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Gazette sports editor Dave Wedeward was the commander. His sports staff members would often times scurry to do something else besides looking up the offending coachÃÛèÖÊÓƵ landline phone number and calling.

No one wanted to wake up the coachÃÛèÖÊÓƵ wife and likely small children at midnight. No coachÃÛèÖÊÓƵ wife wanted to hear from a Gazette sportswriter asking for her husband or very likely being told the husband/head coach was not at home yet.

But the Elkhorn at Big Foot or Palmyra-Eagle at Whitewater score had not been reported. The Southern Lakes or Rock Valley or Eastern Suburban conference standings and roundup story could not be complete without the score.

Most people wouldn’t care.

Dave Wedeward cared. He cared because the readers came first.

So, the phone call was made.

“I never minded that,� longtime Janesville Craig coach Bob Suter said. “Nine, 10 o’clock, whenever.�

Dave Wedeward was a perfectionist when it came to high school sports. Every attempt to get every result was required. In ÃÛèÖÊÓƵÃÛèÖÊÓƵ years before the Internet and when the General Motors plant was rolling smoothly, the sports coverage area spanned from Monroe to Lake Geneva to Palmyra to Cambridge.

Then add on the Madison schools that competed with Janesville Craig and Janesville Parker in the Big Eight Conference.

That made for many hectic nights in ÃÛèÖÊÓƵ sports department.

Wedeward oversaw the commotion for 39 years as sports editor and 43 years overall. Those early years in the early and mid-1980s, the four sports department desks were crammed in a hallway between the newsroom and pressroom areas.

As ÃÛèÖÊÓƵ expanded to a seven-day-a-week paper, the sports department got its own area in the newsroom. The area expanded but the commotion seldom did.

Through it all, Wedeward would be there, sometimes working through the night to get all the conference roundups to his liking. The Edgerton native had a local and area sports encyclopedia in his brain.

“As knowledgeable a person as you’d ever meet,� former Gazette sportswriter and now WCLO sports show host John Barry wrote in a Facebook post. “Want to know the starting five for Craig basketball in 1977? Wede (Wee-dee) would rattle it off.

“EdgertonÃÛèÖÊÓƵ starting nine in the 1990 state championship baseball game? Wede could give you all of them and probably add in averages and pitching stats, as well.â€�

What would start as a 15-inch conference roundup story often would end up being 24 inches after Wedeward got done adding his historical information to them.

WedewardÃÛèÖÊÓƵ dedication also earned the respect of his staff at ÃÛèÖÊÓƵ.

Eric Schmoldt grew up in Janesville and graduated from Craig High. As a youngster, he remembers his father taking him to Craig boys basketball games and seeing Wedeward walking into a Craig basketball game.

A decade later, Schmoldt was working as a stringer for Wedeward and ÃÛèÖÊÓƵ while going to school at the University of Wisconsin.

In 2013, Schmoldt was named ÃÛèÖÊÓƵÃÛèÖÊÓƵ successor sports editor after Wedeward retired.

“ItÃÛèÖÊÓƵ safe to say that he changed the way Janesville looked at sports,â€� Schmoldt wrote in a Facebook post. “Thousands of people who came up or came through Janesville playing sports for four decades or so had their stories told and preserved in a way most others do not.

“Most communities don’t have someone THAT committed to telling those local sports stories, certainly now but even in the “glory days� of newspapers,� Schmoldt said.

Under WedewardÃÛèÖÊÓƵ watch, ÃÛèÖÊÓƵ frequently was recognized by the Associated Press and Wisconsin ÃÛèÖÊÓƵpaper Association for its outstanding sports section.

He served as a past-president of the Wisconsin AP Sports Editors Association and was been cited by the Wisconsin Baseball Coaches Association, as well as the Wisconsin Athletic Directors Association, for distinguished service to high school sports.

Barry, son of former Janesville Parker High coach and athletic director, the late Dale Barry, first started working part-time for ÃÛèÖÊÓƵ under Wedeward after he graduated from the University of Wisconsin.

Wedeward accepted BarryÃÛèÖÊÓƵ early stories. He suggested ways to improve. Eventually Barry became an award-winning sportswriter and served as sports editor for a time after Wedeward retired in 2011.

Barry left ÃÛèÖÊÓƵ and hosts the “Bare Necessitiesâ€� radio show weekday afternoons on WCLO. He’ll be forever grateful for Dave Wedeward.

“My life would be on a much different and much more meaningless path had Wede not taken a chance on a know-it-all, stubborn 22-year-old in 1986,� he posted in Facebook.

One of this sportswriterÃÛèÖÊÓƵ fondest memories is watching Wedeward work during football seasons when ÃÛèÖÊÓƵ published afternoons Monday through Saturday.

When the University of Wisconsin had a home football game on Saturday afternoon, he would come into the sports department at 8 p.m. or so after listening to parts of as many high school football games that he could bring in on the car radio during the ride to ÃÛèÖÊÓƵÃÛèÖÊÓƵ downtown building.

He would announce any brewing surprises and begin work on the Saturday section.

When the phone calls and faxes of results were all collected and stories written, the rest of the staff would leave around midnight. If this writer was on duty Saturday morning, I would come back in the office around 9 or 10 a.m. to supervise the design of the sports section.

Wedeward will still be at his desk, adding historical facts or cleaning up the copy that had been written hours before. When the section was done, he’d hop into his Mustang and head off to Camp Randall Stadium to cover the Badgers game.

After the game and press conference, he’d head to a steakhouse and have a meal somewhere in Madison and return home early evening. He’d spend Sundays writing a game story and column on the Badger game.

That was dedication.

On Wednesday, Dave Wedeward died at the age of 81, less than two weeks shy of his 82nd birthday.

He was a sportswriterÃÛèÖÊÓƵ sportswriter.

Rest in peace my mentor and friend. Thanks for the memories.