By Andy WalterDOVER — Bob Reed has lived in Dover pretty much his entire life.
So when he looks around the present-day city, it’s not difficult for him to also imagine what used to be there.
“I can ride around town and tell you all the different changes,” said Reed. “‘Well, this used to be such and such and that wasn’t even here.’”
Now the former longtime baseball coach can add Wesley College’s athletic fields and facilities to that list. Up until a couple weeks ago, the Wolverines’ baseball diamond — with its navy blue fence surrounding it — bore Reed’s name.
“When I rode by there the other day, and looked at the baseball field, I said, ‘Well, it’s going to be hard to see this when they paint that fence red,’” he said. “But things change. It isn’t ‘Bob Reed Field’ any more. It’s DelState’s.”
The 76-year-old Dover High grad has been around long enough that he can remember in the late 1950s when a group of local businessmen contributed a total of $100,000 to help keep Wesley from closing. Reed said he can count three or four times in his lifetime when it seemed like the school might shut down.
This time, though, it’s for real.
Delaware State’s acquisition of Wesley, which was finalized last week, means the end of the Wolverines’ athletic programs.
For someone like Reed, who has probably seen and been involved with Wesley athletics more than anyone, that’s not easy. From 1964 to 2001 — with only a short break to attend Maryland — Reed was involved with the Wolverines, first as a player and then as a multi-sport coach.
He was also Wesley’s athletic director for 14 years, including the stretch in the late 1980s when the Wolverines switched from playing as a two-year junior college to a four-year NCAA Division III program.
“I did everything from blowing the balls up to sweeping the floors to making out the budgets,” he joked.
Reed, who was still a regular at Wolverine games for the past two decades, saw a little bit of everything at Wesley.
In their junior-college days, the Wolverines had some great players come through its football and men’s basketball programs. Reed can remember guys going on to play at big football programs like Florida State, West Virginia, Minnesota and Wake Forest.
The post-World War II baby boom pushed the enrollments of lots of schools like Wesley to their limits.
“Anything that was bigger than a broom closet had a student living in it,” said Reed, who was an assistant coach in both football and men’s basketball. “When we were a junior college, it was fun. We were giving out scholarships. We had some really good teams.
“I talked to Mike Drass one day and he had some really good (football) teams. But he didn’t realize the caliber of kids we had.”
Reed said Wesley’s best football team of that era was probably the 1970 squad. He said at that time the Wolverines were playing in a football league with top-notch JUCO programs like Chowan, Ferrum and Nassau.
“We would have an all-star game, and there would be 100 four-year colleges looking at these kids,” said Reed. “It was really good football at the junior-college level.
“(Jim) Wentworth was doing the same thing (in basketball). In the late 60s and early 70s, it was nothing for us to have four or five kids on the team who were 6-6, 6-7 and 6-foot-8 who had a chance.”
Reed said he can remember a couple Wesley hoop players who went on to Houston and LSU.
By the 1980s, however, New Jersey and other states in the region started to open more community colleges and Wesley had much more competition for student-athletes. Reed said the school didn’t have much choice but to move into Division III.
The Wolverine football team, in particular, struggled at first. It lost its first nine Division III games to stretch its losing streak to 27 games in a row.
“We played the first year we were there in Division III,” Said Reed. “Well, we go down to Salisbury, and they’re leading the country or something like that. I’m standing there talking to the baseball coach and their team walks by us on the way to the field.
“We had all these little freshmen and sophomores and here come these juniors and seniors. They were a lot thicker and stronger than we were. It was a mismatch of sorts.”
Gradually, though, Wesley became a pretty-good school in Division III athletics.
The Wolverines reached the NCAA national semifinals six times in football, made the NCAA tournament in field hockey and men’s basketball and almost won a national title in men’s golf. Reed’s baseball teams went 249-210-7 at the Division III level.
They had 17 programs when athletics were shut down.
Wesley also upgraded its athletic facilities.
Remember, before building Miller Stadium, the Wolverines played their football games at various fields, including Dover’s Central Middle School, Dover High and Dover Air Force Base’s old high school field.
But now those facilities belong to somebody else. And Reed has a sign that says ‘Bob Reed Field’ sitting in his garage.
“I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do with it,” he said.
“It’ unfortunate,” Reed added. “I wish that DelState could have possibly done like Penn State, which has a bunch of different campuses around the state.
“It would have been an ideal place for the state of Delaware to offer some of their in-state kids an easy tuition to deal with and they could come and play Division III. That was kind of my wish.”
