Date: Fri 15-Mar-1996

Publication: Bee

Author: KIMH

Quick Words:

Karl-Fischer-At-Drexel

Full Text:

Karl Fischer - At Drexel

B Y K IM J. H ARMON

PHILADELPHIA, Pa. - Steve Kordish and Randy Gunther scored 2,418 points

between them in their four-year careers at Newtown High School, but neither

one of those players stepped on a basketball floor with an NCAA Division I

college program.

Karl Fischer - who scored just 183 points in his Newtown High career and

stands 77th on the all-time scoring chart - has found that very floor as a

walk-on with the NCAA tournament-bound Drexel University Dragons.

It's just plain nuts.

"It's great," Karl said, just hours before the Dragons were to fly to

Albuquerque, New Mexico, for two days of practice in preparation for their

first-round game with Memphis. "Everyone at school has started calling me

Rudy. Ever since I got on the team, people have kind of adopted me. I don't

know, everyone loves a walk-on here."

That is, a walk-on who is the first Newtown player ever to have a taste of the

NCAA Tournament.

And he earned that opportunity not so much from the talent he had as a

basketball player - achieved mostly through his off-season workouts, training

and fraternity basketball experience since leaving Newtown High - but from the

kind of perseverance not possessed by many players.

For Karl had been cut by head coach Bill Herrion in each of the last two years

and Karl, who tendered the idea of leaving Drexel for a Division III school

somewhere in Massachusetts, tried again.

"I thought about (quitting) at times," said Karl, "more so the first two years

that I got cut, the week or so after I'd think about quitting, but then I'd

realize how much I love the sport and how much I really wanted to play."

So he tried again - after talking it over with a friend, Jan Giel, the Drexel

sports information director - and his dream finally came true.

"I wanted to just burst out," Karl said, remembering when he was told he had

made the team. "I tried to hold it in, because I felt bad for everyone else

who didn't make it because everyone else had worked as hard as I did. But I've

been working at it for a long time and it's only became realistic and possible

over the past three years here when I started to develop a little more."

And although he appeared in just 15 games and scored just six points for the

26-3 Dragons, winners of the North Atlantic Conference, there is no place else

Karl would want to be.

"If I went D-III or D-II I'd have a chance to be more of a role player and my

personal stats would be better," he admitted, "but chances are I wouldn't get

the same recognition I'm getting now - not personally, but the kind of team

I'm on. I decided that the experience I'm getting now, to play with one of the

top players in the country (Malik Rose), to just playing at this level of

basketball, is incredible. I don't think anything can compare to it."

Over A Long Road

It seems awfully incongruous that a guy like Karl Fischer - who did not play

varsity as a freshman and sophomore at Newtown High, scored only 33 points as

a junior and 150 points as a senior captain - could somehow have found his way

onto a Division I basketball team.

"Back in high school," he said, "I don't think I really was developed

athletically. I was tall, but I was really skinny, and I don't think I

developed until I reached college."

It didn't help that Karl had somewhat of an injurious career with the Indians,

starting with a car accident as a junior and moving through twisted ankles and

other bumps and bruises.

"Look at my high school career," he said. "There's really nothing impressive

about it. In my junior year I got into a car accident and that hampered me and

it seems like every time I was starting to develop a little bit, get my wind

back and get my legs back, something else would happen."

He left Newtown High School with seemingly more to show for his time with the

cross country and track teams than with the basketball team. But rather than

get discouraged, rather than give up, Karl continued to hope.

He looked at several Division III schools, with the thought of playing

collegiate ball, but none had the type of engineering program he was looking

for. But Drexel, a D-I school, did. Its co-op program allows Karl - now in his

fourth year (the junior year following the pre-junior year) to study for six

months and then work with a company for six months.

Basketball, though, didn't quite fit into the mix at first.

"Freshman year, I was thinking about it," he said, "but the whole college

atmosphere overwhelmed me. I actually shied away from it. I was afraid to try

out. I didn't feel I was ready for it and hadn't developed enough for it. I

wasn't ready to make that step."

So he started playing pick up ball every night in a gym during his freshman

year. As a sophomore he joined a fraternity (Tau Kappa Epsilon) and was

playing fraternity ball even as he was being cut from his first tryouts with

Drexel. He tried out again as a pre-junior, got cut again, and gave some

thought to transferring to a small D-III school somewhere in Massachusetts.

But he didn't. Jan Giel talked him out of it.

He remained athletic, playing intramural/fraternity volleyball, football,

softball and basketball. During the summer he worked out three or four hours a

day, lifting lightly and adding on an hour or two of pickup ball every day to

get ready.

He didn't give up on the idea and neither did the Drexel players, who be

played with in the off-season, or his parents. Everyone encouraged him to keep

going, to keep trying.

His chance came again this past fall. During two nights of hard scrimmage and

practice, 15 guys fought for one spot on the team and after those two days,

when coach Herrion sat down with the players, Karl thought he had looked at

his third strike.

"I really was worried," he admitted. "I didn't think I had made it because I

really hadn't played well over that two-day period. But (coach Herrion) ended

up picking me. He told me I was really close last year, but he didn't need

anyone at my position. This year we were a little softer, a little weaker, at

the position and he picked me up."

And he walked on to a team that took full control of the North Atlantic

Conference, finishing with a 26-3 record. Karl saw time against St. Anselm,

Vermont, James Madison, Hofstra, New Hampshire, Northeastern, Boston

University, Maine, Lehigh, Vermont and the University of Maryland - Baltimore

County.

His six points came in three-point increments against Vermont and Hofstra.

"I got more playing time than I expected to," Karl admitted. "Being a walk on,

you have to accept that most likely you're not going to get a lot of playing

time. I looked at it as more of a growing experience for me. I had time to get

used to playing on that team and playing at that level of basketball, which I

hadn't done in my life."

It wasn't always easy, even for the last guy off the bench.

"I have had some times where it's been tough," Karl said. "I've gone through

stretches where I really didn't feel I belonged on the team and I felt like I

was hurting the team more than I was helping it. But the guys on the team

really helped me through that. It was like a really close family."

The family left Philadelphia on Tuesday morning for the flight down to

Albuquerque and Karl was going with the full knowledge that his role may be to

simply sit on the bench and hope.

"Realistically," he said, "I'm probably not going to get in the game, but with

the game going on I'm going to be as loud as I can and support the team as

much as I can. I know my role on the team and I have accepted my role as the

last man off the bench. I look at it, I've made the team and that's big enough

for me right now. I have next year to step up and try to prove my game."

Being a walk-on, it's NCAA policy that he has to try out again, but the

experience he gained from his first year with the Dragons has given him enough

confidence to look forward to the 1996-97 season.

"It's possible for anyone to do," Karl said. "You just have to work at it hard

enough. I went through a lot of set backs. Getting cut from the team twice,

for a lot of people, would mean there's no chance of making it here. If you

get put down, you have to keep coming back at it and back at it."

And should Drexel defeat Memphis in the first round, Karl would cheer and

celebrate as loud as George Hudgins . . . as loud as Cornelius Overby . . . as

loud as Malik Rose, the NBA-bound center.

Because Karl is a part of the team.