Gordon Vadakin is part of the 2022 Pizza Hut Shocker Sports Hall of Fame induction class. The class will be inducted on Sat., Feb. 5.

Run 20 rows of stairs at Cessna Stadium. Pushups. Run 20 more. Sit-ups.

When Wichita State bowler Holly Harris finished one of those workouts, she felt exhausted. She also felt a sense of accomplishment and bonding with her teammates as she listened to coach Gordon Vadakin say "You can do hard things."

Those occasional sessions at Cessna Stadium demonstrated the wonder of Vadakin's career as one of the nation's most successful college coaches. He pushed his bowlers to meet high expectations - academically, physically and on the lanes – and they loved it because he cared.

"It was called 'Tour de Cessna," Harris said. "He did such a good job on: Lecture beforehand. Run until you're miserable and then praise the hell out of you when you're done. You leave thinking 'Man, I did something. That was good.' He just was so good at encouraging."

Vadakin, a member of the 2022 class of the Wichita State Pizza Hut Shocker Sports Hall of Fame, is one of bowling's most prominent coaches for his contributions at all levels of the sport, including internationally. His insistence that bowling be treated like any other team sport – physical conditioning and mental preparation included - is where the success story began.

"The way we always tried to structure Shocker bowling is that we didn't look at other bowling programs," he said. "What would any major sport on the college campus do? What are the best examples of any program? Let's fashion our program to emulate Duke in basketball? What are they doing?"

Vadakin coached Wichita State from 1978-2019 and led the Shockers to 18 Intercollegiate Team Championships national titles -  11 men and seven women. He coached 145 All-Americans, 25 Bowler of the Year selections and 239 Academic All-Americans.

In 2012, the Bowling Coaches Hall of Fame inducted Vadakin and called him "perhaps the most successful collegiate bowling coach of all time."  Vadakin bowled on Team USA in 1983 and 1989. He won two U.S. Bowling Congress National Open Championship titles and is a member of the USBC Hall of Fame.

Vadakin retired in 2019 to help his daughter Andrea and husband Raja with Ryan, their 5-year-old son who has a rare genetic disorder that requires constant care. He remains close to the program he invested so many years developing and promoting.

He doubled as bowling coach and manager for the lanes in the Campus Activities Center (now Rhatigan Student Center) until 1996. Then-president Eugene Hughes made him full-time coach, a move Vadakin called a watershed moment. The staff now has three full-time coaches.

"It's a piece of work I'm incredibly proud of," Vadakin said. "We learned a lot. We learned the hard way. There was constant change, constant evolution. There was always a better way."

That success is secondary to the way he coached, encouraged and pushed his bowlers. His devotion to his team inspired countless Vadakin impersonations, a list of his catch-phrases and at least one Vadakin Halloween costume – complete with grey hair – over the decades.

"Every generation had exactly the same quotes," said Mark Lewis, a former Shocker bowler and current director of Shocker Bowling. "'Stay in the moment.' 'Where are you,' to keep players present. 'That's yuuuge.'"

All the victories, on the lanes and in the classrooms, came with a parental atmosphere of care and trust. He didn't need to yell to communicate. Bowlers, they say, couldn't bear to disappoint Vadakin because they knew how much he cared. He told Shockers the program stood for "maximums." That meant not being satisfied with a 3.0 grade-point average or a bowling performance that didn't improve from year to year.

"He was like a dad," said Harris, who bowled for the Shockers from 2010-14 and is the current women's coach. "It wasn't like he was angry with you. It was 'Come on, I know you can do better.' You got the look and the sigh."

Vadakin, a Wichita native who bowled for the Shockers as a student, is the first representative of Wichita State's bowling program to enter the Shocker Sports Hall of Fame.

"I'm honored," he said. "I'm humbled. I can still remember how shocking it was to get that call. When athletic director (Darron) Boatright called, I was kind of at a loss for words."