Former CDT editor, reporter Doug McDonald leaves unforgettable impact on area sports community
In 1958 when Doug McDonald asked the Centre Daily Times editor if he could have the sports editor position — without much reporting and editing experience — the editor said yes, with one catch: McDonald had to stay with the paper for at least two years.
McDonald agreed and stayed for an extra 35 years, as he recalled in his farewell column when he retired in June 1995. For nearly four decades McDonald reported on Centre County and Penn State sports and built a reputation as a humble, professional and dedicated reporter.
McDonald died on Saturday at 91 years old in State College, leaving behind a legacy of being a kind, genuine and trustworthy person who was deeply committed to sports.
During his long career as an editor/reporter, he won multiple awards and saw major technological advances. (By his retirement, he no longer had to dictate stories over the phone when on the road and had access to computers.) He also watched the expansion of women’s sports, in addition to the growth of Penn State’s athletic programs.
He reported on all sports, but he was most well known for his wrestling coverage, which catapulted him into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame. Even so, he had never seen a college wrestling match until his freshman year at Penn State in 1951, or high school wrestling until 1958, he wrote in his retirement column. “But what a treat,” he wrote.
“Rec Hall was jammed to the rafters for those Saturday night dual meets, and many of the fans were there to see Coach Charlie Speidel of Penn State in action. The opponent didn’t matter,” he wrote.
His passion for wrestling lasted a lifetime. In fact, the night before his death, he and his wife, Jane Houtz, watched Penn State wrestling beat Iowa, according to his obituary.
Wrestling was ‘his life’s interest’
That devotion is something many remembered about him. Rich Lorenzo, the head wrestling coach at Penn State from 1978-1992, said McDonald was well-respected by top coaches around the country for his reporting.
“The amount of dedication and commitment and hard work he did for it, it was his life’s interest. He just had a big interest in the sport of wrestling, and Doug was so well respected by coaches around the country because he was a very fair writer,” Lorenzo said. “When he reported matches, he didn’t make fun of any performances, attack or judge.”
He recalled, in the 1960s, coaches from outside of Pennsylvania and Centre County subscribed to the CDT to read McDonald’s coverage because he always included scores and information from wrestling matches around the country.
John Fritz, a former Penn State wrestler and head wrestling coach, said he and other coaches in recruiting would often use McDonald’s articles because he did so much research on it.
“As far as when we were recruiting and looking for the best kids in the state, Doug was always on top of it,” Fritz said.
Fritz was a Penn State wrestler in the 1970s and met McDonald then, but later became an assistant and then head coach for the team, and had the opportunity to work with him from that aspect. He remembers McDonald as a caring and gentle person, and someone who always did extensive research before interviews and before writing an article. He said he can’t imagine how much time it took for McDonald to do everything he did for each article.
Jeff Byers, who’s known as the voice of Penn State wrestling, felt similarly. Byers has been in radio broadcasting for the majority of his adult life and got to know McDonald through wrestling reporting. He said he was always impressed with what a gentleman he was, along with his ability to listen to what the coaches or athletes told him and incorporate that into stories.
He appreciated McDonald’s research and thoroughness to go back through the records and get little details on how things developed, and put it into context.
“(It) was really a remarkable skill that he brought to a sport that you know didn’t have a whole lot available in terms of historical context,” Byers said. “... He really did just (have) an amazing volume of research. And for our little corner to kind of get the big-picture perspective was pretty special, and to have somebody willing to do that and take the time to provide those results, those historical records, was extremely important, but also very, very appreciated, and probably more appreciated than he even realized.”
McDonald, who was in the inaugural class of the Centre County Sports Hall of Fame in 2017, was just as respected inside the newsroom as he was outside. Jim Carlson, who worked at the CDT in the 1980s, said he was a genuine, nice guy and one people trusted.
Looking back on his time working with McDonald, Carlson said they always knew when he was “in the zone” because he would balance a pencil between his upper lip and nose.
“We always marveled at how that thing stayed there. If you saw that, then you knew he was in the zone … don’t bother him,” Carlson said. “He sat there with a pencil above his lip and under his nose, and it just stuck there like it was glued.”
Dedication, compassion beyond wrestling
Whether McDonald was covering a high school basketball game or the NCAA wrestling championships, he brought the same compassion to his storytelling, Byers said.
While he was known for his wrestling coverage, his track and field knowledge and reporting was just as good, said Steve Gentry, a 1965 graduate of State College Area School District, a state champion runner, and later a teacher and track and field/cross country coach at State High.
McDonald covered Gentry’s accomplishments as a student-athlete, including his two state championship wins in cross country and another in track and field.
At the time, Gentry said he didn’t have the perspective of how unbelievable McDonald was at getting to the story. But that changed when he later became the head girls track coach at State High and McDonald covered the success of the team.
“He knew the sport. I think that’s kind of unusual among sports writers. They, many times, will know their football, their baseball, their basketball and, in Centre County, their wrestling. And he knew all of that, but he also understood track and field,” Gentry said. “Of the sports reporters that I’ve dealt with, sometimes I got the feeling that they got the short straw and that’s why they were covering track and field and cross country. In Doug’s case, I know that he looked forward to covering it, and I think that reflected in the articles that he wrote.”
Gentry said McDonald deserved every award for wrestling reporting but wished it encompassed his track and field and cross country reporting, as well. His “offseason” reporting was just as spectacular as his in-season wrestling reporting was, Gentry said.
Greg Fredericks, who came to Penn State in 1968 as a student-athlete running cross country and indoor track and field, first had a conversation with McDonald after winning the IC4A Cross Country championship in a “photo finish.”
“He was one of the handful of people covering sports that, as someone giving the interview, you always knew you could trust him. He wasn’t going to try to twist things or slant things or interject his own twist on it, he would pretty much report what you were telling him, and that was always comforting. So when you had a conversation, you were pretty much at ease, which was kind of unusual,” Fredericks said.
An impact ‘impossible to measure’
When someone like McDonald dies, Fritz said, a great thing that can be done is to learn something from that person’s life.
“I’d say, for anyone, if you’re going into journalism or going into any field, the thing is to be honest and tell it like it is, and have a passion for it. And that’s what he had. He had a passion for it,” Fritz said.
Carlson said he expects a lot of former wrestlers will pay their respects to McDonald this week because of his natural ability to turn his interviews into a conversation where they felt heard and respected.
His impact, of course, goes beyond his reporting.
“The impact he made for folks that follow sports in this area is almost impossible to measure but it was very, very substantial,” Byers said. “And again, he’s going to be missed, not just because of his sports writing abilities, which were immense, but also just the kind person that he was. And just — we need more souls like that on our planet.”
Fredericks said McDonald was “one of the nicest people you could ever meet,” and was a joy to be around, which Lorenzo echoed.
“It was just a great opportunity and a great thing to happen to me, to meet this man and to work with this man for 50 years,” Lorenzo said. “I had a great friend there in the sport of wrestling, and people had a great friend with Doug McDonald.”
Services
A visitation to honor McDonald will be held from 2-4 p.m. Thursday at Koch Funeral Home, 2401 S. Atherton St., State College.
His funeral mass is scheduled for 9 a.m. Friday at Our Lady of Victory Church, 820 Westerly Parkway, State College. Following the interment at Centre County Memorial Park, friends and colleagues are invited to Our Lady of Victory social center for brunch and fellowship.
In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to “Rise Above: Friends of Adaptive Athletics at PSU” an organization that helps student-athletes with physical disabilities at https://riseaboveability.com/donate.
