ALUMNI PROFILE
This player’s got history
Seventy-six years later Francis Zummach still can’t pinpoint why Marquette’s basketball coach looked at this walk-on player and told him to suit-up.
By Joni Moths mueller
 And suit-up. And suit-up. That’s right, Zummach, Arts ’33 and Law ’35, played for Marquette from 1931-33, his sophomore through senior years. Today at 96 years old, Zummach is Marquette’s oldest living former basketball player.
The coach never said why Zummach caught his eye, so he’s left to credit his longevity on the squad to having the right attitude. “I was small, didn’t do anything fancy. I guess I was maybe more coach-able,” he says.
Zummach later became Marquette’s first paid assistant basketball coach and remembers teaming up with and later coaching players who earned local and even national fame wearing the blue and gold, including Eugene Ronzani, Ernest Kukla, Adolph “Big Mitts” Gorychka and Ray Morstadt. His favorite games were, of course, when Marquette beat Notre Dame and Wisconsin. He still likes to see that happen.
Zummach went on to coach a National Basketball League team in Sheboygan, building the nucleus of the team with four Marquette alumni, before launching a full-time legal career.
Nearly eight decades later he still keeps his eye on Marquette hoops and says, “Remember, there was basketball at Marquette before Al McGuire.”
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