|
|
|
||
|
|
Zhang: So before your time who’s the coach of the soccer team?
Howell:
They
didn’t really have a coach. They had a student, his name was Ted
Staley, and Ted was an X-Cluber, played soccer, and then when he wasn’t
playing I guess he was in the graduate school. He was kinda running the
program. Joe Justice’s name was on the brochure, I guess a matter of
record because it needed a faculty person, but Ted was the coach.
Actually I think he might have been a playing coach and he was
graduating and there was a technical advisor named Ernie Rochet. He was
German and he worked for Tupperware International, which its offices
were down in south Orlando, and he was being recalled to Germany by
Tupperware. So they lost their technical advisor and Ted was
graduating, so the opening was there and President McKean was very fond
of soccer, he started the program and did want to see it flourish and he
just asked me to take a go at it.
Howell Discusses the Second Hearing About Lighting Sandspur Field (Play audio)
Howell: So the second hearing was about
two or three weeks later at the Winter Park Chamber. The lady with the
baby was there, the police were there, the objectors that had been over
to the tea were there, and I made my proposal again and each was asked
to say something and each was supportive of lighting the field. The
only change that I had to make, the city said, I wanted 90-foot poles,
they said you can’t be higher than 70 and you must paint the poles green
(laughs). They made some other; you couldn’t have music after 9
o’clock. Of course that’s fallen by the wayside, nobody’s enforced that
for years. But they approved it.
Howell Discusses a Holistic Approach to Sports (Play Audio)
Howell: The Athletic Department at that time had two hundred students I guess student-athletes, did not have a required GPA, coaches were pretty independent with the way they managed teams and budgets and things. The student-athlete by and large could have had a higher level of appreciation if you worked at it among the college you know our various constituencies, our teachers and our administrators. There was some work needed to be done there. The curriculum, there was not an academic curriculum for the Department of Physical Education. So I saw that as part of my mission to improve those things or at least get them in our consciousness about the contributions of the athlete and how we could raise the importance of athletics for the holistic approach, you know mind body the old dualism that many previous civilizations have handed down to us. That’s why I worked very hard at getting the college to approve the lifetime fitness course. Then I was able to get one course at a time through the Academic Affairs Committee having to do with sports. Sports & Society for example, I started that, Ethical Issues & Contemporary Sports. The athletic coaching, let’s see I started, I got the college community to put it in the curriculum. And we raised the GPA to 3.0 to be eligible.
Howell Discusses Developing 'Athletics of the Ancient World' (Play Audio)
Howell: I developed a course that I am very pleased with and it’s the sports and antiquity course, Athletics of the Ancient World, a field studies course. How I developed that course is amazing and a lot of luck. I conceived the course, I developed an itinerary, and then I went to Greece. I preceded my going with letters to the dean of the American School of Archaeological Studies and the Greek School of Archaeological Studies and the British Museum with what I was coming for and what I wanted to do. I had appointments with all three of them, I went on my own, spent about three weeks I guess, two weeks, and I went to those places and I said this is what I want to do, where I’m from, what I want to do, will you tell me if I can do it, what needs to be done so I could do it better, can I make this itinerary which is we visit about fifteen different sites in a two week period. They were somewhat helpful, especially telling me where I had overplayed my hand in terms of time and distance, the topics were just right and I came back and I developed the course, the syllabus and course description. And then offered it every other year, it’s been made very well, and I fine-tuned it through the years. And in the year 2000 on my sabbatical, I did an unusual thing, somewhat unusual for my age and experience. I went to Greece looking for different sites. You know, the main Pan Hellenic sites and some smaller sites and museums and temples and sanctuaries I knew about, but I wanted to see what else is out there. Looking for unknown sites for athletics in the ancient world.
Howell Discusses Fleetwood People's Diving Helmet (Play Audio)
Howell: One of the stories that I enjoying tell about, Fleetwood Peoples had an ancient diving helmet, a metal, it had a plate glass window, I mean the old diving -- I can imagine Alexander the Great, he dived under the sea with an ancient diving helmet. Something like that (laughs), it was copper and it was three or four feet high with a rope on the end of it. And he loved to take Rollins students and he went down under the water and you’d just place it over your head on the top of the water on the surface and you’d sit down. And then through that plate glass window you can watch the bass and watch fish, you can watch the currents, and students loved to do it. I even did it a couple times myself.
|
||
