CLEVELAND, Ohio -- While speaking with the media at the 23rd Greater Cleveland Sports Awards, 84-year-old triathlete Luise Easton looked up and saw a familiar face on a live feed projector screen. Jim Tressel was on stage presenting Ted Ginn Sr. with a lifetime achievement award. Easton began to choke up.
“I’m just looking up there, I see Jimmy Tressel on the screen. Jimmy Tressel was a student of mine, actually, years ago,” Easton recalled.
A former physical education teacher at Berea High School, Easton knew Tressel as a student and coached his older brother, Dick, in swimming. She has followed Tressel’s accomplishments for the past five decades. She last saw Tressel 52 years ago.
When Greater Cleveland Sports Commission director of marketing and communications Meredith Painter was told of the connection, she was quick to find Tressel after his presentation. She reunited the two and they happily spoke with the media together.
“It’s been a few years,” Tressel quipped with his arm around Easton. “She was like the Energizer Bunny back then (at Berea High School), that’s just her makeup.”
Easton was honored with the 5-Star Senior Athlete Award on Wednesday night. Her accomplishments include winning first place for her age group at the International Triathlon Union Multisport World Championship Festival. She also completed the Alcatraz Sharkfest Swim in San Francisco Bay twice, at age 70 and again at 75. She won a gold medal at the National Senior Games in 2015.
“I talk to my old boys all the time. Wait ‘til I tell them who I was hanging out with tonight,” Tressel quipped.
Easton recalled that Tressel got a pass from P.E. class when he became a football player. He smiled.
“It was really my older brother who was closest to her. The discipline that she taught my older brother, who was a swimmer, that was the lesson that was passed down to us.”
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