General | October 21, 2018

KALAMAZOO, Mich. - The Western Michigan Division of Intercollegiate Athletics will induct the 2018 Hall of Fame class on Friday, Oct. 26, at the Fetzer Center. The inductees will also be honored previous night on Thursday, Oct. 25 during halftime of Western Michigan football's game against Toledo. This week www.wmubroncos.com will take a closer look at each of our inductees: Scott Duhl (men's soccer), Jim Havrilla (men's basketball), Becky Horn (women's track and field), Greg Jennings (football), Doug Marcero (baseball), and Chantal Robinson (women's soccer).

Jim Havrilla
A native of Portage, Ind., Havrilla played basketball at Western Michigan from 1988-92. A two-time First Team All-MAC Selection in 1990 and 1992, along with an All-MAC Honorable Mention honor in 1991, Havrilla was third all-time in points scored at WMU with 1,551 career points at his time of graduation and currently ranks eighth in program history. Additionally, Havrilla ranks fifth all-time in free throws made with 449, seventh with 551 field goals, and ranks in the top-10 in career rebounds (770-8^th), double doubles (21-8^th), and field goal attempts (1,116-10^th). Throughout his career in Brown & Gold, Havrilla averaged 14.0 points per game along with 6.9 rebounds a game.
 
Q & A With Jim Havrilla

Q: What was your reaction when you found out you were being inducted?
I was caught off guard. It's been a number of years since I've been there (WMU) and they have had a lot of successful athletes come through since then. Obviously I'm honored, excited, and humbled.

Kathy Beauregard called, and talk about a blast from the past because Kathy was there back when I was in school as the assistant athletic director and I can even remember when she was pretty heavily involved in gymnastics. To hear her voice on the phone, and she had mentioned Jeff Stone, my academic advisor, it brought back some memories. It put a big smile on my face to hear from some people that I knew from back then and to know that they are still involved in the University speaks volumes.

I am really looking forward to getting back to campus. My wife and I took the kids there a couple of years ago. We got to see a game and show them around campus. It's not as easy as I would like to get there anymore but I know we're looking forward to going. It has changed so much for the better and it is really exciting.

Q: Do you have some favorite memories from your time playing at WMU?
I guess it is all about the people and experiences. Like most kids, I was a raw teenager that thought I knew everything about life and then the longer you're there you realize you don't really know that much. That was instrumental in helping kind of get me into shape or ready for the real world, which is similar for most kids. I was where I should be when I should be by being at Western Michigan, during that time in my life.

As far as other memories, I had just turned 18 when I went on campus. The first time we had played a pick-up game with the basketball team, I remember I didn't even touch the ball. I couldn't catch a pass, couldn't get a rebound, couldn't defend anyone, couldn't do anything and I walked off the court going, "you've got to be kidding me." Coach had mentioned possibly redshirting me because I was young, and I walked off the court going maybe I could redshirt for a couple years to catch up. My initial reaction was, "what am I doing here."

Another memory that stands out in my mind was going into my senior year. We had a really rough junior year, basketball wise. During one of the last practices before our first game my senior year, Coach Donewald was done with it and threw everybody out. He said "I don't care you guys can go ahead and do what you did last year." He went to his office, had the managers take the balls, and left us on the court standing around looking at each other. We gathered a players-only meeting and found an old rehab ball from the training room and went back onto the court. Mark Judge and I kind of rallied the troops and I don't how productive it was, but the intensity level was there. We told one of the managers to "tell coach that we're practicing if he wants to join us." He came down and just stood there and glared at us while we busted our butts for about two and a half hours. Then we started off the season winning more games than we won the previous season. It was a game-changer for the group. I laugh when I think about that because there were so many people that were disappointed from our last season and we weren't going to tolerate it going into the next season.
 
Q: Who were some of the people at Western Michigan that made your time memorable?
Social media is a real game-changer in today's age. We didn't even have cell-phones to keep in touch throughout the off-season, so it was kind of hard to keep in touch with people back then. After I got out of school and with all of the traveling I did, I haven't kept in touch with a whole lot of people. As I've been slowly getting back in touch with some people, it brings back a lot of memories.

Mark Judge and I roomed together our freshman year and by the time we were seniors, he and I were the only two left from that original class as we had redshirted. I learned a lot from Mark. Our relationship wasn't always "best friends" or anything like that, but I had a ton of respect for him for having gone through what we went through those five years. We started off with Vernon Payne and ended with Coach Donewald and had some of the worst and some of the best of seasons. Mark was there through all of it and he was the only one that really knows what we went through to get to that point.

There were some people off the court that didn't have anything to do with basketball that were pretty instrumental in getting me through things. It was always nice to see Jeff Stone because no matter what you had going on in the classroom, he'd always seen worse and better so he was resilient in that fact that he wouldn't get phased about whatever you had going on.

Q: Have you kept up with the program since you left?
Occasionally I'll follow what the team is doing. The basketball and football teams are the two that I follow whether it being on Fox Sports or ESPN. I know that they have had some incredible seasons, great players, and great stories. Whether it be Shayne Whittington playing in the NBA for a bit and over in Europe, or Thomas Wilder going over to Europe, that kind of stuff is exciting and I have a lot of pride in that. I was working in Indianapolis when Western played Syracuse in the NCAA Tournament in 2014 and they had a great showing. I take a lot of pride in that stuff and never hesitate to tell people that I went to Western Michigan.
 
Q: What has life been like for you since leaving Western Michigan?
It has definitely been unconventional. When I first got out of school, I had a couple opportunities with the NBA. I went and played in the Summer League with Washington and Utah and then went to training camp with Cleveland. After I got let go, I bounced around in a couple of defunct leagues. I ended up going to Australia and basically played professionally for 13 years and there was a lot of travel involved.

My family was based out of Portage, Ind., and that was where we would come in the off-season. After I had kids I wanted them to have a play to be grounded with something familiar. When I stopped playing in 2005, the kids were already in school and we didn't want to re-locate. I started to work in the beverage/alcohol business in Chicago and have been doing that for 13 years now and both of our kids are in college. Our daughter, Emma, is a sophomore at Indiana University in Bloomington and my son is a freshman at DePauw University in Greencastle, Ind., and is actually playing basketball there. My wife Tanya and I have been married for 25 years. I really enjoyed coaching my kids in youth basketball and they played from the time we got back to the U.S. throughout high school. They grew up knowing that basketball was a part of our life and I was lucky enough that I was able to use basketball analogies as life lessons.