Chesterton High School Athletic Hall of Fame: Rick Fulton, Class of 1980, still holds the school record in the shot put and is enshrined in the Indiana football Hall of Fame

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

Shot put techniques and weight training and nutrition methods have come a long way in the past 46 years, just not long enough for any Chesterton athlete to throw the shot as far as mountain of a young man Rick Fulton did in 1980.
Fulton threw the steel ball at the state championship track and field meet that year 60 feet, 6 inches. Forty-six years later, Fulton will be inducted into the Chesterton High School Athletic Hall of Fame still in possession of that record.
This year’s inductees will be honored at the season-opening football game on Aug. 21 and at a Hall of Fame induction banquet Aug. 22 at Sand Creek. Those interested in attending should call the athletic department at 219-983-3730 for ticket information.
Fulton goes in as a football player and a thrower.
His 60-6 mark made him the runner-up at state to Hammond’s Mark Murakowski, whose throw was a mere 3 inches farther.
“I was beating him all year by 4 feet and then he learned that spin move,” Fulton said. “I don’t know, maybe I should have tried that.”
Fulton’s Chesterton record came in just his second year on the track team and in his second-best sport, so he doesn’t lose any sleep over not winning the state title.
Fulton, who doesn’t appear to let much bother him, expresses no regrets about his athletic career, whether it’s falling three inches short at state or not having an NFL career beyond training camp.
He’s working as an electrician at the Cleveland Cliffs steel mill in Burns Harbor and for the moment has his son and three grandchildren living with him.
“I’m happy,” Fulton said.
And happy to be catching up with old friends during Hall of Fame weekend.
Fulton always was a football player first, a thrower almost as an afterthought. By the time he tucked a steel ball under his chin and gave it a ride, he already had established himself as a force on the gridiron, mostly as a 6-foot-5, 255-pound defensive lineman who also made appearances blocking when the offense neared the goal line or on third and short when the heavy personnel package went onto the field.
The reputation Fulton earned during his three-year varsity football career gained him induction in the Indiana Football Coaches Hall of Fame on May 7, 2017.
During Fulton’s Chesterton football career (1977-79), the Trojans went 3-0 vs. Valparaiso and 0-3 vs. Hobart,.
“Hobart (then in the DAC) was the team to beat, always, but our rival was Valpo,” Fulton said. “We geared up for Hobart. Junior year they got us 7-0 at the Brickie Bowl, the Bowl right next to hell it was so hot. And then our senior year they talked us up. We were the biggest line out there and we were supposed to beat Hobart and they took it to us (21-6). I give them credit. Coach (Don) Howell, they had a system down and they played it perfectly.”
As a senior football player, Fulton not only was All-DAC and Region 1 All-Star, he was an All-State selection who played for the North in the North South All-Star Game.
“That particular game I did better on offense. They had me in there as an offensive tackle,” Fulton recalled. “Literally right after the game, Lee Corso, the Indiana coach, came up to me and wanted to give me a scholarship to come to IU. I said, ‘No, I’m going the other way, Bud. No.’”
Instead of heading south, he headed north to Northwestern, where he played for one year with former Chesterton teammate Rich Raffin, also being inducted at this year’s Hall of Fame banquet.
“It was a Big Ten school, a quality school, pretty close to home, but between the practice, the meetings and school, you had four to five hours of sleep a night and I could just not handle that,” Fulton said. “There was just no way on earth. Five hours of sleep? I would have gone insane.”
Plus, the Northwestern football program was in a state of limbo after firing coach Rick Venturi and before hiring Dennis Green. So Fulton left: “(Chesterton) Coach (Mike) Jennings called me and said, ‘Get down to Missouri State,’” which then was named Southwest Missouri State. He finished his college career there.
Fulton made a strong enough impression and showed enough speed for his size that the New York Giants signed him to a two-year, non-guaranteed contract as an undrafted free agent in 1985. He participated in rookie camp and three weeks of training camp and in “a couple of preseason games” he said, before getting cut.
That short time gave him a lifetime of memories and stories about some of the biggest names in NFL history: Head coach Bill Parcells, defensive coordinator Bill Belichick and outside linebacker Lawrence Taylor.
“Parcells, he was an old-time coach, yelling and screaming,” Fulton remembered. “Belichick did a little bit of that but it was mainly Parcells yelling and screaming and he’d get under your skin, too. He knew how to do that.”
Parcells was known to use sarcasm to motivate players and Fulton shared one instance of being on the receiving end of that sharp tongue on a play in a scrimmage when 1985 first-round draft choice running back George Adams out of Kentucky got the better of him.
“It was an off tackle run and I was playing end and I stood up a little too tall coming off hitting the tackle and then the running back came through and hit me in the chest and blew me backwards. I tackled him, but he blew me backwards,” Fulton recounted. “Parcells just looked at me and said, ‘Nice tackle, Fulton.’ Everyone is trying for a spot and then you hear that and you’re like, ‘You son of a …’ You’d raise your level a little after that, or at least you’d try to. To get bowled over like that, not good, especially in front of the coaches.”
Belichick, who would go on to win six Super Bowls as head coach of the New England Patriots, had a different style, Fulton said: “He was all business, and I mean all business. When you were on the field, all business.”
The Giants had it written into Fulton’s contract that needed to report to camp at a maximum of 262 pounds and would be fined $25 per pound every day for every pound over that. He never was fined.
“They were switching me all over. I was a big guy but I was pretty fast,” Fulton said. “I remember one day Belichick had me go with the linebackers, and after every practice he had me run 100-yard dashes with one of the defensive backs. That alone was exhausting.”
Fulton understood that Belichick did it to get him in top shape and to try to make him faster.
Fulton was there long enough to see what made Taylor a popular choice as the greatest defensive player in NFL history.
“I didn’t see him lift weights hardly at all when I was there,” Fulton said. “He was just a different guy, a natural athlete. Faster than hell, stronger than hell, and mean. Plus, from what I understand, he’d come into meetings late, fall asleep and they’d get on him for that, but he could explain to you exactly what was going to happen on the play drawn up. So he had a good football IQ too.”
Fulton said he had ascended to as high as second string at one point, but ultimately was cut and told he could go to Denver, Green Bay or Washington to try out.
“I said no thanks, I’m done. My body was hurting even at that time,” Fulton said. “I think back on that and think if I kept playing, how would I be now physically? And back then it was completely different. You got to hit people. Now there’s a strike zone on the quarterback, nothing below the knees, nothing above the shoulders. It’s still a hard-hitting game but it was just different.”
He explained how else it was different.
“You see these guys now if they don’t want to play they tell the coach I don’t want to play. Well, we didn’t have that option,” he said. “It was, ‘Go see the trainer. Wrap it up. Take an aspirin or whatever and get back out there.’ No concussion protocol. That was just starting to come into play. But still it was very weak at the time. It was basically, ‘How many fingers am I holding up? Here are some smelling salts and let us know when you can go back in.’”
No regrets about not having an NFL career. Well, maybe one.
“I missed the cutoff for being one of the actual football cards by about 10 days,” he said. “That would have been cool.”
And one more: “I wish I would have paid more attention to nutrition. I look back on that and think: ‘How did you even play this game?’ My diet was terrible. You’re at that age, and being a big guy I ate what I could get ahold of. Pizza, day-old pizza, just garbage food. I didn’t pay attention to carbs and protein ratio, none of that stuff. I look back on those high school days and I wish someone would have told me more about nutrition. My pregame meal was a steak and a bottle of Coke. Not like today. It’s all dialed in now.”
Otherwise, all the memories he recounted from competing at Chesterton made him chuckle.
“I loved playing for Coach Jennings, actually,” Fulton said. “He was a hell of a good coach and I thought he was a good guy.”
He said he also enjoyed head track coach Larry James: “I remember going to track meets in Larry James’ station wagon, eight of us in his station wagon, because we couldn’t get a bus or something. The engine’s overheating halfway to Purdue. I think of crazy things like that.”
He also thinks about the first time he heaved a shot:
“The coach was out there and when I first threw it I was over 50 feet and he said, ‘OK, you’re throwing the shot.’ So I figured what the hell, why not? It’s not a lot of running, it’s just throwing a big steel ball, so yeah, I’ll do it. Then I had to learn to get the footwork and the timing and all that down.”
Farther than 50 feet without even knowing what he was doing, such a natural athlete.
Fulton didn’t play a winter sport at Chesterton, but according to state champion wrestler Jim Popp, entering the Hall of Fame the same night as Fulton, he certainly was equipped.
“Wedge, God, he was a big high school kid. Man. We could have used him as a wrestler,” Popp said. “We could have made him into a wrestler because he was athletic.”
As for the nickname, Popp said that Fulton “would make a wedge whatever he ran through or pushed through. … I haven’t seen him in a long time. I haven’t seen a lot of the guys I’ll see in a long time.”
Instead of wrestling in the winter, Fulton did the polar opposite. He rested. He did more than enough in the fall and spring to earn the break and to enter his high school’s athletic Hall of Fame.