RICHMOND, Ky. – Before he was a legendary coach – before all the conference championships, Coach of the Year awards, All-Americans and Olympians – Rick Erdmann was a paperboy.
 
The son of a grade school teacher and a steel mill worker, Erdmann pedaled the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette to residents of Ligonier, Pennsylvania, a rural hamlet nestled in the state's mountainous southwest.
 
The rugged, blue-collar region taught Erdmann the values of hard work and perseverance.
 
When he was in high school, Erdmann took a summer job in New England, harvesting tobacco in the Connecticut River Valley. He lived in a Quonset hut and made 75 cents per hour. It was grueling work – likely a violation of labor laws, Erdmann quipped – and many of the hired hands hitchhiked home. But Erdmann saw it through.
 
Western Pennsylvania also instilled into Erdmann a love of football.
 
Erdmann grew up in Ligonier; however, he was born 20 miles west in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. Latrobe is also the birthplace of Arnold Palmer, the banana split, Rolling Rock beer and – legend has it – professional American football.
 
At that time, the best football players in the world came from the steel towns of western Pennsylvania.
 
"Florida produces a lot of football talent now," Erdmann said. "But in the 1950s, the University of Miami beat Pitt in a bowl game, and all 22 of Miami's starters were from western Pennsylvania."
 
Erdmann was not one of the best football players in the world. But, he was a football player – a strong, speedy halfback who, in 1960, earned a partial scholarship to play at Ashland College (now Ashland University) in northern Ohio.
 
College, as it often does, broadened Erdmann's horizons.
 
Specifically … other sports existed beyond football!
 
In Ligonier, football was life. What were all these newfangled games?
 
One sport, in particular, captured Erdmann's attention … track and field.
 
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Racing is one of the most primitive and purest forms of competition. The finality of a foot race appeals to Erdmann's competitive nature.
 
"In football, a lot of guys liked to talk about who was the fastest," Erdmann said. "In track, you lined up and settled it."
 
Erdmann joined Ashland's track squad as a sprinter, and he was a member of several record-breaking relay teams.
 
He also discovered a knack for distance running.
 
"Every year, around Thanksgiving, our track coach made the sprinters run a six-mile race, and I always won it," Erdmann said. "One year, as a prize, he gave me a live turkey."
 
This was a lucky turkey, as Erdmann is a renowned champion of defenseless animals.
 
"I let it go in the woods," he said, proudly.
 
When he was a senior at Ashland, Erdmann and a few buddies drove down Interstate 75 to Daytona Beach, Florida for spring break (Erdmann hitchhiked home from the trip, but that's another story altogether).
 
Along the way, they stopped in a town called Richmond, Kentucky so Erdmann could apply for a graduate assistantship in Eastern Kentucky University's physical education department.
 

He got the position.
 
From 1965 to 1966, Erdmann lived in the now-defunct Dupree Hall and earned an M.A. in education from EKU.
 
His fellow graduate assistants that year? Jim Ward – who won 628 games as EKU's head baseball coach from 1980 to 2001 – and Joe Blankenship – who won two national titles as an EKU assistant football coach under Roy Kidd from 1977 to 1995.
 
Erdmann left EKU in 1966 for a job at a small high school outside of New Haven, Connecticut. Spoiler alert: it would not be the last time he set foot on "The Campus Beautiful."
 
In the late 1960s, Erdmann was the head football coach at Hamden Hall, a private institution only a few miles north of Yale University. He was also the school's junior varsity basketball coach.
 
These were good days for the ambitious twentysomething.
 
According to the school's newspaper, he was known on campus as Rick "Flex" Erdmann, presumably because of his muscle-bound physique.[1] 
 
On the weekends, he made $150 per game playing wide receiver for the New Britton Bees, a semi-professional football team in the area.
 
He kept in shape by running with a Yale professor of Greek and Latin literature named Erich Segal. A couple of years later, Segal penned the top-selling fiction novel and the screenplay for the top-grossing film of 1970, Love Story.
 
Erdmann began his own Love Story at Hamden Hall. He met his future wife, Michelle Kahn, while coaching in Connecticut.
 
But, ultimately, football was not Rick Erdmann's destiny.
 
He bounced around a couple of other high schools before finally merging onto the highway to history. 

 
 
That highway first led to the edge of Maryland's western panhandle, where, in 1970, Erdmann became the first-ever track and field and cross country coach at Hagerstown Junior College.
 
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You know you're old-school in 2018 when you were considered old-school in the 1970s.
 
An article in the Baltimore Evening Sun wrote of Erdmann: "Rick's the coach of the cross-county and track teams at Hagerstown Junior College and, obviously, he's a throwback … to the days when the two most important things to a coach were teaching and competing, not a limitless recruiting budget and a TV show."[2]
 
At Hagerstown, Erdmann's budget was comically limited. A TV show? Inconceivable.  
 
He had no scholarships to offer recruits. There were no dormitories on campus for his athletes to live in.
 
All things considered … it was perfect!
 
"Erdmann's a trouble-shooter at heart," Tony Mulieri wrote in a story for the Hagerstown Morning Herald. "The more dilapidated the program, the better."[3]
 
With his back against the wall, Erdmann went to work.
 
When he was told there was no money for travel to faraway meets, Erdmann purchased a van – "into the van the coach and athletes piled with their five jars of peanut butter and eight pounds of bologna."[4]
 
Hotel rooms not covered in the budget? Erdmann and his athletes were known to pitch tents and camp out on the infield of tracks.
 

Erdmann thrived as an underdog, overcoming a severe lack of resources with gumption and sheer willpower.
 
He recruited like a madman, scouring the eastern seaboard in search of proverbial "hidden gems."
 
"The thing that gets you about Rick," said one of Hagerstown's rival coaches, "is he seems to pull these guys out of the woodwork. He has the national junior college marathon champion … and no one knows where came from."
 
He took chances.
 
Erdmann once ventured into a notoriously dangerous neighborhood in New York City, in search of a distance recruit.
 
"I was driving a Maryland state car," he said. "I tried asking for directions, but no one would come near me because they thought it was a police car. So I ditched the car and went on foot."
 
Erdmann found his target hanging out at a nearby playground, and he dropped a recruiting pitch for the ages: small town near the Mason-Dixon Line … no scholarships … no dormitories … but you will win.
 
And win they did.
 
Erdmann built Hagerstown into a JUCO juggernaut. "The Green Machine", as his teams were known around campus, did not lose a dual cross country meet to another junior college from 1973 to 1978. In that time, HJC captured 13 consecutive Maryland Junior College titles in cross country and indoor and outdoor track.
 
"His teams were competitive with most major colleges," claimed a story from the Morning Herald.[5]
 
Hagerstown produced more than 30 All-Americans during Erdmann's tenure.
 
Many of those All-Americans earned scholarships to Division-I powerhouses – schools such as Georgia, LSU, Auburn, Maryland, Pittsburgh, Kansas, South Carolina and Georgia Tech.
 
"Over $150,000 in scholarships have been granted to former HJC runners," Erdmann once said in a newspaper article. "And that's what my job was really all about."[6]
 
In 1978, Otis Sanders – the recruit from the New York City playground – pulled off a stunning upset to win the individual title at the National Junior College Cross Country Championships in Champaign, Illinois.
 
As a team, Hagerstown took second at the meet. At the time, it was the school's highest national finish ever, by any sport.
 
Erdmann was named the 1978 National Junior College Cross Country Coach of the Year. 

 
… And that's when EKU came calling.
 
"Rick Erdmann's credentials literally jump off the page at you," then-EKU athletic director Don Combs said. "When you consider what Rick did with no scholarships, no dormitories and very limited funds, it's just incredible."[7]
 
So Combs made an offer.
 
Erdmann, somewhat reluctantly, accepted.
 
"It was an extremely difficult decision to make," he told the Morning Herald upon being hired. "It's like leaving your own brother. But I felt this was my last shot at the big time or I'd be here forever."[8]
 
The EKU program Erdmann was inheriting was … subpar. The Colonels finished sixth out of eight teams at the 1979 Ohio Valley Conference Track and Field Championships.
 
"Right now, we (Hagerstown) could destroy Eastern Kentucky in track," Erdmann said in 1979. "It'll almost be like starting from scratch again. But that's the way I want it. I want to live or die by my own recruiting."[9]
 
In his farewell story, Hagerstown journalist Tony Mulieri wrote this: "When a guy like Erdmann leaves town, you feel the urge to say, 'Don't, HJC needs you. It won't be the same without you.' True, it won't be the same. But it'll still be good. Erdmann made sure of that. Now it's Eastern Kentucky's turn."[10]
 
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Eastern Kentucky's turn, indeed!
 
The Erdmann magic arrived in Richmond in September of 1979 and has been unwavering for nearly the last 40 years.
 

The surreal numbers are well documented.
 
Seventy-three Ohio Valley Conference titles. Seventy Ohio Valley Conference Coach of the Year awards. More than 40 All-Americans. Three Olympians.
 
Erdmann arrives at the twilight of his career a legend.
 
But, numbers are just numbers. Medals rust. Trophies eventually collect dust in a glass case.
 
Erdmann's greatest legacy – and his greatest source of pride – will always be his student-athletes.
 
"I love seeing kids improve and develop as individuals," he said. "To me, the most gratifying part about coaching is watching my kids be successful in life, not just financially, but in whatever their interests are."
 
Erdmann finds it increasingly difficult to keep up with all of his former athletes. He admits: "I don't do the internet very well" (and that might be understating it).
 
However, he can still rattle off, with great pride, where most of them are now.
 
One is the superintendent of a school district in South Carolina. One is a college president. One is a high-ranking executive at Under Armour. One was a curator at the New York Museum of Art. One earned a PhD and worked for NASA.
 
Several have served in the military.
 
Teachers, doctors, lawyers … Erdmann is proud of them all.
 
"I don't get too hung up on all the awards," Erdmann said. "I just love seeing kids be successful."
 
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Out of all of Erdmann's championships, the only one that had eluded him was OVC men's outdoor track and field.
 
On May 12, the Colonels sent their beloved coach out on top … stunning the conference by winning the men's outdoor title by more than 30 points.
 
Two days later, Erdmann announced his retirement.
 
It was a storybook ending to a storybook career.
 
What's next for Rick Erdmann?
 
He has grandchildren and several cats at home to dote on.
 
Perhaps he will begin training for his next race?
 
"When I'm not coaching runners, I'm running myself," Erdmann once said. "It's not that I think a track coach should be a competitive runner himself, it's just that I thoroughly enjoy running, and competing."[11]
 
Erdmann has competed in several marathons. In the 1970s, he completed the JFK 50-Miler, known as "America's Oldest Ultramarathon." In the early 2000s, Erdmann was a member of four USATF Masters Division National Club Cross Country Championship teams.
 
Truly, a coach who practices what he preaches.
 
And a coach who will be missed at Eastern Kentucky University.
 
When a guy like Erdmann leaves, you feel the urge to say, 'Don't, EKU needs you. It won't be the same without you.'
 
True, it won't be the same. But it'll still be good.
 
Erdmann made sure of that.