The upcoming weekend was going to be a quiet one at the University of Evansville, coming one week following graduation.  Now it looks like campus will still be hopping, thanks to the biggest reunion ever of UE football alumni and support staff.  More than 350 have signed up to attend as of Monday afternoon.

A full weekend of events is planned for Friday, May 13 and Saturday, May 14, including a 12 noon golf outing May 13 at Quail Crossing Golf Course followed by a 6:00 p.m. reception at The Pub. Saturday's activities include an 11:00 a.m. brunch and campus tour, and dinner that night at 7:00 at the Vanderburgh County 4H Center.  The featured dinner speaker will be University of Missouri Director of Athletics Mike Alden, a former football player and assistant football coach at UE.

The reunion is being organized by former Evansville College classmates and longtime football coaches Bill Harrawood and Ralph Weinzapfel (class of '59), along with the UE office of alumni and parent relations, and numerous volunteers.  In addition to inviting former UE football players and coaches, the organizers are reaching out to former cheerleaders, Homecoming Queens, dance team members, band members, athletic trainers, student managers and fans.  Even though UE has not sponsored football since the 1997 season, Harrawood says there's been plenty of enthusiasm for the reunion ever since one on a smaller scale took place in 2009.

"This idea started two years ago," according to Harrawood. "One of our former teammates was in bad health, and he made the statement to his son that he would like to see some of his old teammates before he passed on.  His son told me, I talked Ralph Weinzapfel, we started calling our teammates from that era, and between 80 and 90 guys showed up.  When it was over, I said, 'Why not do something like this for everybody?'" 

So the former football coaches quickly put together a solid game plan to organize the 2011 event.  They brought together more than 50 people for an organizational meeting, then put together teams of four representing each five-year period of Aces' football from the '40s through the '90s.  Thanks to phone calls, e-mails and Facebook messages from those four-man teams, word has spread nationwide. 

"You never know until the time arrives," says Harrawood, "but right now it looks like this is going to be a pretty nice event."

For more information, go to http://www.uealumnionline.com/acesfootball