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Former Player Returns for  Doctoral Degree, Recalls Ups and Downs With Team 

Will Hetzel (Courtesy University of Maryland Athletic Department)

By Nicole M. Richardson
Maryland Newsline
Tuesday, March 5, 2002  

Will Hetzel is back.

The former Terps basketball player, who was once the school's second-leading scorer, has been pursuing a doctoral degree at the university for about 10 years--studying romanticism in '60s rock lyrics. He says he hopes to graduate in June.

His 300-page dissertation will look at rock and roll lyrics as they relate to themes of death, drugs, mysticism and other threads found in romantic poems, he says. 

Those were also issues that interested him when he arrived as a freshman in 1966, he says. 

He almost didn't come. He initially told then-coach Frank Fellows that he wasn't keen on Maryland because the university didn't have enough books in the library, he says. But when his father became sick, Hetzel says he had no choice but to come to Maryland to be close to home. His family lived in Washington, D.C.

He soon became a star on the basketball team. Averaging 23.3 points and 12.2 rebounds a game and providing strong outside defense, the coach and other players put up with his negative stories about the NCAA in the campus daily newspaper, the Diamondback.

Hetzel wrote stories about the NCAA's recruiting violations and its refusal to let players practice at summer leagues, he says. But the fact that the NCAA did not pay players a salary angered him the most. 

"I was fortunate enough to come from a family with money," Hetzel says. "But some of the guys were basically starving, and they worked so hard. Really, the $15 they gave for laundry money wasn't enough."

In 1970, Charles "Lefty" Driesell became coach, and everything changed for Hetzel. 

Driesell shifted him from outside to inside defense. 

Tempers between Hetzel and Driesell flared when Driesell benched Hetzel during the NCAA Finals, after a series of negative stories about Driesell ran under Hetzel's byline in the Washington Daily News. The pieces called Driesell ruthless and difficult to work with, Hetzel recalls.

"I wasn't ruthless, but I was tough on all my players," Driesell says in response.

"I blame myself as much as him," Hetzel said. "We had poor lines of communication. I was the spoiled brat, and he was the dictator."

Hetzel went on to play professional basketball in France, for a small team called The Stars. He quickly switched paths and enrolled in theology school in France, in order to get out of the draft for the Vietnam War, he says.

Hetzel dropped out of school to return to the United States, where he attended Radford University in Virginia in the mid-1970s. He finished with a master's degree in English and got his license to teach high school English, speech and journalism.

Shortly after he began teaching at Park View High School in Sterling. He now teaches at Loudon High School in Loudon County. 

Hetzel, 54, fathered two children, Terra, 23, and Will, 21, with now-divorced wife Judith Starchild. 

As for basketball, Hetzel says: "I'm not that interested in basketball as I used to be. I watch the pros."

Copyright © 2002 University of Maryland College of Journalism
Graphics by Nicole M. Richardson