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Duane Schroeder (Wartburg College), CoSIDA Hall of Fame
by Larry Happel, Central College Communications Director/CoSIDA Special Awards Committee
Duane Schroeder managing the old Schield Stadium Press Box in
Waverly, IA, during a Wartburg College football game. It was the
1999 Homecoming game the season after Schroeder won the
CoSIDA Warren Berg Award.
He set the standard.
In an era when many small colleges dumped sports information duties on a part-time coach or a student, Wartburg College’s Duane Schroeder was pushing his well-worn Smith-Corona manual typewriter to its limits, hammering out weekly releases, play-by-plays, depth charts and media guides. Hall of fame men’s basketball coach Buzz Levick rarely made a road trip without Schroeder and that typewriter aboard a dimly-lit bus, making postgame treks down snowy two-lane Iowa highways.
“He was always a very busy guy,” Levick recalled.
The Loyal, Wis., native started working at Wartburg the day after his graduation in 1958. He didn’t stop until his retirement 42 years later. Schroeder dealt with nearly 400 football games and more than 1,500 basketball games in that span. Along the way, he picked up assorted responsibilities in running Wartburg’s first news bureau, while later also serving as the Iowa Conference SID (1966-92) and as the league’s secretary-treasurer (1981-2001).
His son, Randall Schroeder, notes that it takes four full-time employees to do the work Schroeder tirelessly handled solo.
Yet sports information remains the quintessential behind-the-scenes profession, and serving in that field at a small college tucked amidst the northeast Iowa cornfields back then was the athletics equivalent of the Federal Witness Protection Program.
That’s probably why it’s taken until 2017 — 13 years after he passed away while on a retirement excursion in Romania — for Schroeder to join CoSIDA’s Hall of Fame. To those who worked with him, the induction is a formality. He achieved hall of fame status in their eyes long ago.
Schroeder was a CoSIDA charter member in 1959, attending the fledgling organization’s first 10 conventions at the Bismarck Hotel in Chicago. He went at the urging of CoSIDA icon Warren Berg from rival Luther College, making it particularly meaningful for Schroeder to receive CoSIDA’s Berg Award in 1998.
The Iowa Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (IIAC) Male Scholar-Athlete of the Year Award is named in honor of the Schroeder. During much of his four decades at Wartburg, Schroeder served as the IIAC's secretary and treasurer.
Even when few other small schools took sports information seriously, the meticulous Schroeder did.
“Mistakes would drive him crazy,” Randall said. “Basketball stats had to balance or it would just eat at him.”
Schroeder was equally persistent in putting together the first record books for both Wartburg and the league.
“I remember sitting in the archives of the Wartburg library with him, recreating baseball games from World War II by going through old newspapers,” Randall Schroeder recalled.
Duane Schroeder as a young SID.
Growing up with a father who was an SID was different than having one who passed along a passion for fishing or carpentry.
“Unless I went to football or basketball games with Dad, I never saw him on weekends,” said Randall, now a librarian for the State Historical Society of Iowa. “That was my quality time with him, which is why I’m so useless with tools. I don’t know how to use a hammer but I can tell you the difference between a dead ball rebound and a team rebound.”
He compiled league statistics by hand each Monday night, using dutifully transcribed numbers from his faithful secretary Mardella, who took them over the phone from league SIDs earlier in the day. A couple of schools were habitually negligent in reporting and Schroeder had no hesitation in letting the world know about it. You could almost feel the irritation oozing through the bottom of the page where it read: “(School name) did not report. DS.”
Schroeder wasn’t a spin doctor, and sportswriters loved him for it. He was he the go-to for accurate information and honest assessments.
“If Wartburg’s team wasn’t any good, he wouldn’t blow you any smoke,” one writer said appreciatively.
Yet Schroeder’s obsession with his work couldn’t mask his dry wit.
“He always had a sense of humor,” Levick said. “You’d never see him have a bad day.”
Schroeder’s familiar chuckles and snorts were a staple in the cramped old Wartburg press box, which made it an enjoyable spot to spend a Saturday afternoon. Many Wartburg teams were powerhouses, but on game day, Schroeder usually expected the worst for his beloved Knights. In the late ‘80s, when one of Wartburg’s less-memorable football squads was preparing to take on a league favorite, a bubbly young student press box worker noted that day’s homecoming crowd would release helium-filled balloons when the Knights scored their first touchdown.
Schroeder fired back without even looking up.
“What are they going to do with the balloons at the end of the game?” he cracked.
Schroeder was admittedly not an early adopter of new technology — he termed his office’s first computer “a glorified typewriter” — but he wasn’t a curmudgeon. He was among the first SIDs to embrace women’s athletics, providing women’s teams the same statistical and promotional support as the men’s squads and insisting the word “Lady” not accompany the Knights’ nickname.
The short, round-faced man was a giant. Inducted into Wartburg’s hall of fame in 2002, Schroeder’s impact is still felt by the many SIDs he mentored.
As Levick recalled, “Duane Schroeder was very special.”
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