Mark Schick was, above all else, a winner. From his high school days in Geneva, Illinois when he led the Vikings to a second place finish in the 1975 Illinois 3A state playoffs to his current role as the Chief of Orthopaedic Surgery at St. Vincent Hospital in Green Bay, Wisconsin, his name has always been synonymous with success. He had been a three sport athlete in high school but at Augustana he “narrowed” his focus to football, where he was the starting quarterback for three years, and track & field, where he was an All-American pole vaulter.
Early in his sophomore season in football, then-head coach Ben Newcomb knew he needed Schick on the field and started him at wide receiver in the early going. With the team struggling, and a trip to Elmhurst, undefeated and ranked sixth in the NCAA Division III national polls on the horizon, Newcomb inserted Schick in as the starting quarterback. The move certainly paid off as Schick rushed for one touchdown and threw for another as the Vikings upset the Bluejays 16-13. His eight yard scoring run late in the contest proved to be the game winner.
Schick ended up serving as team captain of the 1980 team along with current Augustana head coach Jim Barnes. Although a knee injury cut short that final season, he still ranks eighth on the school’s all-time passing list with 1,619 yards. It should be noted that he was the starting quarterback in the first year of the Bob Reade-era and the 1,138 yards he amassed that season is ninth on the Vikings’ single season list. He led the CCIW in passing in 1979 as Augustana went 6-3 and started what is now a 26 year streak of winning seasons.
It didn’t take long for Schick to make his mark in track & field as he won the CCIW pole vault title as a freshman in 1978 and repeated the feat as a sophomore in 1979. A knee injury kept him out of the 1980 conference meet but he bounced back in time to clear 15’ 8” at the NCAA Division III national meet and earn All-American honors with a second place finish. His second place points were instrumental in the Vikings’’ fourth place team finish that year. During his senior year, he placed second in the CCIW meet, clearing 15’ 6”, the same height as teammate Brett Anderson, who won the event as Augustana set a conference record for points scored. Although he did not repeat his All-America performance of the year before, he did qualify for the 1981 NCAA meet where the Vikings placed second in the team standings.
He accomplished all of this while maintaining a stellar academic record while majoring in physics. Upon graduation, he went to the University of Texas at Austin and received his master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering. He then decided to go to medical school and in 1988 he received his M.D. from Loyola University Medical School. After completing his orthopaedic surgery residency at Northwestern in 1993, he served as an active duty Air Force Orthopaedic Surgeon at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska.
Mark and his wife Patricia, a Pediatric Orthopaedic Surgeon at St. Vincent’s, reside in Oneida, Wisconsin with their four children: Katie (12), Annie (11), Andrew (10) and Maureen (7).
