Port High honors humble stars

Their sports and backgrounds differ, but one thing was constant for the second class of inductees into the Port Washington High School Athletic Hall of Fame on Saturday night.

The legends credited others with their success more than they enjoyed their moments in the limelight during their speeches in the high school cafeteria.

Five plaques were added to the wall that is already inspiring Pirates.

“We’ve had several students reading your bios already asking questions and wondering how and if they have the potential to make that wall,” Athletic Director John Bunyan said.

‘Thankful for the preparation at Port’

Mark Ewig’s longtime youth and high school teammate Phil Puerling remembers playing multiple sports with him.

“If you were in a tackling drill and you came to the line and Mark was there across from you, that was not fun,” he said. “If you were in a rebounding drill with Mark, he was the first human being I know that has four elbows.”

Ewig starred in football, basketball, track and baseball at Port and was recruited by Notre Dame legend Ara Parseghian. When Ewig couldn’t commit to the Fighting Irish fast enough to meet Parseghian’s timeline, he earned an appointment to the Air Force Academy instead.

Port coaches such as Al Urness, Jim Murray and Dick DeMario, he said, “prepared me for anything.”

Ewig came across Parseghian again in college. He was facing the No. 1 offensive tackle in the country, but “when you have a defensive end who’s 200 pounds with 4.5 speed, you can just about do anything,” he said.

“I turned my talents against Notre Dame and sacked a guy named Joe Theismann four times.”

Ewig served in the Air Force for 26 years, working in intelligence during the Vietnam War and rising to the rank of colonel. He then taught high school social studies before retiring in Colorado.

“I’m so thankful for the preparation here at Port and the whole community of Port Washington because it’s my home,” he said.

 ‘It’s not really my success’

Pee Wee Mueller, one of nine children, won a state wrestling title at Port High in 1970 and racked up conference and national honors at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point and East Carolina, but his gratitude went to those around him.

“It’s not really my success. It’s the people who helped you get there,” he said. “Because you don’t get there by yourself.”

Mueller fell in love with wrestling through DeMario’s new unit in middle school physical education.

After college, Mueller wrestled with Athletes in Action through his friend John Peterson, an Olympic wrestling champion who would have attended Saturday’s ceremony but is working as a missionary in Africa. It was through Peterson that Mueller was saved in 1978, baptized on the spot.

“That’s how I tried to carry on in my life, and that’s why I attribute any success that I’ve had to that experience,” he said.

Mueller coached and officiated wrestling for years. He lives in North Carolina but remains part of the Pirates’ program, presenting the Noel John Mueller Sr. Award, named after Pee Wee’s father, to the team’s most improved wrestler.

He thanked former coach Duffy Brelsford and current coach Angelo LaRosa for including him.

“They made me feel like I’m still part of the program. I’m 73 years old,” he said.

A 5-9, 170-pound football star

Tim Brown, a member of the Class of 1960, excelled in track, basketball and baseball at Port High. He set track records due to his speed and earned all-state honors in football.

Brown played offense and defense at Iowa State, being named to the Big Eight second team. He then played professionally for the Montreal Rifles and East Toronto Trojans, competing into his 40s.

Brown died at 82 on July 9.

Tim’s brother Tod, who accepted the award on his behalf, said he remembered watching TV with his older brother.

“All of a sudden he’d start doing pushups,” he said. “He was 17, I was 11. What does an 11-year-old kid weigh? 75, 80 pounds? ‘Tod come here, get on my back.’ He’d start doing pushups again.”

Brown, Tod said, “was only 5 foot 9 and 170 pounds. God only gave him a certain size frame and he maximized it out to the limit.”

Turning Port soccer around

Peter Metz, the youngest of five children, had the gift of boundless energy, so his mother put him in soccer where he could run around, calling it the “best medicine,” he said.

Metz loved the game but not coach Mike Bultman, at least not at first. Bultman called him out for using the wrong foot during a shooting drill. Metz was “furious” but his parents encouraged him to stick with it.

He became Port’s all-time leading scorer with 78 goals, including scoring the most in a season with 36. He is second in career assists with 47. Port, after not winning four games in a season and not beating any conference teams, won 15, 15 and 14 games in three straight seasons, along with 15 total conference games.

“He had a way of pushing me, getting under my skin and challenging me to my limits. He always had my back and we grew to be friends,” Metz said of Bultman.

He also thanked Don Arnold, Dave Schimpft and the late Timm Snider for their coaching efforts early in his career.

Metz was the state’s Gatorade Player of the Year runner-up as a senior.

He played for UW-Milwaukee, then the Milwaukee Wave for two years. He competed as a triathlete for 15 years, including doing Ironman races.

Even at the Port alumni game in July, Metz heard Bultman yelling about why he didn’t cut in and take a shot.

“I yelled back, I said ‘Mike, I’m almost 50 years old. If I cut in I’ll pull a hamstring,’” he said.

‘Duffy is quite the salesman’

Eric Burke, a 1986 Port High grad who starred in wrestling at UW-Stevens Point, was talked into breaking a contract a full-time teaching contract in Rice Lake to take 50% position in Port that might turn into full-time work and, Burke said, the “opportunity to live with my parents again.”

“Duffy (Brelsford) is quite the salesman.”

“The job did become full time by the start of the year, and I did get my own apartment,” he said.

Burke worked as a principal and coach in Port, helping to found the Piranhas youth wrestling program and going on a run of 13 conference titles in a row.

It was a phone call from his college wrestling coach Marty Loy that changed Burke’s life. He was back home working at Tri-Par during a rough sophomore year and was “pretty lost in life.” Loy called and said he hoped Burke was coming back.

“Small things for some can be huge for others,” Burke said.

Burke is now the superintendent of the Rhinelander School District.

Burke said as he gets older, “the more I know that making time to serve others and leaving things better than you found them is the most important thing you can do in this crazy thing called life.”