Wabash College Athletics

Thomas J. Puschak, native of Valparaiso and graduate of Andrean High School, you were easily the most quiet and most honored track and field student-athlete in Wabash history. 

You earned an Honor Scholarship to attend Wabash, and once here you dazzled your chemistry and foreign language professors. You earned the Howell Chemistry Prize in your major, secured a minor in Russian, made the Dean’s list every semester, and graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. As an athlete, you were literally without peer. You were a three-time national qualifier for the Indoor Track National Championships and became the first Wabash man to earn Indoor All-America honors when you finished fourth in the 35-pound weight throw at Smith College.

You were even more dominant as a hammer thrower and you were a three-time national qualifier in that event, too. Twice you were the Little State Champion, and you broke the conference record by more than 50 feet. As a junior, you won the Eastern Illinois Invitational with a school record throw of 193-feet, 7-inches, but a summer job kept you from competing at nationals. In your senior year, you won conference, Little State, and the Indiana University National Invitational titles en route to the national meet, at which you broke your own school record with a throw of 198-feet, four-inches to become Wabash’s second individual National Champion in track and field.

With a 3.9 grade point average and National Championship under your belt, Academic All-America honors would follow. You would go on to the Indiana University School of Medicine, and today you are a physician specializing in spinal disorders and injuries at Panorama Orthopedic and Spine Center. Thomas J. Puschak, few Wabash athletes in history dominated their sports as you did — all the while soaring in the classroom and lab, too. Therefore, the National Association of Wabash Men is proud to induct you into the Wabash College Athletics Hall of Fame. Some Little Giant!