Tag: RST Newsletter Spring 2024

Long-time RST faculty member Espeseth remembered for work and friendship

May 22, 2024 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

Bob Espeseth was an RST faculty member for three decades (Photo provided)

It’s no surprise that a man who was as outgoing as Bob Espeseth dedicated his life to creating opportunities for others to be outdoors.

“When we grew up, we were always doing stuff, always camping a lot, being outdoors,” said Robert Espeseth, one of Bob’s five children with wife Mary Anne. “That was just us. Part of the trips was to get to see the country … we got to grow up seeing a lot of the parks and a lot of the country and different things. 

“He was always happy to meet everybody. He went out of his way when he traveled to look up people and stop in and visit, or at the very least call when he was in the area.”

Espeseth, who was a faculty member in the Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism at Illinois from 1973-95, died on Dec. 15, 2023 at the age of 93. 

Espeseth grew up in Wisconsin and earned a degree in landscape architecture at the University of Wisconsin, all while serving in the ROTC. Espeseth’s ROTC commitment sent him into the Navy, where he was on active duty for three years. He was an ensign in the Navy when he was the films officer for the USS Purdy, a destroyer that traveled around the world to provide support in the Korean War.

“After he got out of the Navy, he went back and got his master’s degree, and then he started working for the Wisconsin parks system,” son Robert said. “He was instrumental in developing and modernizing a lot of the Wisconsin State Parks, the rails to trails.”

Espeseth also worked in parks administration in Michigan before coming to the University of Illinois, where he was a professor of leisure studies. Colleagues remembered him as warm and helpful.

“He was kind and fun-loving. He was very quick to laugh. Most of my memories are I would go for a run in the morning and he and Mary Ann would walk from their house on Healy Street down to Prospect Avenue.”

RST faculty member Kim Shinew

“And they were standing in front of this tree on Healy one day. And just something about it made me stop, which was unusual. When I run, I usually don’t stop. I stopped, and he said, ‘Do you know what kind of tree this is? And I said, ‘I have no idea, Bob. And he said, ‘It’s a ginkgo tree. They lose their leaves in one day.’ And he said, ‘Long after I’m not around, when you go by this tree, you think of me. And I always have. I always just thought of him when I ever go by that tree.”

In addition to his academic endeavors, Espeseth volunteered for more than 45 years for the Champaign County Forest Preserve District, first as an elected official and later as a foundation board member. His volunteer work and philanthropic endeavors played a significant role in establishing and caring for nearly 4,000 acres of preserves, the Museum of the Grand Prairie, and the Kickapoo Rail Trail.

“He knew the important role that public parks and places like forest preserves, the role that they play in overall life satisfaction and quality of life and places of exercise,” Shinew said. “I know that he really valued and appreciated the outdoors. He was an advocate for that in communities.”

“When I came and Bill McKinney was the (RST) department head, Bill’s area was public parks and recreation. Bob played a big role in that.”

Even now, Shinew said, the connection between landscape architecture and community planning and engagement—two other significant RST industry fields—is significant, a testament to Espeseth’s pioneering work.

Espeseth was also, not surprisingly, an advocate for environmental causes and helped to launch the Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant, which support coastal, marine and Great Lakes communities through research, extension and education. The Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant, one of 34 Sea Grants in the United States, is focused on the southern Lake Michigan region—104 miles of heavily urbanized and industrialized shoreline in Illinois and Indiana. Espeseth was at the helm of IISG from 1982 through 1994. 

But family and greenspace were really Espeseth’s loves. He was part of the National Parks and Recreation Association, and thanks to that, he took his family on many trips.

“We stopped at every state park and national park in the country,” Robert said. “Well, he would pose us, all of us—my brothers and I—in front of the sign to the park, the entrance to the park to take a picture of the entrance. Part of it was he wanted this file of information, but then he also could use it as family pictures. We used to joke that our father has the best collection of park entrances and bathrooms, because he’d always shoot the restroom facilities, how they were designed, how they were landscaped with natural stone or other things. 

“So we’re posed in front of stuff, whether it was in Yosemite, whether it was Yellowstone, whether it was in Grand Teton, whether it was in Craters of the Moon Park, you name it. We used to joke he has the most amazing collection of bathroom pictures in the United States. 

“That was how practical and frugal he was.” 

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How Black distance runners shaped the sport from the shadows

May 22, 2024 | Ethan Simmons

While Black American athletes such as basketball’s Bill Russell, baseball’s Jackie Robinson and tennis’s Althea Gibson received significant coverage in the newspapers of the day, ‘marathoning was on the margins’

Long-distance runner Ted Corbitt, center, was the first Black American to represent the U.S. in the Olympic marathon. (Photo provided)

The world of competitive long-distance running took off in the 1970s. But stories of the sport’s Black architects and pioneers who laid its foundation have been largely untold for decades. 

Teaching Assistant Professor Jake Fredericks in the Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism at the University of Illinois has dedicated a significant part of his research to uncovering the legacies of successful Black long-distance runners who grew the sport “from the shadows” while challenging enduring racial stereotypes. 

“The explosion of running in the 1970s could not have happened without the efforts of the earlier generation, in the ‘50s and ‘60s, to lay the groundwork for the races in the first place,” Fredericks said. “These are the men who established the marathon courses or put the structures in place for organizations that could support bigger and bigger races.” 

This Memorial Day Weekend, he’ll co-lead a panel presentation on Black running history to an academic audience at a conference for the North American Society for Sport History (NASSH). Fredericks will present papers alongside Gary Corbitt, an archivist and son of legendary long-distance competitor Ted Corbitt, and Suzuko Morikawa, associate professor of History and Africana Studies at Chicago State University. 

Dave Wiggins, the former NASSH president and professor emeritus from George Mason University, will co-moderate the discussion. 

Fredericks’ paper, titled “When is it Okay to Run Around Your Neighborhood in Shorts?: Representations of Black Running at the National Marathon Championship,” examines the country’s perceptions of race and long-distance running through the prism of the AAU National Championship in Yonkers, New York, the nation’s second-oldest marathon.

From 1938 until 1966, Yonkers was the site of the country’s preeminent championship marathon race, and several Black American runners—such as Louis White, Ted Corbitt and Harold Harris—posted some of its best times, more than a decade before long-distance running grew beyond its niche, community-driven status.  

While Black American athletes such as basketball’s Bill Russell, baseball’s Jackie Robinson and tennis’s Althea Gibson received significant coverage in the newspapers of the day, “marathoning was on the margins,” Fredericks said. 

In 1952, Corbitt became the first Black American to represent the United States in the Olympic marathon. Two years later, Corbitt was crowned champion in the 1954 National Marathon Championship. 

“That victory is so sparsely covered across the newspapers in the United States, that he’s mostly forgotten. Ted Corbitt is not a name that we often say alongside Jackie Robinson, even though they’re competing at the same time and had similar levels of success,” Fredericks said. “My research looks at how these Black Americans really shaped the sport, even from the shadows.” 

Chicago’s Harris posted his best performance in the 1964 Yonkers Marathon, finishing fourth—just one spot removed from a bid to compete in that year’s Summer Olympics. 

Compared to the more “glamorous” track and field events such as sprints and jumps, long-distance running lacked institutional support, Fredericks said. So, in 1958, many of the sport’s top competitors formed the Road Runners Club of America, opening chapters with running enthusiasts in major American cities. 

Harris became one of the founding members of the Midwest Road Runners branch based in Chicago, which fostered a multiracial community of runners in the city, Fredericks said. Meanwhile, based in New York City, Corbitt pioneered techniques to measure more accurately the 26.2-mile marathon races.

Back when Harris competed, marathons were lucky to run 100 participants, Fredericks said. The “marathon boom” of the 1970s changed all of that. 

A confluence of factors led to marathoning, and running writ large, to hit the mainstream. Medical science backing the health benefits of exercise had steadily grown while Cold War-era pressures to increase Americans’ fitness continued. Then, in 1972, Frank Shorter won the marathon at the Munich Games, scoring the United States’ first gold medal in the event since 1908, and first medal since 1924. 

Ted Corbitt is not a name that we often say alongside Jackie Robinson, even though they’re competing at the same time and had similar levels of success.

Jake Fredericks

Teaching Assistant Professor, RST

Shorter’s success was lionized in the media, and his profile—a white, educated American man—suddenly became the prototypical image of the long-distance runner. 

“We lose the image of Ted Corbitt, who could have just as easily been the image of running, or somebody like Harold Harris, in Chicago, could have been the image of running,” Fredericks said. Those kinds of pioneering figures get replaced throughout the ‘70s, by a Frank Shorter-esque, well-to-do upper middle-class person.” 

The lack of recognition these Black American pioneers faced also played into athletic racial stereotypes. Fredericks’ dissertation, “Great Speed and Great Stamina,” in part challenged the lasting notion that Black athletes were “built” for explosive, powerful feats but couldn’t win in tests of endurance. 

The stereotype seemed to build from the sport of boxing, where analysts alleged that Black fighters couldn’t “go the distance” in the ring. Jesse Owens’ prodigious success in the sprints and long jump Olympic events of the 1930s shattered racial barriers in the sporting world but reinforced some of the same athletic stereotypes that dogged Black American athletes of the day. 

These Black runners’ success, however, “disproves these stereotypes that, unfortunately, have lasted 100 years. They’ve just been so hard to remove in the minds of the public,” Fredericks said. 

Part of the mission of Fredericks’ research, along with Gary Corbitt’s new Ted Corbitt Institute for Running History Research, is to document the history of the sport’s development more accurately and recognize the oft-forgotten figures who laid its framework. 

What stands out to Fredericks is many of these early organizers’ foresight: “They knew that road running had this potential to engage the masses,” he said. Even when races were lucky to field a dozen runners, they kept pushing to host events and spread the word. 

“Black Americans are a huge part of the story of long-distance running. Today, we reap the benefits of their efforts to establish and grow the sport of running, yet that part of the history often gets left out.” 

Editor’s note:

To reach Ethan Simmons, email ecsimmon@illinois.edu.
 

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RST student startup built to help venues stay booked

Jan. 10, 2024 | Ethan Simmons

An RST alumnus developed a digital platform to help venues maximize their booking potential.

Atop the usual final exams and projects, University of Illinois senior Sean Chang has been charting a different path for his final year in the Recreation, Sport and Tourism program—by building his own business.

With the help of mentors and the entrepreneurial ecosystem at the U. of I., Chang is growing “DoubleSpot,” a digital platform designed to help venues maximize their booking potential.

The business officially launched this summer, and already partners with venues such as the I-Hotel and Conference Center in Champaign, Bedford Park’s Wintrust Sports Complex, and campus cafe BrewLab.

“When we talk about video, we talk about YouTube—my long-term goal is when people think of venues or events, I want them to think about DoubleSpot,” Chang said.

The senior’s ambitious idea has found catalysts through the iVenture Accelerator, an entrepreneurial bootcamp designed to kickstart U. of I. students’ startups, and in guidance from RST faculty members, such as Interim Associate Dean for Undergraduate and Graduate Affairs and former RST department head Carla Santos, who’ve dispensed their industry expertise and helped Chang connect with potential clients.

“[Sean] embodies that entrepreneurial spirit of RST,” Santos said. “We’re constantly reminding our students that while we are training you to go into this field, we’re training you to take risks, to reimagine what the field could look like.”

Chang grew up in Taiwan, but moved to California when he was a junior in high school when his father got a job at tech giant Nvidia.

“It was a new beginning for me,” he said. “Moving to a new country was completely different for sure, like culture, friends, school, everything.”

He fortunately joined his high school’s varsity basketball team, which helped him integrate within his new home, find friends and grow his love for sport.

When time came to apply for college, Chang wasn’t sure what he wanted for his future. He wanted to balance his desire for a career in the sports industry with the stability his family sought for him, he said. Chang applied for sports management programs, with the United States’ huge entertainment market in mind.

“There’s not a lot of Asian Americans in this field and I want to prove that if other people can do it, why can’t I do it? I think this kind of mentality has always been pushing me,” Chang said.

Illinois became his lead college option for its global reputation. Many famous Illinois graduates from his native Taiwan, such as YouTube co-founder Steve Chen, had cited the school as a powerful starting point. He went for the RST program in the College of Applied Health Sciences and obtained his family’s blessing by minoring in computer science.

“The U. of I.’s kind of a perfect match for me,” Chang said. “RST gives us a lot of opportunity to do what we like, and the faculty and professors are super supportive.”

Chang quickly made connections with faculty, including retired RST adjunct instructor Don Hardin, who had more than 30 years of NCAA volleyball coaching experience at the University of Louisville and the University of Illinois, where he was the head coach of the women’s team.

The COVID-19 pandemic hit during Chang’s freshman year and changed his course. He took a gap year to visit National Taiwan University, where he studied computer science and clarified his career goals.

“I figured entrepreneurship could be a good fit for me, I have the sports background, CS knowledge, and something we can bounce together,” he said. Plus, “U. of I. has a really good entrepreneurship ecosystem.”

With more professional knowledge, Chang started to dip his toes into the startup world. After returning to the U. of I., he engineered “Courtero,” a community basketball app designed to help players find games near them.

In 2022, he landed a summer job with the Los Angeles Dodgers as a business strategy analytics intern—essentially helping the team find more ways to generate revenue.

His idea for DoubleSpot first flashed in the walls of Dodger Stadium. Since the stadium only hosts 81 home games per season, he thought, what could all this square footage be used for in the downtime?

“Imagine people want to have their wedding in center field, or have their kids at a VIP lounge?” Chang said.

Sean Chang. (Provided)

He returned to campus with the idea fresh in his mind, finding early users for DoubleSpot in area park districts and local vendor CRS Hospitality, which owns several venues in the Champaign-Urbana area.

The pitch: For a small vendor fee, businesses can use DoubleSpot to drive users and event-planners to use the promoted venues on the site, or hopefully “double” their “spot’s” utilization rate, as Chang put it.

Landing a spot in the recent iVenture Accelerator cohort alongside several other student startups was “such a privilege,” Chang said. With the program’s extra time, resources, and mentoring opportunities, his team at DoubleSpot has catapulted its efforts.

“Sean and his team were culture-setters over the summer,” said Mayank Mehta, assistant director of entrepreneurial education at iVenture. “At every given time, you could see their team focused on developing their product. Whether it was during lunch, morning updates, and even after people had left for the day—someone was coding away.

“A lot of people’s passion shines in the way they talk about their idea, but Sean and DoubleSpot’s passion shines through in how they work on their idea.”

What’s driven the startup’s early success is a “customer-centric approach,” Mehta said, which solved a direct problem these vendors were facing. As for finding these vendors, RST faculty such as Santos have been a valuable resource to his team.

The Wintrust Sports Complex in Bedford Park has been an important early adopter of DoubleSpot, using the service to help digitalize its venue management process, Chang said. The complex is run by Chief Business Officer Joe Ronovsky, a two-time graduate of the U of I’s RST program.

Santos and Chang’s conversations have revolved around the ‘human component’ of building a business: how can you sell this product and what will you bring to the table that others won’t? Who from the RST alumni base could help him out?

Chang has a sponge-like ability to absorb information from mentors’ meetings, quickly implementing important slices of advice into his business, Santos said.

And yet, “Sean doesn’t really need mentoring,” Santos said. “He’s very self-directed and he knows what he’s doing. In our meetings, I hope I’ve given him as much as I’ve gotten out of it, to be quite honest.”

“He wants to deliver a product that makes a difference in not just the operation side of things but building a sense of community through using spaces more efficiently.”

Editor’s note:

To reach Ethan Simmons, email ecsimmon@illinois.edu.
 

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Students bring volunteer force to ‘Medfest’

May 22, 2024 | Ethan Simmons

MedFest was set up to provide free medical screenings for Special Olympics athletes.

A small team of student audiologists-in-training conducted hearing examinations for nearly 100 athletes (Photo provided)

The stage was set at Wintrust Sports Complex in the Village of Bedford Park—a suburb of Chicago—when nearly 600 Special Olympics athletes from across the state began to stream in.

With the help of a substantial volunteer staff, including more than 25 students from the College of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, many of the athletes left the facility ready to play.

As part of the 22nd annual “MedFest” event, hundreds descended on Bedford Park to help athletes from Special Olympics Illinois receive their physical certifications to compete in the state.

In the most recent edition, hosted on Nov. 30, students from the Departments of Speech and Hearing Science and Recreation, Sport and Tourism took time out of their fall break from classes to help the event run smoothly.

A small team of student audiologists-in-training conducted hearing examinations for nearly 100 athletes, while 15 RST students helped from the event management side, signing in the athletes and directing them to the right locations.

“You can tell that they got so comfortable and were having a blast, talking with athletes and interacting with them,” said Melissa Garritano, senior director of Special Olympics Illinois region D, which covers the Chicagoland area. “Thinking back to when I was at the U. of I., I wish I would’ve done stuff like this. They drove up two hours to spend the day with us—the athletes loved them.”

The connection stemmed from Bedford Park’s budding partnership with the College of AHS. The Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism has a grant with the Village of Bedford Park, which heavily invested in the Wintrust Sports Complex. The project-heavy facility hosts community events on a regular basis, atop of its normal sports operations.

Joe Ronovsky, chief business officer of Village of Bedford Park, is a two-time RST graduate. He saw that the complex could serve as a real-world “lab setting” for community engagement projects led by RST faculty and students.

“Frankly, it’s kind of a one-stop shop, and it’s an opportunity for me as a teacher to show how all these things interact with each other,” said RST Clinical Associate Professor Michael Raycraft.

MedFest was set up to provide free medical screenings for Special Olympics athletes. Wintrust Sports Complex at Bedford Park began partnering with Special Olympics Illinois about a year and a half ago.

“Their facility is unbelievable,” Garritano said. She met Raycraft through their common connections to the Wintrust Complex.

Nicole Dudek, a junior in the RST program, was taken aback by the organizational strength and scale of the event. She started her day at MedFest positioned at the height and weight station, an entry point for many of the athletes.

When students showed up around 8:30 a.m., the Special Olympics staff had the gear and answers: nametags, T-shirts, and where each student would be working within the complex.

“From the event management side of things, you could tell how well-run this event was start to finish,” Dudek said. “It helped to have such a large open space and so many volunteers, and everyone worked well together with the sole goal to help these students get their necessary medical certifications.”

The “noisy, upbeat” energy of the event bolstered the volunteer experience for RST senior Carson Bounds.

“As you could imagine, with 450 kids taking a field trip to a large indoor sport facility during a school day, they all were quite excited to be there,” Bounds said.

Third-year audiology student Yadira Espinoza appreciated the pre-event workshop on how to work with a special needs population.

“Since it was a Special Olympics event, it was important for us to know what to expect; that every kid will be different depending on their needs and accommodations,” she said.

The athletes—ranging from elementary schoolers to full-grown adults—had a variety of responses to the hearing tests. Espinoza used her bilingual fluency to help some of the families who only spoke Spanish, she said.

“These opportunities are very important because they provide more or confirm what we learn in the classroom. It’s different to work with someone who may have Down syndrome or a speech delay; seeing it firsthand really makes a difference and puts you in a situation to put your critical thinking in place,” she said.

Students from RST and SHS teamed up at MedFast (Photo provided)

SHS audiology students are regular volunteers in the community, typically getting out for a handful of outreach events per semester, such as a recent visit to the ClarkLindsey retirement community in Urbana.

Clinical associate professor Sadie Braun supervised the audiology students in the volunteer event. Seeing her students persist with the athletes who didn’t respond right away to testing made the experience worthwhile.

“The athlete got this sense of pride when they were doing what we were asking them to do,” Braun said.

“It was awesome and unique to bring the U of I [audiology] crew up,” Garritano added. “Some of those athletes they got to see may have never had a hearing test in their life.”

Ronovsky thanked Raycraft and Village of Bedford Park President David Brady for tying together all the stakeholders in November’s event.

“Seeing the large group of RST and Speech and Hearing Science students volunteering at MedFest really tied together the meaning of community we’re trying to build at the Wintrust Sports Complex, in Bedford Park and throughout the state of Illinois,” Ronovsky said. “These Illini students are the next leaders in our communities.”

Editor’s note:

To reach Ethan Simmons, email ecsimmon@illinois.edu.
 

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Message from Interim Dept. Head Bill Stewart

May 21, 2024 |

Bill Stewart (Photo by Jerry Thompson)

Greetings friends and alumni of the Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism,

Welcome to the 2024 spring edition of the RST newsletter. This publication features research endeavors from our faculty, notable student accomplishments and the ongoing engagement of our esteemed alumni.

We were delighted this semester by a visit from Gov. J.B. Pritzker and saddened by the loss of a dear former colleague and mentor. We take great pride in showcasing the achievements of our students, and we shine a spotlight on faculty members, underscoring how their research endeavors propel our department forward as a trailblazer in advancing knowledge and shaping policy and practice. Whether you are an alum, a current student, or a member of our esteemed faculty, we trust that you will find these narratives both enlightening and enriching.

As I reflect on the past academic year serving as interim head, I am deeply appreciative of the rich legacy of leadership within our faculty and alumni. Your enduring goodwill and assistance have contributed to the strategic growth of our department, evident in the expansion of our educational offerings and the increased visibility of our scholarly endeavors.

Warm regards,

Bill Stewart
Interim Head
Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism

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