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SPORTS INFORMATION—2009
CIT's Gela Fondly Remembers merger Era...
CLEVELAND, OH (September 1, 2009) -The merger era was an unusual period for Case Western Reserve University and Bill Gela was certainly not your usual student-athlete.
Gela entered Case Western Reserve in the fall of 1968, a year after Case Institute of Technology and Western Reserve University federated into a single university. The engineering school is what attracted Gela.
“I wanted to go to a top notch school and Case had always been a great engineering school,” said Gela. “Being from Northeast Ohio and being able to play sports were both pluses.”
When Gela enrolled at Case Western Reserve, the two federated schools still acted separately in many ways. Students could get their degree from Case Institute of Technology, Western Reserve University, or Case Western Reserve for several years after the merger. Case and Reserve also still fielded separate athletic teams. Which team an entering student would play for was decided by their major, so Gela started his playing career as a Case Rough Rider.
“As a far I was concerned, I was going to play sports, at least at the beginning, for the Case Institute of Technology,” said Gela. “I had an idea a merger might be coming, but I didn’t know when that was going to be.”
Gela immediately became a star athlete for both Case football and golf. Gela earned four letters in both sports while earning medalist honors in the 1971 Presidents’ Athletic Conference Tournament in golf and serving as an All-PAC starting linebacker and backup quarterback for the football team. He was the only athlete in the conference to play both sports.
“I liked playing both because one’s a team sport and one’s much more of an individual sport,” Gela explained. “I’ve always enjoyed being a little bit alone on an island while golfing and at the same time have great memories of the team sport. To me it was a great combination. Playing at linebacker, where you have a tendency to get your hands mangled, I was glad the two seasons weren’t right next to each other.”
In 1970, many sports, including football were merged into a single team by Case Western Reserve. Two football teams that were arch enemies would now form a single team. The Case-Reserve rivalry dated back to 1891 and at the time of the merger, was oldest rivalry in the Midwest and third oldest in the country. Reserve defeated Case, 28-14, in the final game of the 1969 season and had won three straight meetings over the Rough Riders before the merger.
“The rivalry was still strong with the physical locations of the schools making it intriguing to say the least,” said Gela. “It was weird because the last game we played my sophomore year was against Reserve and there you are hitting and screaming at guys that six months later you were on the practice field with. It was a very unique experience to say the least.”
One might expect that uniting these two adversaries, whose players had no say in the decision, would not go smoothly, but Gela recalls that was not the case with this merger.
“In summer practice, when you have two-a-days with guys, it’s pretty easy to bond quickly because you’re all in kind of the same boat and the boat is 90 degrees and humid. You either accept one another or drive each other crazy. Everyone was pretty accepting of the merger and I did not see what you might expect with people feeling exposed by the competition.”
“In a sense I looked forward to (the merger) because it meant a higher level of talent,” Gela continued. The two schools each had some good players but overall neither was as strong as we would have liked to have been. It was fun to bring the two sides together from that standpoint, better overall talent.”
To help the merger go as smoothly as possible, co-captains were chosen, with one coming from each side. Gela would serve as co-captain for the 1970 and 1971 seasons along with his fellow linebacker Larry Costa.
Gela does not feel there was one significant occasion that defined the merger, but that the summer practices is where the team first bonded on the field. Off the field, a gesture by the former Reserve players helped bring the team together.
“A bunch of us got invited to a fraternity party at one of the houses on the Reserve side of campus after one of the first games,” Gela recalled. “It was the first time we really went beyond the team and became social friends. It was not a defining moment necessarily but it was significant. The merger was a great and unique experience and I very much enjoyed meeting the new group of guys.”
Throughout his college career, Gela continued to practice and serve as a backup quarterback, even while excelling at linebacker. Gela had been primarily a quarterback in high school while attending Columbiana High, located just outside of Youngstown. Four years of practicing at quarterback in college would finally pay off for Gela in the final game of his senior season.
“My defensive coach, Bob Del Rosa, felt after all the practice I had done that it would be cool if I could play quarterback for a game,” Gela explained. “So (Coach Del Rosa) proposed the idea to Coach (Flory) Mauriocourt and he agreed. Everyone was very supportive. It was a unique situation, not the kind of thing that would happen at a Division I school.”
Del Rosa still serves as head wrestling coach at Case Western Reserve after filling various positions, including head coach of football, baseball and tennis, in his 48-year career with the Spartans.
Gela indeed made his first collegiate start at quarterback in the final game of his senior season, a home matchup against Carnegie Mellon University. The Spartans defeated CMU, 29-19, with Gela’s two touchdowns sparking the offense. Twenty-nine points was the most Case Western Reserve had scored all season.
“I had a good game, the team had a good game, and everything just came together,” said Gela. “I had pretty much accepted that the last game of football my senior year was going to be the last game of football I ever played, so it was a fun way to go out.”
Gela graduated from Case Institute of Technology in 1972 with a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Metallurgy and Materials Science and returned to get his Masters of Science degree in Finance from Case Western Reserve in 1979. Gela has more than 25 years experience in the financial services industry, including serving as managing partner for Investment Consultants, which provides investment advising and investment monitoring services to organizations and individual investors, for the past 17 years.
Even while playing at Case, Gela had a firm grasp on the importance of balancing sports and education.
“The reality was we were students first and athletes second,” Gela explained. “Sports were not unimportant or else we wouldn’t have played them but they did not come first. Football was never something I was going to become a professional in.”
Gela still keeps tabs on Case Western Reserve football and is proud of what the team has achieved in the past several seasons.
“The last couple of years of football have been outstanding,” said Gela. “They clearly have some great players.”
HERITAGE DAY… On September 5, the Case Western Reserve University football team will pay tribute to the university’s gridiron history by wearing retro jerseys as part of the university’s first ever Heritage Day. The Spartans will face Kenyon College at 12:00 p.m., but instead of wearing their usual blue and white uniforms with the Spartan logo on the helmets, Case Western Reserve will wear a red and brown jersey with white pants.
Brown and white were the school colors for Case Institute of Technology (Rough Riders) and red and white were the colors of Western Reserve University (Red Cats). The Spartans will also wear Rough Rider and Red Cats logos on their helmets in place of the Spartan. Across the front of the retro jerseys is “CWRU”, paying tribute to all football players who competed when the school's second reference was CWRU.
ABOUT CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY … Case is among the nation's leading research institutions. Founded in 1826 and shaped by the unique merger of the Case Institute of Technology and Western Reserve University, Case is distinguished by its strengths in education, research, service, and experiential learning. Located in Cleveland, Case offers nationally recognized programs in the Arts and Sciences, Dental Medicine, Engineering, Law, Management, Medicine, Nursing, and Social Work. http://www.case.edu.