Malone University Athletics

A 1997 Malone graduate majoring in Law & Society, takes his place in the Malone Athletics Hall of Fame as a four-year standout on the Pioneer men’s golf team from 1993 to 1997. But….as longtime Malone men’s golf head coach Ken Hyland states; it is truly a miracle that he even made it to Malone.  And Hyland says this with his tongue presses firmly in his cheek.  

Hyland first met Chris when he attended Malone’s summer golf camp as a sophomore from Perry High School. But after a week of Chris pulling numerous pranks during the camp including pulling fire alarms, placing buckets of water over doorways and many other high jinks, Hyland admits that he was about ready to kill him. “I think his parents just wanted to get rid of him for a week,” Hyland recalls. “He was on thin ice for most of the camp.”

Chris evidently did not learn his lesson because when he returned next summer for the camp as a junior, more of the same ensued. Perhaps only divine intervention, or Chris’s pleading to come back to the camp as a senior on the promise of being an angel, prompted Hyland to allow him one more chance. During that final summer of camp, Reuscher was indeed an angel, Hyland was able to focus more on Chris’s golf talent than on his troublemaking skills, he ended up coming to Malone after graduating from Perry in 1993, and the rest, as they say, is history.

A two-time team captain and two-time team MVP, Reuscher was a top golfer on the Malone squad during his Pioneer tenure posting the best W-L-T record on the team in three of his four seasons. His career record of 82-30-8 (for a .667 winning percentage) is among the best in the program and he posted an impressive four-year career average of 76.9. A four-time conference match participant, he was named to the All-Conference Team twice. He collected an impressive six tournament victories while at Malone (including three of the eight Pioneer Invitationals in which he competed) which was an individual Pioneer men’s golf record for 10 years. In addition, Reuscher posted runner-up finishes in four events, including the 1995 NCCAA National Championship. In national championship competition, he competed for Malone in both of the NAIA national events for which the team qualified (in ‘95 and ‘96) and he also played in all three of the NCCAA National Championships in which the squad competed (in ’95 thru ‘97). He was also a two-time NCCAA All-American (in ’95 and ’96) and earned NCCAA All Tournament Team honors in 1997.

After his competing four years at Malone, he served as an assistant men’s golf coach for the Pioneers in 1998. In 2002, he earned a Juris Doctor degree (with Honors) from the University of Akron School of Law. During his time at Akron, he earned numerous awards including the Ernest Karam Scholar Award for Academic Excellence and the Joseph Thomas Memorial Educational Scholarship for Academic Achievement. In addition, he served on the Senior Editorial Board of the Akron Law Review and was the treasurer of the Akron Chapter of the Federalist Society. He has also been published twice in the University of Akron Law Review and will be the recipient, in January 2010, of the Ohio Super Lawyers Rising Star Award, which is an award given to less that 2.5% of the lawyers in the state of Ohio.  Reuscher is currently a senior associate at Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff LLP, a 135-person law firm based in Cleveland. An active member of numerous boards and organizations in his community, he serves on the board of directors of The One-in-Six Foundation, a non-profit organization based in Akron that funds research and test programs to find a cure for prostate cancer.   He and his wife, Tara, have one child, Nicholas (who is one year old), and they reside in Copley Township.