Indiana University of Pennsylvania Athletics

One could literally fill a book with the achievements and experiences enjoyed by Chuck Klausing in a coaching career that has covered  the past 50 years. (As a matter of fact, one has been written and will be on bookstore shelves around the nation in time for Christmas.)

For thousands of IUP alumni and the Indiana area community, a special part of that book will deal with the six football teams Klausing put on the George P. Miller Stadium field from 1964 through 1969. And among those, it is the 1968 entrant that offers for many the most vivid image in IUP sports history.

In that year, the Indians advanced to their first postseason
game, the Boardwalk Bowl played in Convention Hall in Atlantic City. They challenged the heavily favored University of Delaware to a virtual draw, kicking a field goal to go ahead 24-23 with a minute to (before falling 31-24 in the final seconds).

 That was only part, though, of a six-year IUP record of 47-10. Klausing's win percentage of .825 is just shy of the all-time best .832 current head coach Frank Cignetti has posted since 1986. Besides 1968's 9-1 mark, the Indians posted records (in order) of 8-2, 7-3, 7-2, 8-1 in '67 and another 8-1 in '69.

Klausing also served IUP as athletic director. His tenure was distinguished not only by highly winning football and men's basketball teams but by the university reinstituting swimming and soccer programs, sponsoring a viable cross country team, and preparing for the launching of women's varsity sports.

After IUP, he became associate head football coach at West Virginia University, head coach at Carnegie Mellon, associate head coach at Pitt, then completed his resume of full-time posts as gridiron mentor at the Kiski School in nearby Saltsburg.  At CMU, he compiled a stellar 75-15-2 record, won six conference championships, advanced to four NCAA Division III national playoffs and won the Lambert Trophy as the best small college team in the East in 1979. He was named ABC­ TV's College Coach of the Year then and in 1983.

Small wonder that 1,000 high school student-athletes continue to come to the summer football camps he offers across a wide geographic spectrum each summer.
Or that the Slippery Rock grad has transferred his expertise to teaching American football to national teams in Switzerland, Austria and Italy so well that his eighth Hall of Fame induction will be in Austria next month.  
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A vital part of what is coming to be the Klausing legend is due in good part to wife Joan, their four daughters and one son.