00:02 - [MUSIC]

00:10 - [MUSIC]

00:15 - It's both a dream come true and the greatest

00:18 - responsibility I think that I could ever have imagined.

00:23 - It's daunting to a university as great as Penn State.

00:28 - An athletic program is great as Penn State to be responsible for the care

00:34 - and preservation and conservation and display of all of these things.

00:40 - And then the education that we're responsible for for all of the people who

00:44 - come in here, it's a massive responsibility.

00:48 - And it's one that I love.

00:50 - [MUSIC]

00:52 - I'm Louis Lazaro.

00:53 - I'm the director of the Penn State All Sports Museum.

00:58 - [MUSIC]

01:06 - We were established in January of 2002 to be the repository for

01:12 - the entirety of the history of Penn State Athletics, which this point

01:18 - accounts for 151 years of history.

01:22 - We're located inside of Beaver Stadium that was part of

01:26 - the renovation of the stadium that was completed in 2001.

01:31 - And this has been our home for our entire lifespan.

01:34 - [MUSIC]

01:38 - The wow factor, honestly, is that we are responsible for the entire history.

01:43 - So every team that has ever played for Penn State as a school is represented

01:49 - here, we're responsible for their entire history.

01:53 - For keeping track of all of their athletes, every letter winner,

01:57 - since the very first team in 1875 are very first baseball team.

02:02 - There are exhibits on every sport that we have ever played.

02:06 - So that's the 31 current varsity sports, plus an additional four that

02:11 - had been varsity sports in the past, but are no longer.

02:14 - [MUSIC]

02:16 - The story of Penn State Athletics is the story of countless thousands of

02:21 - athletes and so many teams over the years, and the coaches,

02:25 - and the administrators, all of those stories have to be

02:29 - sort of contained in some way and presented in some way.

02:34 - So our focus, obviously, one of the things that I think that we like to do

02:40 - is we're not just a collection of trophies and scores.

02:44 - We're a collection of trophies and scores that tell a story about people,

02:53 - and collections of people in teams, and the entirety

02:56 - of the school, and where it has been across history.

03:01 - The influence that we have had on the state and the nation and the world,

03:08 - and the influence that the world and the state and

03:11 - the nation have had on us, that interplay, right?

03:15 - So it's about how do we talk about what happened here in the context of

03:21 - everything else that was going on in the world or in the country at the time.

03:27 - We have a number of bold trophies from Penn State football,

03:34 - other related awards from Penn State football,

03:40 - in addition to all of our national championship trophies.

03:44 - So we're now at 85 national championships,

03:47 - most of which we have on display here right here in the lobby,

03:52 - so people get very excited to see all of those collected together in one place.

03:57 - We have a variety of different game balls from a variety of different sports,

04:02 - certainly football, but soccer and volleyball as well.

04:07 - jerseys from famous individuals, past and present,

04:14 - who have worn the Penn State jersey, and numerous other awards,

04:19 - special awards, individual player awards on display.

04:25 - And of course, every single one of those artifacts,

04:27 - and honestly, 10,000 other artifacts that we have in our possession

04:32 - or on display, all of them have stories

04:35 - associated with them of the athletes themselves,

04:38 - who they were, what they played about how they

04:41 - succeeded and the teams that they were upon.

04:47 - When something comes in very recently,

04:49 - I have a love affair with that most recent thing that comes in.

04:53 - So the thing that I've been most excited about literally this past week,

04:58 - one of the members of the 1973 College World Series baseball team,

05:04 - one of the members of the team, literally just last week,

05:08 - brought in an autograph baseball, the entire team, the coaching staff,

05:13 - the whole thing, all of it.

05:14 - And he was just like, I've had this for 50 years,

05:16 - I think it's really time for other people to enjoy it as well.

05:20 - That was a magnificent day to have him come in,

05:24 - to be able to talk to him about his experiences,

05:28 - and then for him to make that gift to us

05:30 - so that other Penn Stateers and other baseball fans

05:33 - would be able to see that particular piece of history.

05:35 - That was really, that was really very special.

05:38 - We go back a little further, right?

05:40 - So two years ago, our women's volleyball team wins the

05:44 - national championship, their eighth national championship.

05:47 - Of course, we got a game ball from that game.

05:50 - That was almost standard operating procedure, right?

05:53 - What I didn't expect was that several months later,

05:56 - the team was going to walk in here with one of their championship rings

06:04 - to give to us.

06:06 - They had actually ordered one for every member of the team

06:08 - and ordered an extra one for us to be able to have here

06:11 - as part of our collection.

06:13 - Such a special moment.

06:14 - I mean, obviously we're so proud of them

06:16 - and everything that that team had accomplished.

06:18 - And then for them to think so highly of us

06:21 - and what it is that we do here, that they would make sure

06:24 - that we had one of those rings to be able to put on display

06:27 - super, super special moment.

06:32 - We're very used to sort of not really having a whole lot

06:36 - in the way of rivalry trophies as far as Penn State goes,

06:39 - particularly Penn State football.

06:41 - Obviously we have the two that we play for in the Big Ten,

06:44 - but nobody knows about the fact that we had our

06:48 - very first rivalry trophy against Pit in 1908.

06:52 - It was called the Spalding Trophy.

06:54 - The Spalding, Sporting Goods Company created it.

06:58 - We had only been playing Pit for like 10 years at that point,

07:01 - but they had already pretty much decided that we

07:03 - were, you know, going hammer and tongs at each other.

07:06 - So therefore it seemed like a game worth celebrating in that sense.

07:10 - So the Spalding Company made a trophy that was to be either,

07:14 - you know, was to be in the possession of the winner

07:17 - of Penn State Pit game, and that would be over five years.

07:21 - And then whoever wanted the most over those five years got to keep it,

07:24 - and then they would make a new trophy, and it would last

07:27 - then for the next five years in the same thing.

07:29 - So that first trophy, which started in 1908,

07:33 - we won four out of the five games, so we got to keep the Spalding Trophy,

07:38 - which nobody knew about, and nobody knew that it was actually

07:43 - in a storage facility way over on the other side of town,

07:47 - until I saw a picture of it online, and went,

07:51 - "Oh my God, do we have that?

07:52 - " So I called up the archivist, and I was like,

07:54 - "Look, I'd really like to have that over here.

07:56 - " And they were like, "Yeah, sure, no problem.

07:58 - " So the Spalding Trophy came over here, and we've got it on display.

08:01 - Now as Penn State's very first rivaling trophy, super excited when that happened.

08:07 - One of the other things that we do is every two or three years or so,

08:11 - we created a special exhibit that's on temporary display.

08:15 - Our current special exhibit is a photo retrospective.

08:19 - Pat Little was a fantastic photojournalist.

08:24 - I had like a 30-odd-year career here with

08:27 - the Center Daily Times, and then with the AP.

08:31 - And so he retired as a photographer.

08:33 - He got all of his negatives back, like a million negatives,

08:37 - back from the CDT.

08:38 - And just started going through them and sort of putting them online,

08:42 - and we saw that happening, and I get caught,

08:44 - and I said, "Come on over here, let's talk.

08:47 - " And I convinced him that we would really love to do

08:51 - a special gallery of some of his best athletics photos.

08:55 - So we did.

08:56 - So he took a million negatives and whittled it down to 5,000,

08:59 - and I took 5,000 photos and whittled them down to 100,

09:02 - and we put 100 of his best photographs on display as a special exhibit.

09:08 - People have absolutely loved it.

09:09 - It's a fantastic exhibit.

09:11 - People have really gotten a lot out of it,

09:14 - particularly because it starts in 1977 or so

09:18 - when Pat was still a student here, and then stretches all the way up to 2008.

09:23 - So just a huge wide range of different photographs of different sports.

09:28 - It's been a fantastic exhibit.

09:32 - I do truly enjoy what it is that I get to do, but we have to be very careful,

09:39 - the responsibility of maintaining that history

09:43 - and taking care of all of these things.

09:45 - It's a very serious thing,

09:48 - because we want everything to last, not just

09:50 - today and tomorrow, we want it to last forever.

09:53 - We want it to be here for people to see for years and years to come.

10:02 - (upbeat music)