It’s a story Karl Baum will never forget. One that foreshadowed exchanging his wrestling headgear for a pair of track shoes when the season and program ended last year.

Following a meet, the team stopped at McDonald’s and Starbucks for food. Baum and his teammates realized that the bus that brought them was gone.

‘We see assistant coach John Datallo walk from Starbucks,” Baum said. ‘He’s looking around where the bus is and you could see the smoke coming out of his eyes. All of a sudden, Datallo stops and says he’s going after the bus. So he takes off, runs sideways right across the six-lane highway, and he runs all the way back to where the meet was.

“The bus went back to get the coach, but I guess he didn’t know that. So he ran three miles, and we’re just sitting in McDonald’s dying of laughter.’

Baum enjoyed his SU wrestling experience, taking up a sport he excelled at in high school and finishing last season at .500 (10-10). But with wrestling gone, Baum will be running more than the three miles Datallo desperately trekked last year. Baum is now a member of the cross-country indoor track and outdoor track teams.

His best accomplishment this year came when he finished third in Seton Hall’s Last Chance qualifying meet during the indoor season. Although Baum runs track, he still keeps up with wrestling by coaching his 15-year-old brother Luke, who finished 30-7 and saw postseason action in his freshman year of high school.

‘During the summer we got out to the open mats,’ said Luke Baum. ‘He watches me and lets me know if I’m doing something wrong, and he always comes from college to see big events like sectionals. He’s my No. 1 fan.”

Baum gave Luke money to buy a 10-by-10-foot wrestling mat placed in the basement of their Ontario home, about an hour-and-a-half drive from Syracuse.

Baum continues to be active at SU, involving himself in kid-oriented community service events such as Kidfest. Baum is also the president of the Phi Sigma Pi fraternity.

Published on April 24, 2002 at 12:00 pm