Traveling Well
WM followed the Wabash football team to Albion to discover the secret behind the Little Giants’ unusually large and loyal following on the road.
With four minutes left in the Wabash football season opener at Albion’s Sprankle-Sprandel Stadium, the game was slipping away from the Little Giants.
The Britons had blocked a punt in the third quarter and cut the Wabash advantage to three points, then intercepted a pass in the fourth to take the lead.
The Wabash defense was decimated by injuries. Albion had seized the momentum. The home crowd sensed victory—they were celebrating like the game was theirs.
Offensive Line Coach Olmy Olmstead paced the Wabash sidelines, pausing every few steps to turn to his players.
“We can win this game,” he said, looking each young man in the eye as if he could sear belief into their souls.
Some weren’t so optimistic.
“Let’s face it,” a friend more knowledgeable than me about football said as we stood behind the Wabash bench and several exhausted, frustrated players. “The outcome of this game is a foregone conclusion.”
The Wabash fans were still in the game, hollering encouragement and intermittent chants of “Wabash Always Fights.” But they looked nervous, too—several sets of downs had passed since they’d had much to cheer for. It looked like the first game of new head coach Don Morel’s era would end in a loss.
I thought of what Tom Runge ’71 had said at the tailgating a few hours earlier, that “Wabash fans are going to be there til the bitter end, win or lose, because Wabash always fights.”
“They never give up, so we don’t ever give up,” Sherry Ross promised.
Rem Johnston ’55, who has backed Wabash teams for more than 50 years, had said regardless of the circumstances, “we expect to win. We always expect to win.”
Little Giant defensive back Henry Webberhunt ’18 told us, “We know what we have to do, and somehow we get it done.”
Win or lose, the next four minutes would test everything we’d heard before the game from the players and the fans.
Did they still believe?
With four minutes to go, I wasn’t sure.
two hours before kickoff—Wabash fans are tailgating.
Cars, pickups, and vans with Wabash license plates have backed around the perimeter of the lawn at Albion’s Bellemont Manor like a herd of musk oxen in a circle defense. It’s a beautiful late-summer day. Two women in white Wabash jerseys and shorts play corn hole with a couple of guys, a grandfather and son toss a football back and forth, and a white-faced golden retriever wearing a Wabash hat takes it all in from the shade. Hugs and handshakes are plentiful as men and women wearing Wabash red shirts of varying styles and colors wander between tables loaded with fruit, pasta, buns, chips, and Carol Runge’s famous Carolina barbeque. The place smells like a backyard cookout as grills sizzle with hot dogs, brats, chicken, and hamburgers.
The more experienced tailgaters set up canopies with red Wabash flags attached, set out coolers, and turn up the music.
This first game of the season is a reunion.
“I love how at these tailgates we see all these friends we’ve made over the years,” says Kathy Buresh. She and her husband, Bob, have sent four sons to Wabash and have traveled with the team for nearly a decade. “You really go through withdrawal at the end of the season, and you can’t wait for the first scrimmage so you get to see all of your friends again.”
“We’ve been coming to games since the early 1980s,” says Sherry Ross, administrative assistant to the Dean of Students since 2000. “It’s like a family coming together. It’s such a good group of people who love Wabash.”
Her husband, Gary, explains why he and Sherry attended games long before she worked at the College: “I can’t imagine anyone not falling in love with Wabash football. You can approach our players; you can approach our coaches. We get to know families and alums. There is no better place to be on a Saturday afternoon than at a Wabash game.”
“There is an intimacy about this,” says former Dean of Students and Athletic Director Tom Bambrey ’68. “I think that reflects Wabash’s sense of community, that strong sense that we are all in this together, that our current students deserve our support.
“When it comes time to play an away game, our players and coaches look out at our stands and see all these people. It’s crucial, and it’s a tradition that’s been here for generations.”
“Our opponents know that we travel very well,” says Cal Black ’66, a retired FBI agent who grew up around Wabash, where his father was director of admissions. “They’ll even comment that we usually bring a crowd that is as big or bigger than the home crowds. That’s a lot of incentive to come and support the team.”
Enough incentive for Mike German ’74 to fly in from San Diego for the game: “Wabash football gives guys who might not have an opportunity to play elsewhere the chance not just to play, but to do well. These guys are not just good players; they are academically superior. That’s the Renaissance man… mens sana in corpore sano [a sound mind in a sound body].”
Chemistry Professor Laura Wysocki wears a Wabash jersey with “Olmstead” printed on the back—she and the Wabash O-line coach were married this summer. But she traveled to away games long before she’d met her future husband.
“Road games give me some time away and the chance to support students doing what they really enjoy,” she says. “The passion they show on the field is a reflection of their hard work, preparation, and their dedication. I see that in the classroom all the time, but seeing it on the field sort of completes the whole person. It feels really good to be here, to support them in that.”
“Support” means the crowd has the team’s back, win or lose. In fact, one of Bambrey’s most memorable moments was a loss to the eventual 2007 national champions.
“It was a playoff game at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, a game in which we were beaten badly. But our kids played hard in about 20 degrees and a violent snowstorm that went on for the entire game. When I walked on to the field after the game to congratulate our coaches and our student-athletes on the caliber of their play throughout the season, I was amazed at how bad the field conditions really were. Talk about Wabash Always Fights.”
Scott Olmstead, Coach Olmstead’s father, remembers a game at Allegheny shortly after the 9/11 attacks, back when Olmy was a kicker for the Little Giants.
“At the start of the game the announcer said, ‘Please rise for the National Anthem,’ but they couldn’t get the recording to play. After what felt like a few minutes of silence, the Wabash fans started singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Then the Allegheny fans joined in. Afterward, the P.A. announcer thanked the Wabash fans. I thought, That’s just like Wabash—they found a way to get it done.”
Scott also recalls a tough loss in the play-offs, this one to eventual national champs Mount Union in 2002.
“Our fans stayed and cheered each kid as he left the field. I heard a Mount Union player say, ‘I wish we had fans like that.’”
“You are never alone—we travel as a group really well,” says Lon Fox, father of junior kicker and psychology major Derek Fox. Lon brings his boat for the weekend to get in some fishing on Sunday, but he’s all-in for the game. “Derek’s not just a football player, but a student at Wabash. He’s part of a brotherhood that’s very significant and life changing. To be involved in that journey with him is awesome.”
“At Wabash, we talk a lot about resilience,” says President Gregory Hess. “Being able to play at home with everybody cheering for you is one thing, but when playing away, our guys connect in ways that strengthen the inner core of the team. I think they get better the more they play on the road—it forces them to rely even more on each other.”
Scott Olmstead thinks he knows the secret to what makes the Little Giants’ road games unique: “I don’t think it’s Wabash football; I think it’s Wabash College.”
“’Wabash Always Fights’ means so much more than sports,” says Jay Fischer ’65 who has recruited students for the College, including current players and some of the alumni cheering them on from the stands. “It is the mantra of Wabash. It means you give your complete attention, full effort, reach down deep to accomplish the best beyond what your best might be.”
“My sons have learned that if you work hard and you put dedication into what you do, you can be successful, and that plays into life and career and family,” says Bob Buresh, wearing the #28 Wabash jersey of his son, Ethan. Kathy sums up the transformation she’s seen in her sons: “They are real men.”
“He came in as a young man and he’s grown into a complete man,” says Melanie Adams, mother of senior tight end Sammy Adams. “He cares about his teammates. He cares about his teachers and fellow students.”
Webberhunt enjoys road games because they give him the chance “to relax, ease my mind, and get out of the stress that is Wabash.
“I always look at the stands to see who’s there from my family—it’s my one chance during the week to see them. It’s great to know that, no matter wherever we go, there is going to be Wabash scarlet on our sideline cheering for us.”
Working in the Dean’s office gives Sherry Ross a close-up perspective on the players: “I get to know them personally and know what kind of character they have, to see how hard they fight out on the field, how hard they work in the classroom.
“I’ll put our Wabash guys above any we play.”
With 3:38 left in the fourth and the Little Giant fans were on their feet yelling “Wabash Always Fights,” the offense started to click. Senior quarterback Connor Rice connected with Oliver Page ’19 on a 17-yard pass that kept hopes alive. Then the Little Giants moved the ball to the Albion eight-yard line. Fewer than 30 seconds remained. Albion kept the door closed for three downs, but when Rice threw a fourth-down pass toward the back corner of the end zone, Page hauled it in with a leaping catch, and senior Andrew Tutsie’s extra-point kick forced the game into overtime.
“It’s a brand-new game,” Coach Olmstead yelled jubilantly at his players as the noise from the visitors’ stands began to overwhelm the stunned Albion fans.
And the Wabash offense took his word for it, marching down the field and capping the drive with a one-yard touchdown run by Tyler Downing ’18.
When Albion got the ball, junior Brient Hicks threw the Albion running back to the ground for a 10-yard loss on the first play. The Britons connected on an 18-yard pass on second down, but Brian Parks ’18 broke up the third down pass, and Albion’s final play disconnected.
The Wabash Little Giants, playing away in their first game under Don Morel, had pulled one out of the fire.
The players sang “Old Wabash” to thank the crowd even as fans rushed to the field to congratulate their sons, friends, fraternity brothers, students and fellow Wabash men.
Celebrating with his brothers and the team, former Little Giant All-American Cody Buresh ’15 laughed: “You guys almost killed me. I’m 24 and going to die of a heart attack in the stands.”
But what if the game had gone the other way?
“If we lose, yes, it hurts,” said Wabash Director of Sports Information Brent Harris H’03. “Our players will be disappointed not to win, disappointed that they didn’t play as well as they could have. But they also know that in a few years they’ll be the ones in the stands—cheering on the next team of Little Giants—while taking the first steps into careers of their own after Wabash. They have perspective.”
They’ll also have the words Coach Don Morel spoke so passionately to them as they knelt on the field after this unlikely come-from-behind win:
“It didn’t look good out there, did it? But Wabash Always Fights. You’ve got to believe in that. It works.
“You need to believe in all this—Wabash, the Gentleman’s Rule. It will carry us.
“When we struggle, it will carry us.”