Remembering His Roots

The Allen Park Sports Hall of Fame welcomed two very deserving new members with the additions of longtime Allen Park competitive cheer coach Julie Goodwin and former Cabrini athletic standout Randy Wojtala. The Class of 2025 inductees were honored during the August 2 induction ceremony.


When Randy Wojtala goes over to clean his parents’ headstones he makes a point of stopping by and cleaning up a couple others while visiting Our Lady of Hope Catholic Cemetery in Brownstown.

“My dad passed away when I was 9 years old back in 1966, and my brother and I were kind of lost,” Wojtala said. “The Radecki family lived down the block from us and I was friends with their son David, and that summer they invited us on a family vacation. They had a son who played football for Cabrini and we started going to the games in the fall with them.”

And that was a real “game changer” for young and impressionable Randy.

“He used to walk around with his letter jacket and I really looked up to him and those games on Friday were incredible,” he said. “The excitement. The stands were packed and it seemed like the whole community was there.”

Wojtala was all in with sports – it was game on!

“I played four sports (basketball, football, baseball and track) at Cabrini in the 1970s and was pretty good in all of them,” he said. “I loved representing my school and being with my teammates. We became very close.”

But his best sport he didn’t play at Cabrini.

“They didn’t have a soccer team,” he said. “My brother and I actually played for Allen Park High School during my freshman year. We kind of snuck on to the team and after they found out, they let us finish the season. If you look in the Allen Park High School 1973 yearbook, my brother and I are in the soccer team photo.”

After Cabrini, Wojtala went on to a successful soccer playing career at Western Michigan University, where he set both career and single-season scoring records (the latter lasted 46 years). He was inducted into the WMU Sports Hall of Fame in 2024.

He even kicked around the idea of playing professionally, getting invites from several North American Soccer League (NASL) franchises. He also earned a tryout with the USA National Soccer Team in 1974 and 1977.

“It came down to trying to play professionally or getting married and starting a family,” he said. “I made the right choice.”

Wojtala has been married for 39 years to Debbie Norman, currently the assistant athletic director at Cabrini High School. She was a highly successful softball coach for the Monarchs and is in the Michigan Softball Coaches Hall of Fame, Catholic League Hall of Fame and City of Allen Park Hall of Fame.

All of Wojtala’s success in sports – and in life – leads us back to the cemetery.

“I never got a chance to thank the Radecki parents,” he said. “When you’re young you don’t realize how important people like them are in your life. So when I go to the cemetery I make it a point to clean their headstones. It’s my way of thanking them.”