Rev. John J. Piderit, Society of Jesus, calls himself “a fairly good walker.” That’s somewhat like Frank Thomas describing himself as “a pretty good hitter.”
The president of Loyola University has been a Chicagoan only a short while. But he has hiked down enough of the city’s side streets to compile an accurate read on his new hometown and its people.
Weather permitting, Piderit frequently walks the 9 miles from his Michigan Avenue office to his office on Loyola’s Lake Shore campus. He doesn’t always take the direct route through Lincoln Park. He usually walks through different neighborhoods.
“I spent so many years abroad,” Piderit explains, “that I learned the only way to know a city is to walk its neighborhoods.”
Last Thanksgiving, Piderit extended his stroll. He walked from the Lake Shore campus 5 miles west on Devon Avenue to Cicero and 2 miles south to Lawrence. Then he zigzagged through a score of dialects and a dozen cultures back to campus.
“It was like walking around the world,” says Piderit, who was ordained in Germany in 1971, “and I only had to go to Cicero Avenue. . . .”
Piderit plays tennis, enjoys sports and has regularly attended athletic events involving Loyola’s men’s and women’s teams. In this respect, he’s unlike his Jesuit predecessor, Raymond Baumhart, who expressed little interest in athletics during his 23-year tenure.
Piderit has learned quickly that Chicago is a great sports town. He describes the city as “a gold mine” of teenage basketball talent. He’s convinced Chicago fans will flock to games, including Loyola games, if they provide keen competition and skilled play.
All of these factors come into play as Piderit unfolds his grand plan to restore Loyola’s slumping men’s basketball program to the prominence it enjoyed in the past.
Talking about sports at Loyola and his role in them, Piderit frequently emphasizes three points: the need to recruit better players, the need to go coast-to-coast to recruit them and the use of Chicago itself as a key part of the sales pitch to the recruits.
Piderit talks of committing resources to the stepped-up national recruiting. He talks of the Ramblers “getting up there occasionally in the top 10” in the nation, a lofty goal considering recent history.
Loyola has suffered through seven straight losing basketball seasons. Unless Coach Will Rey’s Ramblers upset Butler on Sunday night in Indianapolis in the Midwestern Collegiate Conference tournament, they will end their season with an 8-19 record. Home crowds at the 17,000-seat Rosemont Horizon averaged only 3,609 fans a game.
“I’m not discouraged,” Piderit says, “because steps can be taken. Some already have started to attract better players.”
Piderit points out that as recently as 1985, then-coach Gene Sullivan’s Ramblers caught Chicago’s fancy when they fashioned a 27-6 record and reached the Final 16 in the NCAA tournament.
“I’d love, over time, to recruit some very fine people to rekindle the enthusiasm of the city of Chicago for Chicago teams,” Piderit says. “We think that with measured steps over the next couple of years, we can once again produce teams like the 1985 team.
“You have to have good players, and you have to have a good, solid coach who can attract those players. I think coach Rey is very willing to go out and highlight the virtues of Loyola and of Chicago.”
Asked if his coaches would try to sell Chicago to recruits, Piderit answers like a salesman himself.
“Absolutely. Chicago is not just a big basketball city, but a wonderful engaging city,” he says. “It has a teriffic reputation nationally. Yes, we intend to sell Chicago.”
If the recruiting is successful, Piderit says, things such as turnstile counts and TV exposure will take care of themselves.
Piderit stresses that while men’s basketball is the school’s most visible sport, he seeks a broad athletic program.
“I want our men’s basketball team to do well because we know how much attention that team gets,” he says. “But I’d personally be equally pleased if our women’s team made the Final Four, and I think our alumni would, too.”
More than any other point, Piderit dwells on the need to recruit beyond the Chicago area and the Midwest.
“Many young people want to go outside their home to go to school,” he says, “so I think we can do a good job of recruiting East Coast, West Coast and outside the Midwest.”
Rey’s current squad consists of 13 players, six from the Chicago area, three from other parts of Illinois, two from Indiana, one from Minnesota and one from Kansas City.
Where will Loyola attract its fan base?
“We would like to be able to rely upon all our wonderful alumni in the Chicago area,” he replies. “But we’re all mortal, to use a theological term; we’re all attracted by excellence.”
Loyola has not accepted athletes whose test scores or high school grades do not meet NCAA minimums. Rey this season brought in five junior college players in an attempt to add experience. Two of the players were dropped from the team for low grades. They met NCAA minimums, but missed Loyola’s more stringent requirements for playing sports.
“We have to be careful to make sure that they get enough academic assistance so that they’re committing themselves to their studies,” Piderit says.
Last year, the men’s basketball team had three extraordinary student athletes. Brian Wolf, now in medical school, had a nearly perfect 3.94 grade-point average. Grant Moehring, preparing to enter med school, did almost as well. Eric Dolezal was already in graduate school as he played his final season.
But that team had a 7-20 record. Piderit’s thoughts about these numbers?
“Wonderful,” he says. “I applaud each one of those players. But also I think we can attract a little bit higher quality of basketball skill if we recruit more nationally.”
Loyola has a nightly 10 o’clock mass for students at the Jesuit residence on campus. Piderit usually attends the mass and celebrates it once a week. He was “very touched,” he says, when members of the men’s and women’s cross-country teams attended the masses.
“They came two days before their match,” he says. “They didn’t want to go the night before the match, they said, because they wouldn’t get enough sleep. They asked, `Father, will you say a prayer for us?’
“I find that gratifying as president. These are very good, committed kids. Committed in their studies, certainly in their running, also in their spiritual development. That’s my primary responsibility as president . . . to see there’s a good balance between physical talent and academic talent and commitment to the sport and commitment to the academics.”
