FOSTER, Harold E. "Bud"

FOSTER, BELDING, FUNK, WESTON, MEANWELL

Posted By: Sharon R Becker (email)
Date: 11/11/2014 at 01:03:13

The Globe Gazette
Mason City, Cerro Gordo County, Iowa
Saturday, July 06, 1940, Page 16

THEY STARTED HERE
No. 16 in a Mason City Series of Success Stories

HAROLD E. "BUD" FOSTER, Basketball Mentor

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Add to the list of such Mason City sports greats as Eddie Anderson, Lester Belding, Jack Funk, and Laurence Weston, the name of Harold E. "Bud" Foster, for his achievements in the field of athletics, both as a coach and competitor, have ranked him among the finest of his time.

Now head coach of the University of Wisconsin cage teams, the former Mason Cityan is mentioned with the all time greats at his alma mater, Wisconsin, when it comes to basketball.

The Badger mentor started life in an auspicious - or should it be said - big way at Newton, Kansas. He was born there May 30, 1906, weighing 13 1/2 pounds, which gives him the record of being the biggest baby ever born in the Jayhawk state.

* * *
After this fine start, Bud settled down for the average life of a boy in a small Kansas town and began attending school at Newton. Then his father came to Mason City to manage the Cerro Gordo hotel, bringing his family with him.

In high school here, Bud Foster was a tall boy and his height carried with it the awkwardness and gawkiness of boys who have grown a little faster than they have learned to handle themselves well.

But in the spirit of this gawkiness the high school coach wanted him to report for basketball and finally overcame his initial lack of interest by kidding the good natured but retiring youth into coming out.

* * *
Bud was no great shakes as a basketball player in high school, although he managed to earn a cage letter. His height - he was well over six feet tall - was his biggest asset.

* * *
Attending junior college, the youth began to show a little more of the ability that he was to have as a college star.

Following his schooling here, Bud Foster went to Chicago for a time, when his family moved there, and then decided that he needed a college education to get along in life. Perhaps it was the influence of Laurence Weston, but at any rate the youth went to Madison, Wis., to enroll in the University of Wisconsin and specialize in economics.

Just as a sideline, he reported for freshman basketball during the 1926-27 season. By this time he had filled out more and began to show flashes of the form that was later to make him an All-American on the court.

* * *
As a sophomore the Mason City youth showed real talent for tossing basketballs through the hoops but it was in his junior year that the team really got under way. The experience he had gained as a sophomore on a team that placed third in the tough Big Ten made him an All-Conference center on the champsionship Badger five of 1928-29 and a year later an All-Conference and All-American selection in the 1929-30 season. That year the Wisconsin cagers were second in what is possibly the fastest basketball loop in the country.

Following his graduation in 1930, the former Mason Cityan played some semi-professional basketball with the Oskhosh All-stars and Chicago and Milwaukee teams. He found that the semi-pro game was fun and offered a certain amount of travel but it was easily apparent that there was no future in it for an ambitious young man, and so he soon turned to the seed business.

* * *
Selling seeds is not bad, he found, but the old basketball lure was still with him. Then, in 1933, his former coach at Wisconsin, Dr. Walter E. Meanwell, was instrumental in his being offered and accepting the post of freshman basketball coach at the Badger institution.

Serving a year in this capacity, Bud Foster showed such ability at handling basketball players and teaching them the tricks had had made him a cage great that when the head coach's job opened up, he was offered the post.

The opportunity came when Dr. Meanwell was elevated to the athletic directorship and the former Mason Cityan, then less than 30 years old, steeped in the position after only a year of coaching experience.

* * *
Nor was it a mistake to place confidence in him, as Bud Foster quickly proved. His first varsity team tied for the championship of the Western conference - the Big Ten - an achievement of which few coaches can boast.

Since that time the Madison institutuion has been represented on the basketball court each winter by hard playing, quick thinking, aggressive fives. While they haven't flashed championship strength, they have played the heads up, competitive, clean type of game which is the real goal of all athletic coaches.

Nor is Coach Foster the type of mentor who sits on the sidelines and watches his charges go through their paces with only verbal descriptions to show what he wants. The Wisconsin head coach jumps out on the floor to demonstrate in person.

* * *
And on occasion, he dons a basketball suit and plays with the second string against his varsity to impersonate some opposing star, to give them generally tough opposition, of just for the love of the game. And he still isn't so bad, either, usually making his share of baskets in the scrimmages.

Now at the age of 34, Bud Foster has already reached a high peak in one of the finest, cleanest professions in the waorld, that of coaching athletics. And ahead of him lies many more years of building characters and bodies, which will in turn mean better citizens and a better nation in the years to follow.

NOTE: Under Coach Foster's guidance, the Badgers claimed their ownly NCAA men's basketball championship in 1941. This squad posted a 20-3 record and won its last 15 games which included three in the NCAA tornament. Acknowledged as Wisconsin's winningest men's basketball coach, Bud Foster registered a 265-267 record (still a school record) over his 25 years at the University. He served as president of the National Association of Basketball Coaches, chairman of the Basketball Rules Committee (1957-1966), and was named to the Helms Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame, the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame (1964), the Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame (1970), National Basketball Hall of Fame (1964), University of Wisconsin Athletics Hall of Fame (1991) and the Madison Pen and Mike Club Hall of Fame (1966).

Dubbed "Mr. Wisconsin," Coach Foster was known for not only teaching his players fundementals of the game, but loyalty and sportsmanship.

Harold E. "Bud" Foster died at the age of 90 years on June 16, 1996.

Photographs courtesy of Globe-Gazette

Additional information from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_E._Foster

Transcription and note by Sharon R. Becker, May of 2014

Cerro Gordo Biographies maintained by Lynn Diemer-Mathews.
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