Tom Dinkel: HOF Inductee Says Son’s the Hero

Posted on 28. Jun, 2007 by admin in News

Nicklin, Carrington, Dinkel join council’s hall of fame

Hall inductee says son the hero

Former star football player Tom Dinkel was enshrined as a Topeka Shawnee County Sports Council Hall of Famer on Wednesday night, but Dinkel figures his 16-year-old son, Alex, is the true hero in the Dinkel family.

Alex, who played on a state championship baseball team in Kentucky this spring as a sophomore, is fighting cancer and undergoing extensive treatment to fight the disease.

“In all honesty, he’s my hero,” Dinkel said of Alex, who also played football before his illness. “I’m choking up right now talking about it. He’s often-times going, ‘Dad, what are you crying for? You’re embarrassing me.’

“He’s as strong as an ox mentally, and physically he’ll get back there. I’m so proud to have him as a son.”

Dinkel said Alex’s illness has brought him and his son and his entire family closer.

“You always hear from losing teams that adversity brings you closer,” said Dinkel, who lives in Villa Hills, Ky. “We’re very close.”

Dinkel, who was a standout at Shawnee Heights and Kansas and played in the 1982 Super Bowl for the Cincinnati Bengals, said Alex is handling his situation as well as anyone could expect.

“He now knows to live one day at a time, and if you’re going to do something, do it to the best of your ability,” said Dinkel, a 1974 Shawnee Heights graduate. “That’s what he’s doing now.

“You realize how precious life is and how quick it goes from being a state champion to not being able to play football again all in one doctor’s visit.”

Dinkel said the trip home to Topeka has been good for Alex and the family.

“It’s risky because you don’t like to get too far away from the home hospital, but it’s one of those things we feel is worth the risk because it lifts his spirits to see the family,” Dinkel said. “He thinks of Topeka as his home and we love it here.”

Dinkel shared the Hall of Fame stage with 1967 Topeka High graduate Preston Carrington, a 1972 United States Olympian; and former Topeka High boys basketball coach Willie Nicklin, who won 501 games as a coach.

Because of his fifth-place finish in the long jump in the ‘72 Olympics, Carrington is best known as a track athlete, but he was a star basketball player at High and at Wichita State, where he is in the Shockers’ Hall of Fame.

“Basketball was always my first love — I went to Wichita State on a basketball scholarship — but track got me to some other places,” said Carrington, who lives in Glendale, Ariz.

“Now track athletes make money so I might have concentrated a little more on track, but back then you didn’t make any money. And I had this dream to be a professional basketball player. Less than one percent make it, but that was my dream.”

Carrington and Nicklin first became associated in the mid-60s when Nicklin was an assistant coach at High under Jack Dean.

“He was our buddy coach,” Carrington said of Nicklin. “The assistant’s always close to the team because you can kind of joke with him. Coach Dean would yell at you and (Nicklin) would mellow it out and keep you up.”

Nicklin, who still lives in Topeka, was the Trojans’ head coach from 1970-94, leading High to state championships in 1973 and ‘86.

“I never had any expectation of ever getting into any Hall of Fame,” said Nicklin, also a member of the Kansas Basketball Coaches Association shrine. “You’ve got to have the talent.

“When I got to Topeka High, the first week down there with the guys in phys-ed I said, ‘Oh, I’ve hit utopia.’ ”