Spotlight

Ron Slaymaker and the ESU Athletics Museum

As a legend of ESU athletics, former men’s basketball coach Ron Slaymaker, with all his knowledge, belongs in a museum. Now he’s created one, the ESU Athletics Museum in downtown Emporia, to showcase the rich history of ESU athletics. Slaymaker began coaching at ESU in 1960 as an assistant basketball coach under Gus Fish. “I had been putting stuff in boxes for many years – over 40 – because I saw many important things being thrown away, being stolen,” Slaymaker said. “So I put stuff in boxes and saved it.” The museum is a testament to this conservation. Consider the enormous photograph of the 1946-47 men’s basketball team posing as winners of the Central Intercollegiate Conference Title, which Slaymaker found as athletic offices were moving to today’s HPER building. He hid the photo in the building for more than 30 years in a spot where only he could find it.

Slaymaker’s last year of coaching was 1998. He secured the permission of Kent Weiser, ESU athletic director, to work on cataloguing and preparing the items on a half-time, phase-out contract. It took him two years, sorting through all the donations and all the memorabilia on his office walls. “The whole thing’s been a labor of love,” Slaymaker said.

The museum – housed today in a large converted walk-in freezer in Poehler Mercantile Antique Mall, a fortress-like building owned by Slaymaker that was built as a food warehouse more than 100 years ago – still receives items on a weekly basis. It’s packed to the ceiling with eye candy, like the picture of the first U.S. Olympic basketball team taken in 1936 in Hitler’s Germany, a team coached by ESU graduate Gene Johnson. Or the collection of team uniforms like a wool lady’s swimsuit from 1910 or the towering wooden Wilt Chamberlain training device.

The walls are lined with tall glass cases donated by the William Allen White Library. The cases fit so perfectly they look like they were made for the museum – just like everything else in it. The museum is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, and 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday, at the antique mall, 301 Commercial St.

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Last Updated April 17, 2008