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Loras College Athletics

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Hall of Fame

Lester Teeling

  • Class
    1954
  • Induction
    1987
  • Sport(s)
    Basketball, Golf
  • Played for one of the best basketball teams in school history in 1950-51 when the Duhawks were invited to the national tournament and finished with a 23-7 record.
  • Member of the Loras distinquished 1,000 point club, despite missing nearly the entire 1951-52 season with an injury.
  • Closed his career with 1,079 points in only 72 games played (15.0 ppg).
  • Also inducted into the Loras Athletic Hall of Fame with the 1950-51 NCI basketball team in 1993.
  • I remember the basketball team traveling by car to a game in Illinois under weather conditions less than favorable. In fact, the roads were starting to freeze over and those of us riding with Father Coyne (then AD.) kept asking him to slow down because we could feel the vehicle fishtailing. He brought the car to a sudden stop in the middle of the road, got out of the car, put his hand down on the road, got back into the car and said “Yep, it is icy, fellas!”
                Speaking of Father Coyne leads me to conjure up another moment when I was standing in the Fieldhouse with “Doc” when a sales person approached and asked if Doc had anything to do with ordering equipment. Doc’s reply, “Oh no! You’ll have to go upstairs and ‘insult’ (consult) Father Coyne about that.”
                Again, many of my stories seem to involve Doc in one way or another. As Coach Dowd was instructing us in the locker room at half-time of one of our games, Doc came in laughing heartily and said, “You should have seen that girl from Clarke trying to cross the gym floor in her high heels. She slipped and fell ‘prostitute’ (prostrate) on the floor.”
                I believe it was during my senior year that the “powers-that-be” decided athletes needed to do some work to “earn our keep” so to speak. I was to check in with Doc periodically to work in the equipment room. After the best-two-out-of-three games of cribbage, Doc signed my work sheet and I was on my way (of course, I let him win so I wouldn’t place my good deal in jeopardy!).
                Bob Levington and I shared some club car moments with Miss America (Yolanda Batheze, Miss Alabama 1951) on our train ride to Albany, New York, for the NCIT. Obviously as freshmen, Bob and I put up with considerable guff from several of the seniors: Jim McCabe, Gene “Buck” Ternes, Ted Mostal, Jack Roban, Ernie Skraby, etc… This story we thought ended within several months after our return to school. Bob and I were called to the registrar’s office. By this time we had given up on receiving the autographed picture of Miss America which she had promised us, and we were thinking we were in some sort of trouble; however, the picture had arrived.
                Still later Bob received a postcard signed “Yolanda Betheze” saying she was going to be in Iowa and would like to stop at Loras for a visit and hoped she would have a chance to visit with us. End of story. The postcard was a hoax, sent to Bob by some of his college friends
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