Ted D. Rupe
Ted D. Rupe '78 1988 Cross Country, Track
Cross Country was already established as a successful sport at Cleveland State, and track was enjoying reasonably respectable success when he arrived on campus in the Fall of 1973.
Ted Rupe took both sports to another level.
A quiet, modest youngster from a town whose entire population did not match the enrollment at the University, Rupe was already a champion when he first donned the Forest Green and While. The youngster with a smile that lit up a room won the Ohio Class "A" championship for Maplewood High in 1972, leading the Cortland school to the team championship as well. He went on in the spring to finish second in the Ohio class "A" mile run.
There was no falling off of quality when he moved to the college ranks. At the close of his freshman cross country campaign he earned the first of three consecutive awards as the team's "Most Outstanding Runner", something no Viking runner had done before, nor has done since.
By the end of his junior year, when he had earned that third "Most Outstanding" trophy, things had gotten downright serious.
After running over 1100 miles in the summer preceding his junior season, he took 49 seconds off his best five-mile time to set a new CSU record, he had become the first CSU cross country runner ever to go undefeated in dual meet competition leading the Vikings to a best-ever 8-1 record, had finished lower than third in just one invitational meet and had become one of two Vikings to qualify for the NCAA district meet, another CSU first.
A stress fracture kept him out of competition for the 1976 season, but it only served to keep him fresh for the following (1977) track campaign, where he proceeded to set school records in the mile (4:11.1), 3-mile (14:07.2), 6-mile (28.13) and 3,000-meter steeplechase, qualify for the NCAA Division I Championships in both the 5,000 and 10,000 meters and earn the CSU Athletic Alumni Association's "Most Outstanding" award for a fourth time, his first in outdoor track.
There was another silver lining for the Viking ace in missing the '76 cross country season.
It enabled him to compete as a member of the 1977 team in company with All-Americans-to-be Marc Hunter and Don James, a team which finished a remarkable 11th in the NCAA cross country championships. Earlier in that season the team had also won the All-Ohio title, and Rupe won the Cleveland Colleges Meet.
As accomplished in the classroom as he was in a track uniform, Rupe graduated cum laude in June, 1978 with a 3.32 accumulative average. He accomplished this while earning two degrees-a Bachelor of Science degree with a major in Chemistry and Education and a Bachelor of Arts degree with a major in Physical Education.
In that year he was also the University's nominee for the NCAA postgraduate scholarship and was nominated by the Cleveland State chemistry department for a Rhodes scholarship.
Since his graduation Rupe has pursued a career in teaching and coaching. He has also continued his running-with a vengeance.
He has competed in more than 25 states and in four different nations on three continents.
Three times he has been named an alternate on the United States' International Cross Country Teams. In 1984 he and his wife, Michelle, represented the USA in the Singapore International Marathon.
Of the literally dozens of races he has won in the years since graduation, two stand out most vividly-the 1986 Revco Marathon, when he became the first Ohioan ever to win a major Ohio marathon, and the International Peace race 10-kilometer Run in Moscow.
Now living once again in Cortland with his wife and two children, Craig and Rochelle, he is teaching at his high school alma mater, Maplewood High.
