Award presentation ‘great thrill’ for Frederick

By Chuck Woodling     May 12, 2004

About this time three years ago, Bob Frederick announced he was stepping down as Kansas University’s athletic director after 14 years in the post.

Since then, Frederick has maintained a low profile, teaching sports management and marketing courses in the KU School of Education. His only connection with KU athletics has been as a fan.

With one exception.

Frederick, 64, shows up every May for the annual presentation of the plaque that bears his name — the Robert Frederick KU Senior Scholar-Athlete Award. After Frederick stepped down in late April of 2001, KU officials recognized Frederick’s commitment to academics by tacking his name on the annual award.

Thus, on Monday night, Frederick was at the Holidome to fete this year’s honorees — baseball first baseman Ryan Baty and volleyball outside hitter Sarah Rome.

“It’s a great thrill for me to be there,” Frederick said. “I had Ryan in class last year — he’s a really good student — and I’ve watched Sarah from being a volleyball fan.”

The KU athletic department, in conjunction with the K-Club, began honoring the top male and female senior student-athletes under Frederick’s watch in 1992, yet he declines to take credit for its inception.

“It just evolved,” he said. “At some point, our policy group decided to recognize a senior male and female for their accomplishments both in academics and athletics.”

Frederick’s only regret is that the university made the athletic department change the traditional time frame for its presentation.

“We used to have it on Stop Day,” he said, “because we knew all the student-athletes couldn’t be on the road and we always had a great faculty turnout. Then the university asked us to stop because they didn’t want any activities at all on Stop Day.”

Stop Day is the 24-hour period between the last day of classes and the start of final exams. Thursday, for example, is the last day of spring semester classes, Friday is Stop Day and finals will begin Monday.

So, to avoid weekends when spring sports teams are competing, the awards ceremony must be conducted on a school night, in some cases after the conclusion of practice.

“It’s unfortunate,” Frederick said.

Frederick speaks as a professor now, not an administrator. This semester he has 73 students in a sports marketing class and 53 students in a graduate class in sports administration. In addition, he’ll teach a sports management class this summer.

In his spare time, Frederick and his wife, Margey, who runs the KU Visitors Center, keep tabs on their four sons. Oldest son Brian, who once taught at Lawrence High, is a doctorate student at Colorado University studying journalism and mass media.

“He’s going to China pretty soon,” Frederick said, “to do research on basketball and the globalization of the NBA.”

Brad, who was a member of Lawrence High’s 1995 Class 6A state championship basketball team, has completed his fourth season as a men’s basketball staffer at Vanderbilt University under former KU aide Kevin Stallings.

Mark, also a former LHS basketball player, spent last season as a basketball walk-on at Kansas State, and plans to return to Manhattan next season, his father said.

Chris is a freshman at Kansas University and, it would appear, the first member of the Frederick clan who will earn a degree from KU since his parents. Brian owns degrees from Iowa and North Carolina. Brad also went to school in Chapel Hill, N.C., where he spent four years on the basketball team.

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