Athletics Alumni - Careers
Haverford's commitment to individual achievement and excellence is reflected in the many student-athletes who have won national fellowships, prestigious NCAA graduate scholarships and places on innumerable Athletic-Academic "Honor Rolls." The majority of Haverford's 19 Rhodes Scholars won varsity letters, and former Haverford president and alumnus Tom G. Kessinger '65 was a three-sport athlete himself.
These alumni have made their mark in the sports world and the world-in-general after leaving Haverford:
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The late Donald "Doc" Baker '26, one of America's finest cricket players, captained the Haverford XI as a senior after the helping the Fords' soccer team to wins at both Harvard and Yale. He received the National Soccer Coaches Association of America's 39th Annual Honor Award in 1981 for his 40-plus years a professor and coach at nearby Ursinus College.
Bruce Berque '88 is currently the head coach of the University of Michigan's men's tennis team after serving as associate head coach of NCAA D-I champion University of Illinois and assistant coach at U. of Florida. Berque formerly served as facilities manager and assistant women's tennis coach at Haverford after having been a net star under Coach Albert Dillon.
Rob Burke '88, men's basketball MVP in 1985-86 when he scored his season-high in a 20-point win over Swarthmore, was an assistant coach at Maryland-Baltimore County and Loyola Marymount after earning his sociology degree. He helped Siena to a 66-27 record, three MAAC title games and the 1999 NCAA Tournament before joining the staff of Gonzaga (D.C.) High School classmate John Thompson III at Princeton for the 2000-01 season. Burke is currently an assistant basketball coach at Georgetown University.
Josh Byrnes '92 was recently named the General Manager of the Arizona Diamondbacks after serving as the Assistant General Manager of the Boston Red Sox and winning the 2004 World Series. Byrnes has experienced a rapid rise through the administrative ranks of Major League Baseball. He began his career as an intern with Cleveland Indians in 1994 and, by the age of 27, became the Indians' director of scouting. He then became the Assistant General Manager of the Colorado Rockies before joining Theo Epstein in Boston. Formerly the college's career leader in homeruns, Byrnes' career numbers at Haverford included a .332 avg., 14 HR, 106 RBI and 142 hits in 128 games.
Bob Colburn '59, a co-founder and inductee of the Delaware Baseball Hall of Fame, won over 300 games and six Independent Conference championships in over 40 seasons as head baseball coach at St. Andrew's School in the First State.
Jen Constantino '04 was named head women's volleyball coach at Albright in the summer of 2007.
Lindsey Dolich '06 is currently on the editorial team for ESPN The Magazine in New York City as a writer and researcher. A member of the women's soccer team that made it past the first round of the NCAA's in 2006 for the first time in school history, she was also a member of the founding Women's National Deaf Team that brought home the gold medal in 2005. Fittingly, she recently interviewed Abby Wambach from the Women's National Team, who is headed to China in Sept. 2007 for the Women's World Cup.
Dr. Steve Emerson '74, recently appointed Haverford's 13th President, won the 1999 Rolex Achievement Award, which honors past particpants in college lacrosse for their professional successes and contributions to society. A founding member of Haverford men's varsity and junior-year Phi Beta Kappa, he graduated summa cum laude in chemistry and philosophy. Earning M.S., Ph.D. and M.D. degrees at Yale, he now conducts bone marrow research for leukemia and blood diseases as a professor, hospital chief and cancer center director at Penn.
Roger Jones '52 was rated as one of the world's eight best fencers and competed for the United States at the 1955 World Fencing Championships in Rome. A retired Navy captain and president of Franklin Polymers, Inc., the Middle Atlantic College Fencing Association team epee trophy (won by Haverford in 1998) is named in his honor.
Mike Kelly '05 is currently an assistant men's basketball coach at Division I Hofstra University.
Tamara Lave '90, Middle Atlantic Conference cross country champion in 1988 and '89 and an All-American in the 10,000 meters as a senior, is now a deputy public defender in San Diego. Lave, who published a "My Turn" column in Newsweek magazine last year, was the top American finisher at the 1999 Suzuki Rock'n'Roll Marathon. Lave qualified for the U.S. Olympic Trials in the marathon in 2004.
Gerald Levin '60 won the coveted Haines Prize Fielding Belt as a sophomore cricketer at the 'Ford. He is the former Chairman and CEO of Time Warner, Inc., which merged with AOL and encompasses Warner Bros., HBO, CNN and Turner Entertainment Networks and Sports Illustrated publisher Time, Inc., whose Editor-in-Chief was former Haverford varsity wrestler Norman Pearlstine '64.
Thad Levine '94 became the Assistant General Manager of the Texas Rangers in October 2005 after serving as the Senior Director for Baseball Operations with the Colorado Rockies. Before Colorado, Levine spent one season with the Los Angeles Dodgers. He also has worked for Coca-Cola and Reebok.
Allen Lewis '40 covered the Phillies for nearly three decades as a sportswriter for The Philadelphia Inquirer and coordinated the Inquirer's weekly baseball trivia contest. A former member of the Hall of Fame's Veterans Committee and the former chairman of Major League Baseball's Scoring Committee, Lewis was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame's Sportswriters' Corner in 1982. In 1998, he became the first official scorer for the expansion Tampa Bay Devil Rays.
Bill Lindsay '06 earned a second bachelor's degree at Haverford after starring in baseball at Guilford. The North Carolinian hit .242 for Napoleon Lajoie's 1911 Cleveland entry in the American League and also had a distinguished minor league career. Lindsay's athletic feats in his year at Haverford were limited to bowling, however.
G. Diehl Mateer, Jr. '50 was a charter inductee into the United States Squash Hall of Fame in April 2000. He won three national doubles titles with Hunter Lott, Jr., and a total of 11 doubles championships with five different partners. He also won three national singles championships and two intercollegiate titles, and was the only amateur to win the U.S. Open twice.
Rob Mullowney '05 is entering his first season as head women's volleyball coach at the United States Coast Guard Academy.
Owen Newkirk '02 was appointed the Director of Media Relations and is a broadcaster for the American Hockey League's Albany River Rats, in the summer of 2007.
Lord Philip Noel-Baker '10 was an English Quaker who played soccer at Haverford and set records in the mile and mile relay at the Penn Relays as a freshman. He later won a silver medal in the 1,500 meters as captain of Britain's "Chariots of Fire" 1920 and '24 Olympic teams, served in Parliament, helped found the United Nations and received the 1959 Nobel Peace Prize.
Karl Paranya '97 won nine NCAA track titles -- four in the 800 and five in the 1,500 meters and was a 15-time All-American. He was the first D-III runner and only the 216th American ever to run a sub-4:00 mile (3:57.6) and was named D-III Athlete of the year for winning the D-III outdoor 800 and 1,500 and placing second in the 1,500 at the USATF Championships. Last winter, Parayna ran the second-fastest split (1:48.31) of a World- and American-record indoor 4x800-meter relay (7:13.94).
Tony Petitti '83, economics major and baseball captain, was named President and Chief Executive Officer of the MLB Network in April 2008, which will launch on January 1, 2009. Petitti was previously the Executive Vice President of CBS Sports. Upon graduating from Haverford, Petitti attended Harvard Law School before joining the legal staff of ABC Sports. He later became a vice-president at NBC Sports under Dick Ebersol, the son and brother of Haverfordians Charles '38 and Charles, Jr. '74 Ebersol. Now a senior VP at CBS, Petitti was instrumental in that network's reacquisition of rights to broadcast NFL football.
Hunter Rawlings '66 was a conference MVP in basketball and had major league baseball tryouts as a pitcher. He took an NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship to Princeton where he earned a doctorate in classics. Rawlings chaired the Big Ten council and served on the NCAA Presidents Commision from 1993-95 as president of the University of Iowa before serving as president of Cornell University from 1996-2003.
Ron Shapiro '64, student body president and slugger for the Fords' baseball team, joined with Baltimore Oriole great Brooks Robinson to organize a pioneering sports representation firm. Shapiro's clients included Cal Ripken, Kirby Puckett and Eddie Murray.
Leslie (Lee) Smith Gleiser '85 was a management intern with the Phillies and became one of the few women assistant general managers in pro sports as an employee of The (Fort Myers, Fla.) Miracle of the Gulf Coast League, an independent minor league franchise. She is currently events manager for the NHL Dallas Stars.
Arn Tellem '76 leads the sports practice of Wasserman Media Group, Inc., where his assistant is all-time Haverford winning pitcher Nick Chanock '05. Tellem represents such stars as former Indiana Pacers forward Reggie Miller, Chicago Cubs shortstop Nomar Garciaparra and New York Yankees first baseman Jason Giambi. Haverford honored Arn and his wife, Nancy, head of CBS Entertainment, by naming the new Fitness Center in the Gardner Athletic Center in their honor.
Dr. Joe Torg '57, Haverford football star, helped create the burgeoning field of sports medicine. Torg headed the Hahnemann University Sports Medicine department and has been team physician for most of Philadelphia's professional sports teams.
John C. Whitehead '43, former co-chairman and partner of Goldman Sachs, was Deputy Secretary of State in the Reagan administration and part owner of the 1995 and 2000 Stanley Cup champion New Jersey Devils. The college's campus center was named in his honor in 1994.
Ed Zubrow '73/74, a wrestler and football/baseball player at Haverford, rose quickly through the football coaching ranks and led the University of Pennsylvania to a 23-7 record and two Ivy League titles as Penn's head coach from 1986 to '88.