Stadium needed to remember legend

Tyler Scott

Mast Guest Sports Columnist

So what are you going to do with your one wild and precious life? This week a PLU legend will celebrate his 80th birthday.

As a student who never had the opportunity to watch Frosty Westering coach a PLU football team, I wanted to learn more about this legendary figure. After some online maneuvering, I found a few articles posted in the football section of the PLU athletics Web site. What I found amazed me.

The site features multiple articles from Sports Illustrated, one from ESPN The Magazine and one from the winter 2003 issue of PLU’s Scene Magazine. All of these articles offered a glimpse into the coach who established EMAL football, the man who brought tiny Pacific Lutheran University national recognition in the realm of sports.

I have had the privilege of meeting Frosty on one occasion, and all I can say is that his presence alone makes you smile and appreciate all the world that is around you. From what I have read in articles and heard from first-hand accounts, the man embodies PLU’s motto of the wild and precious life. Even better, his attitude and personality has inspired countless others to do the same.

After reading these articles and talking to people who have known him for years, I can’t help but ask myself why Frosty, only five years removed from his retirement, is hardly referenced in the greater context of Pacific Lutheran University.

A tour of the campus offers a brief glimpse into the history of each building. Yet somehow, the name of one of the most influential people who ever stepped foot on this campus is never even uttered.

During a scholarship interview, one of the faculty members asked me why I wanted to attend PLU. I explained that I saw a university that challenged its students to live a life worthy of recognition, and I saw a university where I could have an impact. The challenge of the wild and precious life fascinated me, and I enrolled in an attempt to find a way that I could both leave a lasting impression on the university while, at the same time, allowing the university to leave a lasting impression on me.

A couple weeks ago, I spoke to a few students who expressed the need for a football stadium on campus. They explained to me that such a facility would foster incomprehensible growth to the already outstanding campus atmosphere.

I heard murmurs of agreement after the article was published. I saw smiles on people’s faces when they thought of the potential for all of the campus growth. After witnessing the response, I began to feel somewhat ashamed.

I could devote thousands of words to the facts about how Pacific Lutheran is the only university out of the seven that play football in the Northwest Conference without an on-campus football stadium.

I could write countless articles detailing the lack of decent athletic facilities, about the nearly ten football players to one showerhead after practice, or the fact that the locker rooms haven’t really been improved since being built in 1969. I could mention the 14-by-10 foot full-color video display screen that Linfield recently installed in its on-campus stadium.

The fact is that there are countless angles I could take on this article, numerous facts and statistics that I could detail to reveal the need and logic for an on-campus facility that can support football, soccer, graduation ceremonies and all kinds of major events. But through it all, I find myself captured by the image of Frosty and the wild and precious life.

There is no building on campus named after Frosty in a way that recognizes his contribution to the school. Those names are typically reserved for big financial donors. But isn’t this a betrayal by the school of its own call to existential authenticity and fulfillment?

I find it ironic that Pacific Lutheran University offers countless events to help us discover our own identity and purpose, yet in some ways it disregards the man who completely embodied this idea for nearly 40 years on this very campus.

Perhaps the goal for our one wild and precious life is the financial bottom-line. Perhaps it is pure academics and nothing else. I find both of those thoughts ignorant and closed-minded. I believe that the tour of the Pacific Lutheran campus should end at a stadium named after the man who taught PLU’s motto long before it was PLU’s motto.

I believe the name Frosty Westering is one that should resound around campus each and every day, a constant reminder that Mary Oliver’s words are not empty clichés, but a true possibility.
What are you going to do with your one wild and precious life? Are you going to disregard something as unnecessary simply because it might not contribute directly to academics? Or are you going to embrace a legacy of authenticity and recognize the impact that can take place outside the classroom?

I believe I have found my chance to impact this university. I will do everything I can to ensure that someone who has left such an impact on thousands of lives is not confined to a plaque in Olson Auditorium or a single page on the Athletic Department Website.

Frosty celebrates his 80th birthday Dec. 5, 80 years of touching lives and pushing students to achieve what they never thought possible. I only hope I am not the only student who believes Pacific Lutheran University needs to stand behind its own challenge.

Photo from Mast Archives

Coach Frosty Westering talks with his players during one of his seasons as head coach of the PLU football team. A new football stadium could potentially be named after Frosty.