UIC Athletics will hold its 2017 Hall of Fame Banquet and Reunion on Saturday, Jan. 28. This year's class features representatives from five different sports, one former coach and long-time administrator, and the first men's basketball team to earn an NCAA Tournament berth.
 
Leading up to the celebration, UICFlames.com will be profiling each of the 2017 inductees, which include Tricia Charbonneau (Softball), Tom Cisar (Men's Golf), Jay DeMerit (Men's Soccer), Erin Garrett (Women's Swimming), Justin Johnson (Baseball), Denny Wills (Coach/Administrator) and the 1997-98 men's basketball team.
 
Tom Cisar (Men's Golf, 1968-1971)
By: John Healy
 
Tom Cisar was an experienced basketball player and golfer from LaGrange, Ill., when he graduated from Lyons Township High School in 1966 and became the first person in his family to go to college, starting his career at Kenyon College in Ohio before transferring to UIC, and its newly constructed campus, in 1967.
 
"I was just going through my first year there [UIC] and I didn't really know much about what was going on," Cisar commented, recalling his initial experience at the new university and how his good friend and fellow UIC Hall of Fame member Bob Augustine helped him get on the team. "I got a call from Dick Rader, who was the golf coach, and [he] said Bob Augustine said you're a really good player, you're on the team," Cisar said, remembering how he ended up on that initial '68-'69 team. "It was really that simple."
 
Cisar was drawn to that UIC team in 1968 because of both his talents, passion for the game and his appreciation for the team as a whole. "I was just drawn to it because it was the one team that was really, really good," Cisar answered, citing the team's winning streak that had been ongoing since '66, and which would continue until '70 for a total of 66 matches. He was also excited by the caliber of fellow athletes on the team, such as Augustine and Gerald Scherrer. "That's what really drew me to golf," Cisar replied. "It was a great environment with great guys."
 
Cisar also recognized that the success of the team was also due in part to their coach, Dick Rader. "He was always really positive, and his attitude was that he knew we were going to win," Cisar recalled, detailing Rader's easy personality and dedication to his players. "He just worked with us, he was just great."
 
Cisar and the team would go on to win the Illinois Lakeland and Chicago Collegiate League tournaments, among other honors. He would also go undefeated his junior year, winning 20 matches and earning honors at the North Central Invitational. Later, he would go on to succeed again, despite many of the top players of the previous year graduating, in his senior year, winning the Naperville College Invitational as a team captain and going 8-3 while battling a case of mono. "We went from being a golf power-house to having some difficult times," Cisar said, but he reveled in the challenge of it all, saying, "I don't remember losing."
 
Tom Cisar and his wife are still active at UIC, supporting the university's medical school and sponsoring the Cisar Student Veterans Center in the student union to support and give current students that have served in the armed forces a place to meet and study, as well as supplying a myriad of other programs to assist student-veterans. Cisar currently practices law with his son in the Chicago suburbs.
 
"It's allowed me to meet an unbelievably large number of people," Cisar stated, commenting on the many opportunities that golf opened in his life. "Golf, my whole life, has been amazing to me."