles. Many said it wasn't fair that the No. 7 seed had to travel so far to play No. 10, barely an hour from its campus, at the Consol Energy Center. They were all right. It wasn't fair. Gonzaga jumped West Virginia midway through the first half last night and never let up, blowing the Mountaineers out of the Big East to the Big 12 with a sendoff that only a Pittsburgh fan could love.

It was that time of year. Not the mad rush for the holidays, but time for parents to begin the campaign to find the perfect school for their child. My son and I set out for our journey to Blacksburg, Va., to the one and only Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University - Virginia Tech. Here I was taking my son on the same trek to my alma mater that I had made 29 years earlier. For my son, this would be his initiation into adulthood. Just as my life had begun an exciting transformation on that campus, now my son will have his opportunity in June 2012 when he enters Virginia Tech as a transfer student from Gloucester County College.

AS I PULLED into the West Philadelphia Catholic High School parking lot, at 45th and Chestnut Street, I feared for the worst. I experienced many feelings: happiness to be back on the grounds of my beloved alma mater and excitement to see the staff that helped mold me into the young woman I am today. However, I also felt the sorrow of what was on the horizon - that the high school I graduated from two years ago would learn that its days were numbered. West Catholic was an experience for me, as it was for the thousands of alumni who have walked the halls of both the current building, on 45th Street, and the old West Catholic Boys' school, formerly on 49th Street.

Like many of his classmates, Eric Rutherford knew of West Catholic High's fate before administrators made an official announcement during Friday's assembly. "I could just tell," said the junior, a 6-foot, 291-pound defensive lineman on the football team. "I never saw the teachers that emotional before. You could tell it wasn't going to be good news. " As had been rumored, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia on Friday disclosed plans to close West Catholic, a longtime fixture at 45th and Chestnut Streets, in June.