4 Seniors from Fenwick Named 2021 Evans Caddie Scholars

Quartet joins more than 15 other Friars, now enrolled at universities around the country, who are fellow recipients of the golf-related, four-year full scholarship.

The Western Golf Association (WGA) and its Evans Scholars Foundation have released the names of four Fenwick High School seniors (in alphabetical order) who will receive the Chick Evans Caddie Scholarship for the 2021-25 school years:

Jason Cruz (left) of Chicago/Chicago Academy Elementary School (Sunset Ridge Country Club, Northfield) – Marquette University (Milwaukee, Wisconsin)

Cristian Garcia (right) of Chicago/George Rogers Clark Elementary School (Briarwood Country Club, Deerfield) – University of Illinois (Urbana/ Champaign)

Rafal Sieklucki (left) of Chicago/St. Constance (Ridgemoor Country Club, Harwood Heights) – Miami University (Oxford, Ohio)

Alessandra Zuleta (below) of Cicero, IL/Saint Frances of Rome School(Glen View Club, Golf, IL) – Northwestern University (Evanston, Illinois), probable

Alessandra Zuleta

The four soon-to-be graduates will join more than 15 other former Fenwick students presently enrolled in universities as Evans Scholars, including six from the Class of 2020. (Recent alumnus Gabriel Ruggie ’20, of River Forest, IL/St. Luke Parish School and Oak Park Country Club, was awarded the scholarship after completing his first semester of studies at the University of Wisconsin – Madison.) Each award covers full tuition and housing for four years. An additional 256 Evans Scholarships are being awarded to other Class of ’21 caddies from around the United States.

“The Evans Scholarship Program has provided a truly exceptional opportunity to our students over the years,” said Emily Anderson, one of two college counselors at Fenwick. “Again this year, the selection committee has granted full scholarships to these four seniors. We are proud and grateful.”

Chick Evans

Legendary amateur golfer Charles “Chick” Evans (left, 1890-1979) aspired to send deserving caddies to college. Sponsoring country clubs can nominate a young man or woman possessing “a strong caddie record, excellent grades, outstanding character and demonstrated financial need,” according to the WGA.

Evans Scholarship Facts

Since they were first awarded to NU students in 1930, more than 11,000 young men and women have been awarded Evans Scholarships to some of the nation’s top universities. Presently, 965 students receive the award. On campus, they live together in a Scholarship House owned by the WGA’s Evans Scholars Foundation. Four additional statistics:

  1. The average value of an Evans Scholarship is $100,000
  2. The college graduation rate for Evans Scholars is 95%
  3. Evans Scholars’ collective, cumulative GPA is 3.3
  4. The program’s scholarship costs exceed $20 million annually

Collegiate Friars: August 2020

Catching up with recent college graduates and 2016 Fenwick classmates Bridget Corcoran and Brendan Jones.

BRIDGET CORCORAN

Fenwick Graduation: 2016
Hometown: Elmhurst, IL
Grade School: Visitation
College: Saint Louis University
Major: Investigative and Medical Sciences (IMS)

Internship: My sophomore year at SLU I accepted a position at St. Louis Children’s hospital as a phlebotomist and laboratory assistant. I had the opportunity to work with the greatest kids, exercise the diagnostic laboratory science I learned at SLU, and collaborate with some of the most prestigious pediatric medical professionals.

Career aspirations: I am applying to Physician Assistant (PA) schools all across the country. I have three interview offers already and cannot wait to see where I end up!

Fenwick achievements/activities: Some of my activities at Fenwick included: 4 years on the Poms team, 3 years on the soccer team, Banua, Write Place tutor, Friar Mentor, Latin Club, Illinois State Scholar and Student Council.

Fenwick teacher who had the most influence on you: Although it is almost impossible to pick just one, I would have to say Mr. Trankina. Taking Anatomy with Mr. Trankina my senior year was my first didactic medical experience and really got me excited about pursuing a career as a PA. He also went out of his way to help tutor me in AP Chemistry during my study hall, which really showed his dedication to his students and their success.

Fenwick class that had the most influence on you: Besides Anatomy, a close second in my most influential Fenwick classes would have to be AP Language and Composition (APLAC) with Mrs. Visteen and Mr. O’Connor. It was my first purely discussion-based class on such a wide variety of topics that it undoubtedly prepared me the best for college classes.

Best Fenwick experience/the one you would like to live again: I would easily choose to relive my Poms performances at the homecoming pep rallies every year. During these performances, I felt so much pride in being a Friar and loved every minute of energizing the crowd with a dance we put so much hard work into. I can definitely still remember the choreography for these dances four years later!

What Fenwick experience changed you the most: My four years participating as an Irish dancer in Banua taught me so much about supporting my classmates, appreciating our talent diversity, and working hard to put on the best show. The love and support I felt from the Fenwick community during Banua season was undeniable and showed me how lucky I was to attend a high school with such an uplifting environment.

BRENDAN JONES

Screen Shot 2020-07-27 at 9.10.42 PM

Fenwick Graduation: 2016
Hometown: Riverside, IL
Grade School: St. Mary’s
College: Marquette University
Major: Economics

Post-graduate plans: After graduating from Marquette University in May, I was fortunate enough to accept a position as an Operations Assistant at Guaranteed Rate in Chicago. I help mortgage brokers and their clients throughout the lending process. During these hard times, it is rewarding to help people make their dreams of buying a home come true.

Continue reading “Collegiate Friars: August 2020”

More than a Half-century Later, Fenwick Is Still Teaching Lessons to #254

How did a rough-and-tumble kid survive being a gang member on Chicago’s mean streets in the early 1960s to become a successful entrepreneur? Fenwick had something to do with it — as did his nearly lifelong love of boxing.

Introduction

Terracina’s 1964 Fenwick Yearbook photo.

There were 269 students in Roy Terracina’s 1964 graduating class at Fenwick. His academic rank among those boys was near the bottom: 254. “That’s why I wear these cuff-links,” the businessman and entrepreneur explained to three groups of current students in mid-April, standing on stage in the school’s auditorium and pointing to his wrist. “These remind me of where I was and where I started. I ran with a gang and got into trouble,” Mr. Terracina admitted. But he also stuck it out and got through Fenwick, by the grace of God.

His message to today’s Friars included anecdotes about some of his mistakes, his great love of family and his understanding of how faith has played an important role in his life. “My purpose is simple: to reach the bottom half of each class,” Terracina shared, “and to give them hope that the education they are getting is preparing them for the future; that the combination of studies and peer motivation mixes to make this a special, four-year education. I wanted a message of how special their time is here at Fenwick, even though they may not realize it today.”

After his high-school graduation, Terracina attended Marquette University in Milwaukee, WI, where he majored in finance. In the early 1990s he borrowed $1 million from a bank and bought Sterling Foods to provide packaged food to the military during the first Gulf War in Iraq. Eleven years later, Terracina sold the food-packaging business and transitioned to his present career at US Global Investors and CEO of Sunshine Ventures, Inc. (See bio.)

Mr. T settled in on stage at Fenwick and felt right at home. “I remember this place,” he told students earlier this spring.

“I speak to youth groups and groups of young entrepreneurs about 10 to 15 times a year,” Terracina told the Friar Files. “However, no experience matches speaking at a place that means so much to me, as Fenwick truly changed my life.” Fenwick is unlike most places he talks, “where I normally have to ask the teachers to keep things orderly,” he shared. “Recently, I had to send a group to the principal’s office at a local elementary school in my home base of San Antonio. But Fenwick students indeed are different: well behaved and sponges for learning.”

Here is Roy’s story, in his own words:

“If I Had My Life to Live Over”

By Roy Terracina ’64

My teen years where filled with family stability, hard work with my father and a lot of confusion over who or what I was. I would travel by bus, elevated train and walk to get to a high school, Fenwick, that I didn’t feel a part of.  I knew going to Fenwick was the right thing to do, but I knew it because I was told it was as opposed to ‘feeling’ it was.

My freshman year was particularly puzzling because my close friends from my younger years were all going to either public schools, or a much less academic Catholic school. My evenings as a student were filled with friends who attended mostly public schools and were learning trades, while I was trying to learn Latin and physics. The childhood friends quickly saw that I was different, as did my peers at Fenwick. So the reality is that I didn’t fit into either place. I felt lost, confused, bewildered and went with the flow of the day. When my friends were out on weeknights doing what inner-city kids did, I was to be home studying, but my heart and mind were not there.

I did what I had to do to get by, and yet found myself working twice as hard as my neighborhood friends, and still not keeping up with the Fenwick standards. I was small, and in a football-first high school at the time, did not manage to engage in sports.

In the neighborhood, we were out making trouble: fighting, chasing girls and, in general, not doing the things I needed to do to build my academic career. I found out that I loved competition, especially in sports, and particularly liked to lose my temper and fight. My friends would use me as the guy who would tease others into fighting since I looked like an easy mark. When I would get into it with someone much larger, the rest of my friends would jump in and “handle the situation,” and eventually I got tired of that and learned that my speed was enough to outmaneuver most larger boys.

Continue reading “More than a Half-century Later, Fenwick Is Still Teaching Lessons to #254”

If These Halls Could Talk: The Hilarious Case of Maguire University

How the fictitious ‘school’ came to be – even though it never was a real college.

By Mark Vruno

The more I learn about Maguire University, the more my stomach hurts from laughing. It is difficult not to laugh, or at least smile and smirk a little. I first caught wind of Maguire U last winter in the Faculty Cafeteria at Fenwick, sitting and chewing the proverbial fat with John Quinn ’76, Fenwick alumnus, longtime social studies teacher and Catholic League Hall of Fame basketball coach.

The conversation turned to the late, great John Lattner, who had passed away about a year earlier. Mr. Quinn was laughing, almost snorting, between bites: “Did you ever hear about Maguire University?” he chuckled, nearly choking. No, I had never heard of that school, I said, wondering what the heck was so funny. Little did I know!

It is good that Quinn is one of Fenwick’s unofficial school historians because, as it turns out, there is nothing official about Maguire U. The infamous university was “created” 55 years ago in a semi-respectable Madison Street establishment in nearby Forest Park called, what else: Maguire’s. With the annual March Madness basketball craze upon us, this is how the story goes …

Humble Beginnings

The athletic recruiting game was quite different, for both Catholic high schools and major college sports programs, in the 1960s – three decades before the Internet was birthed and long before “social” media platforms such as Twitter reared their electronic heads. Back then, if a coach wanted an eighth-grader to play for him at a certain high school, it was in his best interest to find out where the kid’s old man hung out socially and maybe get invited to a confirmation or graduation party.

It wasn’t much different for college coaches recruiting Chicago-area talent, particularly for the football gridiron and hardwood basketball courts. They knew where to go to meet a concentration of high school coaches in the city: Maguire’s.

Every February Chicago Catholic League (CCL) football coaches congregate at the league’s annual clinic in Oak Park at Fenwick, where the powwow has been held every winter for the past 72 years. Older fans will recall that, in the 1960s and ’70s, Fenwick and the CCL were recruiting hotbeds for Big Ten football coaches, including University of Michigan legend Bo Schembechler. Some coaches also may recall that, a few years back, a keg could be found tapped in the school’s lower-level student “green” cafeteria, where the post-clinic fraternizing commenced. Nowadays the coaches toast their religion and each other on Madison Street in Forest Park, which is exactly where the college coaches knew where to find them back in the day.

The Fat Duck Tavern & Grill now sets across the street in Forest Park from where Maguire’s used to be.

Giving the tavern a school’s name originally was the brainchild of college recruiters in town to woo the coaches of prospects from Chicago. Telling their athletic directors, to whom they reported back at the real universities, that they were conducting business at “Maguire University” sounded more respectable than Maguire’s Pub. Hence, the pseudonym was born.

Continue reading “If These Halls Could Talk: The Hilarious Case of Maguire University”