Basketball: Princeton great Joe Ruklick - In his own words

Editor’s note: Joe Ruklick doesn’t have a display case in the Prouty Gym lobby at Princeton High School, because he’s been the school’s all-time leading scorer since 1955. But rather because of his remarkable life story rising out of the Covenant Children’s home, being cut from the freshman team at PHS to become an unanimous All-State player, Prep All-American and College All-American for Northwestern University. He left NU in 1959 with 16 school records. He was a first-round draft pick of the Philadelphia Warriors, famous for recording the assist on teammate’s Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point basket in 1962. His story is what legends are made of. The following is a letter Ruklick wrote to BCR Sports Editor Kevin Hieronymus, written with the flair of his future in journalism, on April 13, 1995, leading up to the 1953-54 and 1954-55 state basketball teams’ induction into the BCR’s Bureau County Sports Hall of Fame. Joe passed away on Sept. 17, 2020. Here’s Joe Ruklick in his own words: Part I - coming to Princeton.

LOGAN JUNIOR HIGH

I wasn’t on the team, but I use to watch the Princeton Tigers to-be work out in the junior high gym. (Lew) Flinn, (Forrie) Finn, (Dick) Hult and (Gary) Mulally, were unaware that I dreamed of making their team some day. I watched them, dreaming like a guy lost in a wilderness dreams of joining a feast going on at the Waldorf Astoria. Word around town had it that these four guys would one day bring honor to Princeton because they were gifted athletes with a fantastic future. I fantasized I’d make the team and then I did. Just being on the floor with these graceful athletes was magical because they knew they were headed for destiny or now I think I remember they knew that. Anyway, they were famous for their promise before the Famous Five got famous.

I wanted to be a Little League player and my eighth grade teacher Max Pannebaker was ln charge of signing up boys for the park district. When I came around to his office he laughed that spring day and said I was too old. I went back to the children’s home, re-read the rules, and found out I wasn’t too old. I’d been put ahead a grade the year before by principal Paul Bone when I came to town from Chicago because the sixth grade was overpopulated. So I persisted and Mr. Pannebaker signed me up. I made the all-star team at the end of the season: left field.

PRINCETON TOWNSHIP HIGH SCHOOL

You know how you pass by and bump into the same people in school day after day between classes? One dim winter day I was walking to my freshman algebra class and there hurried Coach (Don) Sheffer with a slip of paper in his hand. Coach Sheffer never walked around in the hallways during those noisy class breaks. In four years of high school, I never saw him between classes again. This time he slowed down and asked me how I was doing on the frosh team. I looked up at him - I was 13 years old and five feet, eleven inches - and told him I’d been cut. He looked back at me for a long second and said that if I wanted to try again he’d talk to Coach Durham. He told me to show up after varsity practice, when he’d work with me. We did that, I persisted, obeying his instructions on how to learn the hook shot, and I got reinstated. I’m glad I was at the usual place between classes.

Coach Sheffer would work with me after the varsity finished practice, delaying dinner at his house for an hour or more on most of those dark winter nights. He must have noticed progress. One night as our old janitor Mr. Schulz quietly swept the gym floor with one of those pushbrooms with a flat mop head made of string, Coach Sheffer took my right hand in his left, grasping my index finger in his right hand. He pressed it back, saying, “You’re Big Ten material.” I fixed my eyes on his and would not beg him to ease up. I did not cry out. I went down to one knee, but I didn’t take my eyes away from his. He let me up and walked out. My finger felt fine the next day.

Coach Sheffer brought me up to the varsity my sophomore year for a look against Kewanee, there. Everybody was swirling around me and then the ball swished through the net. I cleverly grabbed it and stepped out of bounds to make a quick pass and start a fast break. I saw four guys in dark blue trotting away from me. A Kewanee guy sarcastically relieved me of the ball. My temporary teammates didn’t see the embarrassed blush on my face as I raced after them.

I’M A PRINCETON TIGER

I can’t count all of my happy memories there in that ideal high school in the perfect American town. There’s the Geneseo game when I got called twice in a row for the second foul, each foul an elbow in retaliation for a shot from their hulking center. Coach Sheffer calls a timeout and looks at me as we huddle. The other players listen. The coach says, “Joe, if you do that once more I’ll kick you off the team, tonight.” I never threw another elbow in high school. We all knew Sheffer meant what he said.

The Kewanee News-Gazette sportswriter, Chuck Keefer, runs a number at the beginning of each of his stories during our consecutive wins throughout that season. I don’t know why I didn’t crumple under the pressure.

I see Jerry Zurliene saving our necks against Moline (in the sectional) with those two free throws. He didn’t crumple either. Thanks, Jerry.

THE END OF INNOCENCE

Then something bad happened. We get fourth in State and all that, but the happiness dies. How? Not with whimpering as we listen to the popular song that year, “Moments to Remember,” knowing our boyhoods are over, but with the appearance of something like a monster slinking into our lives from dark woods around the canal.

It happens with a bang, like this one for example. I’m lying in Perry Memorial Hospital recovering from an appendectomy and in walks (legendary Kentucky coach) Adolph Rupp carrying a bouquet of purple and white flowers. No notice, no warning. I almost faint. “Son,” he says, “I’ve just been over in Iowa buying some Black Angus, but I’d rather see you wearing our colors than see any of those fine cattle back home.” He tries to sell me on going to Kentucky through my stupor and pain.

Editor’s note: Ruklick also shared recruiting visits from legendary DePaul coach Ray Meyer and George Mikan, the best player in the game of his era and Illinois coach Harry Combes

Coach Sheffer heads to Puerto Rico to coach that summer, advising me to do the right thing, the moral thing, in selecting my college. I think: Be true and honorable, and don’t succumb when they put pressure on you, even if it hurts. He says something that I think about to this day: Don’t listen to people who are a third as smart as they think they are.

THE NORTH-SOUTH ALL STAR GAME

In those days there was no other high school all-star game except Indiana against Kentucky. More disillusionment. The game is in Murray, Kent. and the powers that be fail to invite a player from Philadelphia named Wilt Chamberlain.

I’m in heaven. I didn’t dare dream back when Coach Sheffer got me reinstated on the freshman team I’d make it to the North-South game. I’m surprised to do so well, scoring 15 and making the All-American five.

Part 2: Ruklick’s college and pro careers