Bleeding Red and Blue

When Penn Athletic Director Steve Bilsky first visited Penn as a high school basketball recruit in 1967, he went to watch an intense Big 5 double-header in the Palestra. For Bilsky, it was love at first sight, and he's been bleeding red and blue ever since. "I'd never seen a basketball atmosphere like the Palestra," Bilsky said. "And I remembered leaving and saying, 'This is it. This is the place I want to go.'" While the teenage Bilsky was impressed by Penn's athletic program, his parents were excited about their son attending an Ivy League institution. Ironically, it is this very same balance between academics and athletics that Bilsky -- in his role as athletic director -- now uses to lure potential recruits to Penn. Bilsky's experience as a student-athlete at Penn helps him to make administrative decisions as the athletic director. "I allocate a lot of responsibilities to the rest of the staff," Bilsky said. "I allow them to make decisions, and that gets into the idea of being on a team and teamwork, and trusting your teammates and now trusting my colleagues. "In this job, on a day-to-day basis, I make decisions, and I help other people make decisions. I think I make good decisions, and I think I make them with confidence. And I think that goes back to the success I had as a player." Bilsky played an integral part in two of the Quakers' best men's basketball teams in the program's history. In the 1970-71 season, the three-time All-Ivy guard led Penn to a 28-1 record, as the team advanced to the Final Four of the NCAA tournament and earned a No. 3 national ranking. "I happened to be on a very special basketball team," the current athletic director said. "To go 53-1 over two seasons was a special thing." At the conclusion of the 1971 season, Bilsky was honored as the runner-up for the Naismith Award in the division of players under six feet. Bilsky graduated from Penn in 1971 and traveled overseas to pursue his childhood dream of becoming a professional basketball player. He signed with Maccabi Tel Aviv, which has historically been a premier team in Israel and in Europe. "I got to travel really all around the world with the team," Bilsky said. "For a person who had probably never been west of Ohio, all of a sudden, here I am in France and Greece and South Africa and London and Holland and living in a foreign country." Bilsky only spent a year playing basketball in Israel, but his involvement in sports never ceased. He earned a master's degree in psychology from the University of Oregon in 1975 and worked as a "graduate basketball assistant" while there. "I thought that maybe coaching was something I wanted to do," Bilsky said. "Eventually I gravitated away from coaching and moved more into the administrative side." The former Penn basketball captain made his first return to West Philadelphia in 1979 as assistant director of athletics and held the position until 1983. Before making his second return to Penn in 1994, Bilsky served as the executive director of the Department of Athletics and Recreation at George Washington University. Bilsky was happy living in Washington and working at GWU -- he developed a strong athletic program, and the administration strongly supported his efforts. But when Penn offered him the position of athletic director he felt compelled to come home. "People ask me why I came back to Penn. It clearly wasn't to be an athletic director, as I was already an athletic director at the time in GWU," Bilsky said. "What I realized is that the most significant things that have happened in my life are due to my associations with Penn. "I graduated here, met my wife and the opportunities both in basketball and in general were just so great." Bilsky has a long history at Penn. His wife's family is a four-generation legacy at Penn. There are currently four of Bilsky's relatives at Penn, including his son Jeff, a freshman in the College. "So this was a chance for me to come back and repay Penn for all that it's done for me," Bilsky said. Judging from Bilsky's extensive fundraising for Penn athletics -- and the 33 Ivy championships garnered over the last four years alone -- it seems that, if anything, Penn is indebted to him. The Weightman Fund, the Athletic Department's annual giving fund, has doubled during Bilsky's reign. He has helped raise over $58 million in eight years. Besides funding the $24 million annual operational costs of the Athletic Department, Bilsky has used the donations to improve Penn's athletic facilities. "When I got to Penn, I knew I had to be focused and clear on what I wanted to get accomplished," Bilsky said. "One of my goals was to really improve the facilities because they had gotten old." Over the years, Bilsky has funded renovations and construction of the Penn baseball team's Murphy Field, soccer's Rhodes Field, the Palestra, the James D. Dunning, Jr. Coaches Center and Pottruck Fitness Center. "Penn deserves to have first-class facilities -- the athletes do, the students do, the staff and faculty do as well," Bilsky said. "That's something I'm really proud of, in terms of all the facilities." The improved facilities have helped with recruitment and, in turn, have strengthened Penn's athletic program, Bilsky noted. But Bilsky's best playing days took place in Penn's 77-year-old treasured arena, prior to any of the renovations. "I loved playing in the Palestra," Bilsky said. "It was great -- the notoriety surrounding the Big 5 at that point. I think there's hardly a day that goes by that I won't bump into somebody who will say, 'I remember your team, I used to watch you on TV.'" And Bilsky's favorite part of being athletic director is watching Penn's teams play -- both in the Palestra and outside it. "A couple of years ago, when the women's basketball team went to Texas after winning their first Ivy League basketball championship, the excitement of the kids going out there and the coaches was great," Bilsky said of the 2000-2001 women's basketball team. "It was wonderful to participate in that." "I also enjoy being involved with the men's football, basketball, and wrestling programs, that win all the time," Bilsky said. "It's not like the first time so they don't have that thrill, but winning over a long period of time is very hard to do and so I get great satisfaction from those programs that win year in and year out." Bilsky was inducted into the Philadelphia Big 5 Hall of Fame in 1988 and the Penn Athletic Hall of Fame in 1998. As athletic director, Bilsky still reminisces about his old playing days as he watches Penn's current athletes compete. "Watching the success of the athletes, knowing what they go through, knowing the commitments they have to make to athletics and in the classroom, and seeing them achieve like that, is definitely thrill number one of being athletic director." Saturday night, Bilsky honored Penn's football players on the hardwood of the Palestra, right where his glory years occurred more than 30 years ago. Regardless of his administrative duties, his heart will always be on the floor of the Palestra where he first fell in love with Penn.

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