New Deacon Podcast “Lunch with Stan” Launches

Wake Forest’s long-time play-by-play radio announcer Stan Cotten announced last week that he was starting something called “Lunch with Stan”.

It turns out that “Lunch with Stan” is a podcast in which Stan talks over lunch with a person who has been influential in the Wake Forest sports community. Naturally the obvious choice for the first episode was former long-time director of athletics Dr. Gene Hooks.

The podcast is available at godeacs.com, via Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, and soon will be available on iTunes.

Stan was kind enough to give me an insight into what the podcast is all about:

“Wake Forest is a unique place with special men and women who have made it so. We wanted our fans to be able to get to know these people and hear their stories, to have access to those who have helped lay the athletic department’s foundation by their work and vision and accomplishments.”

I also asked him about where the idea for the podcast came from and what he hopes it will grow into:

“Steve Shutt and Mike Odom have been talking about doing this for a while and approached me about it. I agreed that we needed something like this and was more than happy to be a part of it. I hope we can create a different kind of ‘historical record’ if you will for our fans and put together something all of us can appreciate and learn from and keep for those who come after us. There are folks both in the athletic department and at Learfield IMG College who are working together to do this the right way. It’s going to be a lot of fun.”

Without spoiling any of the stories for you, some of the topics discussed with Dr. Hooks were:

• the new baseball facilities and the wealth of technology available to the baseball program in partnership with the medical school
• Dr. Hooks’ days as a baseball player and coach
• the move to the new campus in Winston-Salem and initial lack of facilities
• Arnold Palmer and Jessie Haddock and their impact on Wake Forest golf
• poor football and basketball facilities after the move to Winston-Salem
• getting his doctoral degree
• making Wake Forest successful and growing the fanbase and athletic endowment after the move to Winston-Salem
• his own move back to Winston-Salem

I HIGHLY recommend listening to this first episode of what I hope are many to come. Be sure to follow Stan “@StanCottenWF” on Twitter for updates about this new series. I can't wait until the next installment.