Indiana University of Pennsylvania Athletics

Barb and Larry Kubala began their long association with IUP back in 1963. when they arrived on campus as freshmen. They expected to move on after graduation, but eventually chose to stay and carve out careers in Indiana.

The Kubalas have been selected as recipients of the honorary Bell Ringer Award in recognition of their enthusiastic support of IUP athletics. They are avid fans of the Crimson Hawks who rarely miss a home football or basketball game and often travel to road games.

Larry graduated from IUP in 1968 with a degree in English. Barb also received her diploma that year, in art education, and then earned a master’s degree in art education from IUP in 1973.

Larry served as senior vice president at First Commonwealth Bank in Indiana for 22 years before retiring. He had previously worked as assistant vice president at PNC Bank in Indiana. Barb was an art instructor in the Indiana Area School District from 1968 to 1999.

The Kubalas have been involved with IUP in numerous ways, as volunteers, leaders and contributors. Both were active in the formation of and continued growth of the University Museum as members of the board of directors, and have volunteered their time to organize and hang shows in the museum.

Over the years, the Kubalas have served on various committees on campus, such as the Leadership Society, the Division of University Advancement’s Athletic Council and the College of Arts and Humanities Advancement Council. They have also established two scholarships in IUP’s Endowed Scholarship Program.

The Kubalas reside in Indiana. They have a son, Michael, a 1989 grad, and three grandchildren.
 

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Personal Reflection: 

We came to IUP as wide-eyed freshman intending, as most people do, to use IUP as a temporary stop on our way to bigger and better things and the rest of our lives.  

But fortunate circumstances in the way of career choices kept us here and IUP became an integral part of our lives ever since.

We applied for admission to Indiana State Teachers College, it quickly becoming Indiana State College, then Indiana University of Pennsylvania, all, it seems, in the blink of an eye.

When asked to recall some of our experiences as students, we remembered meeting new roommates in long-gone Langham Hall and first floor Sutton (yes, it once was a women’s dorm). With about 4,200 students you got to meet a lot of people, but the classes weren’t large enough to hide from the professor, or to cut class unnoticed.

Long lost details such as Freshman Week and wearing those silly dinks, family style dinners in Thomas Sutton dining hall, Saturday night dances at the Union with live bands, Miller’s Sub Shop when you missed dinner, Harry’s Pizza (10 cents a slice, 12 cents with pepperoni) and ordering 30 to 40 slices for the dorm.

Study hours from 7 to 9 p.m., house mothers in each dorm who made sure girls were in by 10 on weeknights and midnight on weekends, getting “campused” if you were late, room checks, girls having to wear skirts for dinner and if they walked downtown (circumvented by wearing shorts with a raincoat to hide them).

Fraternity and sorority rushes and pledging and the pledge night dance in Waller, Greek Sing which was taken very seriously, formal pinnings and a toss the guy into a fountain, working on homecoming floats for weeks at a time, turning out artistic floats with only chicken wire and boxes of tissue pomps.

And we were exposed to culture with Swing-Out musicals produced by the incomparable duo of Ensley and Davis, who took everyday students and produced a Broadway-caliber musical in Fisher Auditorium, world-famous entertainers, symphonies, renowned speakers and faculty recitals. This cultural experience continues to this day, and is one of the many reasons staying in Indiana was the best choice of our lives.

Sports. IUP has long been the envy of the conference and continues to excel by turning out national championship-level teams with academically outstanding athletes. We’ve followed the success of many of our teams, have met the athletes, their parents and family, and are so proud to have been a part of helping the development of athletics.

We are equally proud of the IUP marching band and its excellence over the years. It is truly the best student ambassador group for recruiting future students. Saturday afternoons in Miller Stadium and Wednesday and Saturday nights in the Kovalchick Center for women’s and men’s basketball have added to our lives in Indiana.

Looking back on our years as students and alumni of IUP, we don’t think we would exchange any experience we had. Life would not have been nearly so exciting without IUP.
 

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