The place they call home

Lyle Michelli Class of 1958

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PERU — Some will travel a thousand miles back to a place they originally call home. It was a home where youth dominated and working as a team was paramount over individual headlines. This home — St. Bede Academy — was an athletic comfort zone.

Saturday, eight men will again make headlines. They’ll collectively enter the St. Bede Athletic Hall of Fame after their dedication to sports on Academy athletic fields found them involved in thousands of swings, pitches, snaps or shots.

But one man who will enter the SBA Hall during the noon ceremony never pitched a baseball or ran a fastbreak as a Bruin.

Spring Valley’s Jerry Carls was a nine-year Academy principal and has witnessed thousands of SBA athletic contests since the decade of the 1970s. He also played a hand — along with then Athletic Director Don Carlson — in switching the school from the faraway Corn Belt Conference to the Tri-County Confer-ence.

Carls is the lone 2008 inductee, who is not a SBA alum, but that has not stopped him from bleeding green.

“I recently sat down, and I’ve estimated I’ve seen over 2,000 St. Bede games since the 1970s,” said Carls who currently is the principal at Lincoln Junior High School in LaSalle. “That’s counting freshman, sophomore and varsity games.

“I’m going in with a bunch of fabulous athletes,” Carls said about his upcoming induction. “This is kind of neat. This past summer, I learned I was selected to the Hall of Fame. I was so humbled by that call because I never expected it at all. I’m really excited to be a part of this.”

Another Bruin athlete headed to the Hall comes from one of SBA’s sports golden ages — Mike Kubera. Already a SBA Hall of Fame member as part of the 1971 football team, Kubera, who was also a standout right-handed pitcher for the Bruins, will now be individually introduced as a hall of famer on Saturday.

“It is an honor to be in there with some of the guys I played with,” said Kubera, who was a member of the SBA Class of 1973. “It is an honor to be a part of this, and to go in as an individual is a big honor.”

After his pitching days were finished at St. Bede, Kubera took the mound for the Bradley Brave baseball program. Now living in Rockford, Kubera is in the metal fabrication and laser cutting business.

Rich Dudek (Class of 1978) will also be inducted this weekend. The tall Bruin cager and first baseman/pitcher was an all-stater in both sports his senior year. One of his biggest kicks this weekend will be when he is inducted with fellow classmate and friend Tim Murphy.

Dudek dislikes the individual headlines of sporting achievements, but the SBA athlete achieved a great deal as a Bruin. He once held the single game scoring record in basketball when he dropped down 38 points against Ottawa Marquette. In baseball, he led the Bruins in hitting his senior year and only committed two errors at the first base position during the spring of 1978.

“I had a lot of personal recognition when I was at St. Bede, but I would have traded that all in for a championship or even a trip down to Champaign,” said Dudek, who now lives in suburban Philadelphia. “It is so much more important to be a part of a team. Individual accolades are nothing compared to what you can achieve as a team. Even with that, it is great to be personally recognized (this weekend).”

Also entering the SBA Hall this weekend will be:

Basketball and football star and member of the 1950 era “K Kids,” Ron Kulpa (Class of 1954).

Dr. Lyle Micheli (Class of 1958), a football player and scholar athlete, who went on to attend Harvard and was one of the founding members of the Division on Sports Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital, where since 1974 he has served as its director.

Jon Wayland (Class of 1981), a letterman in football, basketball and track. A five-time state qualifier, Wayland went to run Division I at Marquette University. He is regional vice president for Lincoln Financial Group.

Tim Murphy (Class of 1978), who was the MVP of the Bruins’ football team and played basketball and ran track. He set a new school record his senior year in basketball for a total of 120 assists and was voted Most Valuable Defensive Player in football.

And the late Michael Perona (Class of 1993), who was voted as the Most Valuable Player and All-Conference for football, basketball and baseball during his senior year. He went on to become the back-up quarterback for the University of Notre Dame for the 1996 Orange Bowl game against Florida State.

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