- The
road to Rhodes
After seeing first-hand how poverty affected children's health, College senior
Lipika Goyal had some ideas about how to improve the situation. Her studies
as a Rhodes Scholar aim to further that goal.
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Jan.
18, 2001
STAFF Q&A/A former track star once hounded by recruiters protects young
athletesÕ right to be kids.
“I think there’s
a purity that exists in collegiate sport that does not exist at the professional
level.”
BY SARA MARCUS
Cochran-Fikes with his Penn
Relays medal
__________________
DENIS ELTON COCHRAN-FIKES
Position:
Compliance Coordinator, Athletics Department
Length of service:
16 years
Other stuff:
Inducted into Penn’s Athletic Hall of Fame in November; voted
1983 New England Coach of the Year while coaching at Harvard;
was director of DuBois College House in the late ’70s.
__________________
Photo by Candace diCarlo
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The West Philadelphia home Denis Elton Cochran-Fikes (C’74,WG’79)
shares with his wife, Doris, is known as the “Dor-Den,” a quirky
conglomeration of glass-doored display cases showing off the couple’s
collections — including teapots, pressed-glass dishes, Penn memorabilia
and black Santas.
Denis Elton estimates that his black Santa collection clocks in at over
750 items. He’s got porcelain Santas and brushed-pottery Santas,
Santas that wiggle their hips and Santas with saxophones. There’s
a whole baseball team of black Santas, and there’s even a big Santa
on a pedestal whose roly-poly stomach quakes up and down as he leans back
and emits a prolonged, robust belly-laugh.
The Dor-Denizens are an all-Penn family. Doris (C’72) is director
of secondary school communications in Undergraduate Admissions.
Two years ago, Denis Elton switched jobs from associate director of athletics
to the less-demanding position of compliance coordinator “to have
more time for Doris and I” — and, perhaps, for collecting —
while remaining true to his other two passions: collegiate athletics and
Penn.
Q. You were recently inducted into Penn’s Athletic Hall of Fame for
your stellar undergraduate running career here, including setting Penn’s
mile record of 3:55. When did you set that record?
A. The current Penn mile record, I established in April of ’74.
I broke my first Penn mile record as a freshman, and just kept breaking
it and breaking it and breaking it. All in all, by the time I graduated,
I had set or broken about 25 middle-distance records.
Q. When did you start running?
A. In my freshman year of high school. Each student at my school was
required to participate in some kind of physical activity. At that point
in my life I was very unathletic; I was your typical bookworm. But my
sister’s ex-boyfriend was the new freshman track coach at my high
school, so I decided that I would join the track team, and I could just
sort of follow Eddie around, and I wouldn’t have to do anything.
Unfortunately, a week or so into school, there was a freshman field day.
I ran a half-mile. I finished second in the race, and the person who finished
ahead of me elected to join the basketball team. So at that point I appeared
to be the best freshman half-miler. Eddie decided that since I was signed
up for the track team, that I actually had to train and compete.
My transition from a non-athlete to an athlete happened very quickly.
That first year I lost about 25 pounds. By the end of my freshman year
I had established two or three New York state freshman records, and in
the rest of my high school career I continued to set state records. It
was a real storybook career as a high schooler, very heavily recruited
by all of the top colleges.
At that point, the recruiting rules that I now find myself monitoring
[for my job] were very different. There was one trip — the school
will remain nameless — but I went on a trip with a friend of mine,
we flew to the school, and they had this Cadillac convertible waiting
for us with the coach. As we entered campus, all of a sudden this band
started playing. And the banner as we went onto the main campus said,
“Welcome Denis and Joe.” Those kinds of recruiting things don’t
happen any more. At least I hope they don’t.
Now we have rules that limit phone calls you can make to a recruit, the
number of visits you can make to a recruit’s home, the number of
visits a recruit can make to your campus, all kinds of things. And I do
think that these rules are good. It makes it much more relaxed for the
prospect, so that he or she can actually be a high school student.
Q. Your first athletics job was in the Harvard athletic department. Why
did you leave Harvard for Penn?
A. Penn is my alma mater. I have a strong history here at Penn. I
love Penn. Boston was not a city I felt that I wanted to grow old in,
and Philly is that kind of town. The people in the Philadelphia area are
more tolerant, they’re more welcoming of people with differences.
University City just felt like home.
Q. What’s your job about?
A. My role as the compliance coordinator is to assist the University
in developing processes, procedures for causing us to be in compliance
with NCAA, Ivy League, the ECAC, other sport governing bodies’ rules,
so that our athletes and our institution can participate in intercollegiate
athletics.
Q. Why did you choose to work in collegiate athletics?
A. I think there’s a purity that exists in collegiate sport,
or in amateur sport generally, that does not exist at the professional
level. In professional athletics, when you go into competition, the competition
is against the best. In collegiate athletics, the competition is not necessarily
against the best athletes. So other things come into the mix. Coaching
plays a much larger role. At the college level, there’s still an
opportunity to have a substantial impact on those individuals as persons,
and to observe them in their growth as athletes. To have them mature physically
and mentally is a very powerful thing to observe.
And I also have a very strong commitment to academics. I couldn’t
think of anything I would rather be doing than working a job in an academic
atmosphere involving athletics.
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