Blue Devil Alumni Spotlight: Dale Evans

Hall of Fame Biography

Name – Dale M Evans
UW-Stout graduation year – 1973
Major – Industrial Technology, concentration: Product Development
Sport – Wrestling
Years Played – 1970, 1971, 1972 & 1973
Hometown (High School) – DeForest High School
Currently Reside – Windsor WI, the Deforest school district
 Why did you choose to be a collegiate student-athlete at UW-Stout?
I wanted the IT degree and wanted to continue wrestling if I could.
 
What did you like most about competing in collegiate athletics? 
The preparation and accomplishment
 
What is the greatest lesson you learned from being a collegiate student-athlete?
How to work hard at something
 
Who was the most influential person in your athletic career?
Hard to say, I had two coaches in high school and four at Stout. But Rick Hienzelman was the assistant who ran practices when I was a sophomore at Stout. He was also my coach out of high school at the Junior Olympic trials.
 
What is your most memorable or favorite sports moment at UW-Stout? 
My senior year, becoming a four time WSUC Champ and being awarded my second Most Outstanding Wrestler award at the 1973 WSUC tournament.
 
How did your teammates describe you as a person and a student-athlete?
"Looks like a chipmunk, wrestles like a grizzly bear", I was 17 when I started wrestling at Stout.  Quiet, hardworking, confident
 
You were on a team with some great wrestlers.  Talk about the friendships that you had with them.
John Peterson ended up being an Olympic champion, still a great person. I don't think I have ever seen him mad.
Hector Cruz, an All American who helped me as a freshman. He was also my coach my senior year
I don't see them often, but when we get together, the hard work we put in and the Stout wrestling room seems like yesterday.DE
 
Outside of athletics, what other activities were you involved in at UW-Stout?
I loved to bow hunt for deer and grouse hunt outside of town in the fall. Co-ed volleyball team (we came in first), softball, flag football.
 
Give us a brief synopsis of your life since graduating from UW-Stout, include job and family?
I went to work at EVCO Plastics (a family business) and started our Project Engineering Department. That next fall I got married to my wife Debra, who I met at Stout. She finished her degree at UW-Madison. We have two daughters (both UW-Madison grads) who now are married and live in Chicago. Deb and I have been married now for 40 years. I have been president of EVCO Plastics since the mid 80's and we now have over 1000 employees in three countries.  We will shortly be a 100 times bigger than when I started.

You were the first four-time WSUC wrestling champion.  What motivated you throughout your career?
I have always tried to surround myself with great people.
 
You and your family received the Lifetime Service Award from the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2009.  Was wrestling a family affair growing up?
My younger brother was a two time HS State champion and wrestled at UW Madison.  I was an assistant at Madison for five years after graduation. At that time we had four guys in the wrestling room on the Olympic team including my old teammate John Peterson.  My first workout partner when I was a UW assistant became Wisconsin's first NCAA champion and the next year my workout partner (Lee Kemp) was second, but eventually became a three time NCAA Champ and a three time World Champion.

I help start a local wrestling club and have coached National Champions at every level. I was the head coach for 18 years and now am still on the Board of Directors. I was the co-state chairman (with Deb) for the Wisconsin Wrestling Federation. I was a 1E (one exceptional) Olympic style wrestling official, internationally certified and ranked in the top ten in the country. My wife Deb was ranked second in the country as a parings official and was asked to represent the USA at the 1984 Olympics. She turned it down because of the birth of our second daughter born a couple months before the games. I assisted at DeForest High School for many years and to help out, was the head high school coach for three years. I now am an assistant middle school coach at DeForest, which is great fun.



Evans and his family have been involved in the Wisconsin wrestling scene for many years, even being called the "First Family of Wisconsin Wrestling" in one publication when Evans, his brother Steve, and father Don, were inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame with a Lifetime Service Award in 2009. See the story below

The First Family of Wisconsin Wrestling, by the DeForest Times-Tribune