There is a proud football tradition at Lenoir Rhyne College, a small (960 students) Lutheran liberal arts school in the foothills of North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains. This season Lenoir Rhyne went undefeated to its fifth consecutive conference title and was named the No. 1 small college football team in the nation. The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, an organization of some 450 small colleges, awarded Lenoir Rhyne's football team the highest rating ever.
Credit for this rests on the broad shoulders of "Stas" Stasavich, who has coached at Lenoir Rhyne since 1938. He is shown here with Lee Farmer, his star tailback, and Peanuts, his Pekingese-cocker, who occasionally turns out for practice. Stasavich's outstanding success has brought him offers from major colleges. He has turned them all down. "I'm a schoolteacher at heart," explains Stasavich, "and here I have the opportunity to teach. What I like to do is take a kid and teach him football. It's a great joy to see a youngster develop and go on from college to become a useful citizen. At a big college I would be mostly a football administrator."
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