MIKE LOPRESTI: This coach has 37 championships and helped restore the Velodrome

Marian University’s Dean Peterson has revived the school’s cycling program and the Major Taylor Velodrome. (IBJ photo/Eric Learned)

Here we are at the Major Taylor Velodrome on a quiet morning, where the only sounds are the birds and the trucks rolling past on nearby Interstate 65. The place once crackled with cycling competition at the National Sports Festival and Pan American Games, but those were eons ago. Wonder what goes on here now?

Well, here’s a guy riding up on a red bike with the answer. As a coach, he’s produced national champions at Marian University like McDonald’s produces cheeseburgers.

A lot of Dean Peterson’s life happens on two tires. He usually bikes 10 miles to work. “It took me 29 minutes today. I can drive here in 22,” he mentions. He and wife, Shari, often bike to dinner. When they went to the Indianapolis 500, they hopped on their tandem and rode from their home near East 65th Street and Allisonville Road to the Speedway. Just another two-car, two-child, five-bike American family.

There are a couple of other things we should know about Peterson.

Fourteen years ago, he took over a once-powerful Marian cycling program that had fallen on hard times. While cycling doesn’t have an NCAA tournament, it does have national championships in five disciplines—track, road, BMX, cyclocross and mountain—plus the overall, which is called the Omnium. Omnium might as well be Latin for “Marian stands on the podium.” The Knights just won the 2019 track title; that makes 37 national championships under Peterson, including seven Omniums in a row.

This is not basketball, where Duke and Kentucky are the blue bloods. Marian’s rivals for national supremacy have names like Fort Lewis College and Colorado Mesa—places where they can train in the Rockies. The Knights’ juggernaut was born in Indiana farmlands, and in a velodrome next to I-65.

No collegiate coach in this state can match the tonnage of Peterson’s national championship hardware—yet he could ride around Indy and seldom be recognized. “It’s kind of like we’re just under the radar,” he begins. “It’s a small, kind of obscure sport. It’s not college basketball or football—all of the things I grew up with.”

Another thing about Peterson. He and Marian have helped revive the Velodrome from the brink of forgotten disrepair. Marian took over its operation from the city parks department eight years ago.

“Dark and dismal. Lots of weeds,” is how he describes the Velodrome back then. “It wasn’t because people didn’t care; it was the parks just didn’t have the money to fund something that was really more just a big-event kind of place. You read these articles about Olympic facilities [falling apart] after the Olympics are done; this was just about like that.

“You’d cut through the access road any given day, no matter what time of day, there were cars parked—I mean 30 cars. It was drugs and prostitution.” Now the renovated Velodrome hosts competitions—maybe 50 a year—plus open-track classes for the community.

We bring all this up now because Peterson is starting to transition out of leading the Marian program, turning it over to trusted lieutenants John Hoopingarner and Michael Kubancsek, both Marian alums. At 54, he’s pursuing a doctorate in education at IUPUI— pedaling to classes, of course, on a black cargo bike with a basket for books.

So goes a winding trail that began at Goshen. He played baseball, football and basketball as a kid, went 6-foot-5-inches in the high jump in high school. He tried the triathlon and fell in love with the cycling portion—took that love to Purdue, then to West Africa for three years in the Peace Corps, “where I was using bikes to ease workloads for women carrying wood on their heads and all the things that go on in rural West Africa.”

Back to Indiana in 1991, then to Indianapolis, where he ended up teaching at The Orchard School, a job he loved. But there were miles to ride on the bike, too, and competitions to enter. Then one day, the athletic director from Marian called with an offer: Come make our cycling program strong again. That was 2006.

“It was the most difficult decision of my life to leave teaching,” he says. In fact, the Marian program was kind of a mess. He had only seven riders.

Thirteen years later, his roster lists 64 riders from 25 states and seven countries. Two of his recent athletes—Coryn Rivera and Felecia Stancil—are prospects for the 2020 Olympics.

“Students were leaving, and the school was in a challenging spot. I began to use my tools I felt I had gathered at Orchard with the students, with the parents in recruiting, and we just kept getting bigger and better and better and better. And then once we started winning, we’ve kind of kept winning.”

Two things he really likes about his sport.

Both men and women compete. There is even a coed relay, and on his wall is a poster of a Marian relay team that included a brother and sister. Try to find that in a college football office.

Also, riding has several levels of competition, rather like an ABCD scramble in golf. “Everybody can have a place. On the human side, it’s outstanding.”

Cycling isn’t without risk. Peterson has had broken collarbones, concussions, separated shoulders.

“It’s just part of the sport that I don’t like at all. I’ve not been hit by a car,” he says, knocking on a wooden table. “One of the hard parts of this job has been watching other people’s kids get hurt pretty bad.

“I had a crash this summer. I hadn’t had one in a long, long time. I called my wife and I said, ‘I crashed. I hurt myself, but I’m good enough to drive home.’ I could tell she wasn’t happy. I got home and she was sitting there with a glass of wine and said, ‘Are we done yet?’”

Well, no. He still loves to compete, and has in fact won the world championship in his age group in the Masters competition in England.

In a way, his journey is an oval that has led him back to the start. He seeks a return to education, eventually teaching future teachers how to connect with students. “It’s come full circle, and I hope it goes another lap, because I think I’ve got a lot to give,” he says of his life.

And the Marian program he helped transform into a title machine?

“I was given a lot of room to visualize, and set the goals and set the tone, go after recruits all over the world. For me, I’ve been able to see it through, complete the vision and hand it off in the right way, so it doesn’t just stop.”•

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Lopresti is a lifelong resident of Richmond and a graduate of Ball State University. He was a columnist for USA Today and Gannett newspapers for 31 years; he covered 34 Final Fours, 30 Super Bowls, 32 World Series and 16 Olympics. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at mjl5853@aol.com.