By CHRIS LARICK
Staff Writer

It's official — Henry Garvey will be the second referee to join the ACBF Hall of Fame.

Very few people knew the area sports scene as Henry Garvey did before he retired. That's because Garvey got to see the good athletes in three sports as an official — football, basketball and track — for 40 years. Garvey, now 85 and living in Naples, Fla., also officiated a fourth sport, wrestling, for a while, though he admits he didn't like that job very well and gave it up.

It is as a basketball official that Garvey will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame on April 10 at Conneaut's Human Resources Center. That seems appropriate since basketball is the sport he enjoyed the most.

He is the second person to be inducted into the Hall of Fame as an official. Ange Candela, inducted last year, was the first.

Garvey grew up in Andover and played basketball, baseball and track there (the school was too small for a football team), before graduating in 1939.

"We won a couple of county (basketball) tournaments when I was in high school," Garvey said. "It was nothing exceptional, but we were at the top most of the time."

Garvey began at Ohio State after graduating from Andover, studying physical education. But World War II intervened.

"The war came along and grabbed me," Garvey said. "I went into the Army in 1942 and got out in 1946."

The Army placed Garvey in the Coast Artillery, the 101st Anti-Aircraft Battalion. "We had 40-millimeter aircraft guns," he said. "I was the gun sergeant, in charge of a gun crew of 15-16 men."

The first duty Garvey's unit drew was on Terminal Island in Los Angeles Harbor, protecting the McDonald-Douglass Aircraft plant from a potential attack from the Japanese. From there his unit, Battery B, went overseas, to Port Busby, Australia; French Haven, New Guinea and then to the Philippine Islands, protecting United States airplanes from attack.

"Manila's harbor was a very busy shipping port," Garvey said. "The big supply depots had to have protection."

Despite the threat, Battery B never shot a plane down. "We shot a boat up in Manila Harbor," Garvey said. "I have no idea if it was Japanese. It was 2 o'clock in the morning and we were on red alert. Everyone manned their battle stations, the searchlights came on, we fired and blew the boat to smithereens. We had no idea who it was. There was a lot of smuggling going on."

When Garvey got out of the Army in 1946, he went to work at Andover's General Electric plant. "I didn't like shift work," Garvey said. "I applied for my insurance license, got my license and went to work for Nationwide Insurance. I worked there for 40 years."

When he was in his late 20s, he started officiating, in baseball at first. He was supposed to play in a basketball game, but broke a finger playing softball. "They didn't have refs, so they asked me," Garvey said. "I said I couldn't do it, but they said, ‘C'mon, try it.' I tried it, didn't think it was so bad and kept doing it. The Conneaut athletic director, Andy Garcia, told me to get a license."

Soon, Garvey had licenses to officiate basketball, football, baseball and wrestling. "But four sports was too many," he said. "I couldn't keep up. I probably did baseball 43 or 44 years, basketball and football about 40 and wrestling only seven years. I didn't care for that. It was new to northeastern Ohio and not many schools had it."

No one was about to get rich officiating high school sports. In football, for example, Garvey was paid $7.50 per game when he started, an amount that was gradually raised until it reached $35 by the time he retired. "When we worked a high school playoff game, they paid $50 a game plus 22 cents a mile," Garvey said of his biggest payday.

When Garvey began officiating, high school football games had just three officials. By the time he retired, there were six or seven. In basketball, the number was raised from two to three. "It was better after (the change)," Garvey said.

While Garvey was officiating, the gymnasiums improved, too. "I remember that Ashtabula played all of its games down at West Junior High. The gym ceiling was only 25 feet high. Harbor didn't have a gymnasium but a church they played in. Conneaut had Lakeside Gym, with poles in the middle of the floor. If you hit a pole, you just kept playing."

The whole style of basketball has changed, too, Garvey said. "Basketball isn't basketball anymore," he said. "There's very little strategy, except for a 7-4 guy dunking the ball. They all do it. It used to be a technical foul to grab the rim. Now, it's OK to grab it and swing on it."

Garvey also thinks modern-day rules allow for more handchecking and moving screens. "A lot of things about basketball are different," he said. "They used to have a jump ball, now there's a possession arrow. That's probably a good rule change. We had the 10-second and three-second rules, but not the five-second rule. We went from gyms that were little bandboxes to regulation 90-by-50-foot gyms. That's the reason they made some of the changes."

"Coaching has changed, too. Coaches nowadays are recruiters, college and high school coaches. They have summer camps. Down here (in Naples, Fla.) they have the gym open year-round. You can go in anytime. We used to have an outdoor court in back of Conneaut High School."

Despite his age, Garvey still is involved in high school sports. In Naples, Fla., where he now lives, he serves as a spotter in the press box for the local football team, the Naples Golden Eagles, who won their division's state championship in 2001.

Garvey and his wife, Louise (nee Babcock), celebrated their 60th anniversary on Feb. 1. Henry and Louise have known each other since they were second-graders in Andover. They got married in El Paso, Texas, in 1945, when Henry was taking a course.

They have five children. Jeffrey, at 58 the oldest, is a retired teacher living in Sandusky. Janice, 53, lives in Little Falls, Minn., where her husband works. Gloria, 52, and Mary Jane, 49, live in Naples, about 150 miles south of Tampa on the gulf side of the state, near Henry and Louise. Julie, the youngest, lives in Tampa, with her husband, who works for a pharmaceutical company, Abbott Laboratories. Mary Jane's husband is a teacher in Naples.

Henry and Louise live in Naples because they visited Gloria and her husband, David Flick (formerly of North Kingsville) in Naples and fell in love with the place. "It's beautiful weather, 80 degrees today," Henry told a reporter on the first day of spring in northeastern Ohio, when the temperature failed to reach 40 degrees here.

Henry golfs free since he works as a ranger and starter two or three days a week at Quail Village Golf Course near his home. "They even pay me," he said. "I couldn't afford golf down here — $100 a round at the better golf courses."

Garvey knew many of the players in various sports who have since moved on to bigger and better things. One he remembers well is Geneva High School basketball player Gary Kreilach, who later became head boys basketball coach at St. John High School. "He was one of the finest players and gentlemen that I met in any sport," Garvey said.

One of the officials on Garvey's football crew was Bob Smith, who worked with Garvey for many years. "I was the linesman for many years, then became the line judge," Smith said. "Henry was the referee. He was our rules interpreter for all those years. He was a good official who was highly respected, a good man to work with. He knew the rules and could quote all the rules."

George Riser, head football coach at Riverside for many years, also speaks highly of Garvey. Riser, now retired but a competitor in the national masters track circuit, specifically requested Garvey to officiate his football games over the years. "He was just a top official," Riser said. "He was a gentleman. He had it all and was a tip-top person on top of that. I'm real happy he's going into (the Hall of Fame)."

Frank Zeman was a scoring machine at Deming High a half-century ago

By CHRIS LARICK
Staff Writer

Little New Lyme Deming High School already had a good basketball team when Richie Scribben started his sophomore year in the 1951-1952 season. Then, Frank Zeman's family moved from Jefferson to Deming, and the Rangers took off.

With Scribben playing the role of Mr. Outside and Zeman that of Mr. Inside, Deming played a style of the game that came to be known as "fire-engine basketball" under coach Ray Rathbun, who brought his running and stunning ways with him from Rhode Island, and, later, Russell Bethel, the superintendent who replaced Rathbun when he left.

During their careers with the Rangers, Zeman and Scribben combined for 2,546 points, with Zeman accounting for 1,338 of them, the fourth-highest total in Ashtabula County history. Both will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame on Sunday at the Conneaut Human Resources Center.

"It's been 50 years, you know," Zeman said. "It's been a long time coming," he added, apparently unaware that this is just the third year of the ACBF's existence.

"I don't know how to take it. It's something that should happen to everybody. I'm thankful for it."

While Scribben had four years to accumulate his totals, Zeman scored all of his points in three years. In one year alone — 1952-53 — Zeman led the county in scoring with 267 points in 10 league games, a 26.7 average.

The Deming duo, though they were unaware of it, were 1-2 in the county in career scoring when they graduated. Zeman is still fourth on the all-time scoring list, with Scribben ranking 10th.

Though Zeman and Scribben were about the same size, 6-foot-1 or 6-foot-1½, they were both a handful for opponents.

"Nobody was any taller," Zeman, now 68 years old, said. "The biggest kid in the county was Ray Reed from Kingsville, about 6-5.

"We averaged 88 points a game. We ran and ran. We were in good shape. We were a real small school, but we did real well."

Though 50 years have passed since they graduated, Zeman and Scribben remain close friends. Scribben is even Frank III's godfather.

"He was great, fast and could really jump," Zeman said of Scribben. "He usually jumped center for us. He was about as tall as I was, 6-1, 170 or 180 (pounds)."

Playing in the Buckeye League, a conference consisting additionally of Pierpont, Dorset, Williamsfield, Rock Creek and Orwell, all small high schools at the time, Deming dominated. Right now Deming would be part of the Pymatuning Valley school district.

"For two years, we never lost a game in league play," Zeman said. "The third year, Orwell beat us in overtime."

Deming, located in New Lyme, was too small a school to offer football, but the Rangers both played baseball and ran track, and Zeman and Scribben were excellent at both those sports, too.

"I played first base," Zeman said. "We had a pretty good baseball team. We got beat in the tournament by Kingsville, 2-1. Terry Bowdler, boy, he was the best pitcher around. I got a home run off him."

In basketball, Zeman once scored 43 points against Williamsfield. He also scored 39 points against Rock Creek one year while playing just three quarters.

"We scored over 100 that game," he said. "We just did it by running. If I didn't score, I'd get the rebound and Scribben would. We didn't have that many easy baskets. I was a good foul shooter, probably 80-90 percent."

During the 1953-54 regular season, at one point the Rangers were 15-0 and had scored 1,468 points to their opposition's 879, an average of 97.9 points per game to 58.6. That number included a 115-27 demolition of Rock Creek.

When he graduated from Deming, the 220-pound Zeman had a football scholarship at Kent State promised, though he had played football only as a freshman at Jefferson. Notre Dame was also interested in him for football.

"What really happened is I (visited) Notre Dame for three days and was really interested," Zeman said. "People told me the coach was really interested in me. I was the only freshman to ever play first-string football for Jefferson.

"After three days at Notre Dame, they said if my father moved to Warren Harding High, they'd set him up with a job at Republic Steel. My father said he wouldn't move."

Before Zeman could sign to play for Kent State, he broke his leg playing baseball against Williamsfield.

"During the game, I got a double and stole third. I was stealing home and slid and broke my leg. They took me to the Conneaut hospital from Williamsfield. That screwed up my year in football at Kent State."

Zeman was also offered a tryout by the St. Louis Browns (baseball) around 1952, his sophomore year at Deming, but didn't take the Browns up on the offer.

Eventually, in January 1955, Zeman entered the Army and was assigned to be a guard on the border patrol on the borderline of East Germany and West Germany, around Nuremburg. In Germany, Zeman played tackle for the U.S. Third Armored Cavalry for about four years.

Zeman had four children by his first wife, Sonya — John, Pam, Michael and Michelle — and another by his second wife, Patricia — Frank III.

"I drove a beer truck (Strohs beer, for Condon Brothers) for 31 years," Zeman said of his working career.

These days Zeman doesn't participate in sports, at least only vicariously, though he does watch his grandson Jared's Little League games.

"I watch a lot of sports on TV," Zeman said. "I've watched basketball every day for the last couple of weeks (during March Madness). I love college ball. There's a lot of pressure in some of those games."

Former Grand Valley star Tammy Busser credits family, coaches, teammates for her success on hardwood

By KARL PEARSON
Staff Writer

There'll be a gathering of the Killer Bs on April 10 in Conneaut.

This time, it will be a time of celebration for Tammy (Busser) Moodt, her mother, Evelyn Busser, and her sister, Terri Busser, in particular. To be sure, Tammy's husband, Lowell, her children Matthew and Megan and her brother, Raymond, and her in-laws, Char and George Moodt, will be there, but there is a special bond the three Busser women have shared for many years.

It all will culminate with Tammy's induction into the third class of Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame that night at the Conneaut Human Resources Center. At 35, her selection makes her the second-youngest member of the Hall of Fame behind Jefferson product Anita Jurcenko Moore, who was a part of the 2004 class.

Tammy Moodt still can't believe she's a part of this class, despite credentials as one of county girls basketball's Grand players, scoring 1,328 career points, that definitely qualify. Those numbers ranked third when she graduated in 1989 and still stands eighth of 21 girls who have scored 1,000 or more career points.

"I was pretty shocked and amazed when I found out," she said. "I was very surprised and happy at the same time."

Moodt readily admits she owes a great debt of gratitude to her mother, sister and brother. She still cherishes the memories of the opportunity the three women got to compete together.

"We used to play softball together and our teammates used to call us the Killer Bs," she recalled. "Those were great times."

As much as anybody, Moodt has to credit her mother and her siblings with helping her achieve what she did. The Busser household had a basketball hoop and paved driveway where Evelyn and her three children spent many an evening.

Her mother was one of the best athletes in Ashtabula County as a schoolgirl but didn't have the luxury of interscholastic sports at that time. Moodt respects what her mother has been able to accomplish over the years.

"My dad passed away when I was in the eighth grade," she recalled. "My mother gave me so many opportunities. She was a single mother back when you rarely heard the term."

Her sister was one of the best athletes in her 1986 graduating class. Her twin brother was automatically a rival.

Needless to say, the competition in the Busser household was great. Moodt feels that is one reason why she was as good as she was at basketball.

"Yeah, I always wanted to be like Terri," Moodt said. "I always wanted to be better than Ray since he was my twin. I just wanted to be as competitive as I could. That's why I played Little League baseball."

That's where she also had one of her first meetings with her future husband. They were teamed up on Ralph Turk's Orwell Tigers.

"We've known each other since the third grade," she said. "We dated all four years in high school. I think we complement each other."

Between the backyard basketball brawls and the sports with the boys, Moodt was constantly tested athletically.

"I think playing with the boys helped," she said. "I don't know if you can compare baseball to basketball, but playing against boys toughens you up a little."

Despite her ability to play baseball, which later turned into a stellar softball career with the highly successful Grand Valley program, basketball was Moodt's calling.

"I'd say junior high was when I knew (I could play)," she said. "We didn't really have anything organized. It was just an intramural thing."

She noticed, though, that she had a strong ability to put the ball in the hoop. When her team needed a shot, she always found the ball in her hands.

"When I played, I scored a lot of points," she said, recalling her junior high days. "So I knew I was pretty good. But it really didn't sink in until I was a freshman. I didn't play JV, I was on varsity with Terri and that's when it really sunk in."

"I can't remember how much I scored but it was quite a bit," she said of her first year. "But I don't remember there being a lot of pressure. I just fit in."

One year later, Moodt found herself as the main scoring threat. Incoming freshman Kim Henson was going to be a big help, but Moodt was going to have to be the leader, something not characteristic of a sophomore.

She knew she had to get better.

"I went to (basketball camp) in the summer and played in the driveway with Lowell," she said. "Mom was always there encouraging all of us to be the best we could be."

Moodt had to do all of her work out of the post position, meaning that someone had to get her the ball.

"Robin Schuller, Seanna (Kampf) and Kim (Henson) fed me the ball," she said. "I'd say I got most of my points off passes. I know I wouldn't have all those points if it wasn't for them."

Moodt held the Grand Valley scoring record for a decade before it was broken. It eventually fell to Kim Henson's younger sister, Krystal.

As much as anyone, she credits the guidance of her high school coaches, Ron Chutas in basketball and Cyndy Thomas in softball, with molding her into the player she became.

"I owe so much to Ron Chutas," Moodt said. "He was in our wedding. He was so laid back. He was always joking and trying to make the experience as fun as possible.

"I appreciated him so much as an athlete. I don't think there was one time where he put pressure on me. He just fit my style. That's the way I like to work with people, too."

It's an approach she tries to take into her job in the human resources department at Welded Tubes in Orwell.

"I learned how important teamwork and getting along with other people was," she said.

She learned to work hard and put as much effort as possible into whatever she does from Thomas.

"CT was pretty intense," Moodt admitted. "That helped me a lot, too."

After graduating from Grand Valley, Moodt went on to play for Baldwin-Wallace, where she lettered four years for the Yellow Jackets.

"I didn't score that much, maybe five points a game (over the career)," she said. "It wasn't that big of a change, just a higher level of competition. I wasn't as good there."

Now, she's preparing to introduce 7-year-old Matthew, a first grader at Colebrook Elementary, and 5-year-old Megan, a preschooler who will attend kindergarten at Grand Valley's new educational complex in the fall, to the backyard games where she got her start.

"We just put a concrete driveway in and we're going to put up a hoop," she said. "The basket's going to be adjustable to their height. We're going to get them started the same way I did."

It elicits memories of days gone by. Moodt hopes the results are as positive as they were for her.

"I just hope Megan or Matthew can be as good," she said.

By CHRIS LARICK
Staff Writer

Randy Linsted and his wife, Shaun, have a 6-foot-5 son, Justin, who is a promising sophomore for the Louisville (Oh.) High School basketball team.

Randy thinks Justin will turn into a fine player.

But he'll probably never score as proficiently as Linsted himself did when he started for Pymatuning Valley for three years (1973-1976). Linsted scored 1,223 points for the Lakers, the sixth-most in Ashtabula County boys basketball history.

"He won't break my record in points," Linsted said of his son.

There's plenty of reason to believe he's right. The year that Linsted ended his career as a senior (1976), he averaged 26.5 points per game, the second-highest mark in county history at the time to Williamsfield's Harvey Hunt's 27.1.

Considering the distance Linsted shot from, the total would have been much higher if Ohio high schools had the benefit of the three-point arc at the time.

"Oh, I would have scored 2,000 [points]," he said of the line. "Almost every shot I made was from outside where that line is now."

Maybe, maybe not. Teams might have guarded the 6-foot-2 guard more closely if every shot he took was a three-point bonanza.

Linsted will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation's Hall of Fame on Sunday at Conneaut's Human Resources Center.

Former Pymatuning Valley coach Bob Hitchcock coached Linsted as a freshman and, according to Linsted, as a sophomore, but had been replaced by the time the latter did most of his scoring.

"There were some misunderstandings with the board of education and I wasn't able to coach him after that," Hitchcock said. "But I got to see him play.

"He was an outstanding scorer with great range. He was also good with the ball off the dribble. He had good foot speed. He had a lot of scoring talents, could put the ball in the basket.

"He was an intelligent player. I would've loved to have coached him. Players like that make you a smart coach."

"I'd like to credit Bob Hitchcock," Linsted said. "I had three coaches in three years (Hitchcock was followed by Dave Roberts and Rich Hackett). Bob Hitchcock gave me a chance to start.

"Hitch had been around the game and played the game. Dave Roberts was a young guy out of college. Hackett was fresh from playing college ball. It might have been his first teaching job."

Linsted didn't get to play varsity as a freshman, since at that time the Lakers started players like 6-9 Rex Burlingham and 6-7 Carl McIlwain, seniors at the time. After that season, though, he became PV's go-to guy on teams that also featured Todd Baker (who went to North Carolina State on a football scholarship), Paul Warner, Mike Wilson and Alan Namey.

"We lost a lot my sophomore year, but I averaged 17 points a game," he said. "My senior year, we went 15-4 and beat Paul Warfield's nephew. We beat Jefferson's ass, that's all that mattered."

PV had no great celebration when he passed 1,000 points, an achievement he attributed to the work he put in on his family's driveway.

"I shot a lot," he said. "I'd shovel the driveway off and play. It's not like there was a lot to do in Andover. We played a lot of basketball."

In Linsted's best game, the Lakers defeated Perry, 86-65, with Linsted scoring 41 points, connecting on 18 of 21 field-goal attempts and five of six free throws.

After his senior season, he was selected as the Grand River Conference and Star Beacon Ashtabula Player of the Year and was third-team All-Ohio on both the Associated Press and United Press International teams, in addition to being first-team all-district and a Cleveland Press Star Dream Team member.

He decided to attend West Liberty (W. Va.) and went out for the basketball team. Though he made the squad, he decided not to play.

"I was sick of it," he said. "I went out for the golf team and played four years of golf. We didn't do anything special, but we played courses all over the country for nothing. It was a lot of fun."

Linsted had played on the PV golf team in high school and held the scoring record at Andover Golf Course for a while.

He graduated from West Liberty with a degree in business management and worked for Cincinnati Insurance in Louisville. He met his wife (Shaun) at West Liberty.

"I could have gone to Youngstown State or Kent, but I chose to go to West Liberty instead," he said. "I loved it there. It was a small school, but I loved it."

Linsted changed jobs recently and right now runs Akron Auto Auction, taking that over from his father, selling cars to dealers. It's a big business.

"We sell 1,000 cars on Tuesdays and another 300-400 on Thursdays," he said. "My dad was one of the original owners, but he decided to get out of it."

He doesn't dwell on his high school career.

"I went there and played and moved on. I haven't been back to my high school. My parents live in Ashtabula now. It was a phase in my life."

Randy and Shaun have three children, all of them athletes. Abby, 21, has a full volleyball scholarship at Edinboro University and will graduate in May. Kaitlan, 19, is a sophomore at Ohio State, who played high school volleyball and basketball. As mentioned, Justin plays basketball for Louisville.

"He liked it when he grew so much," Linsted said. "He's going to be fine. I coached down here for four years, freshmen and as an assistant JV coach. But it took up too much time. I had to leave my job for afternoon practice. I don't know how I did it."

Deming's Richard Scribben happy to be an ACBF Hall of Famer

By CHRIS LARICK
Staff Writer

When the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame was founded in 2003, the names of Richard Scribben and Frank Zeman never came up.

It wasn't that Scribben and Zeman weren't qualified. It's that no one knew of their feats at New Lyme Deming High School from 1950-54.

Well, almost no one. Alex Olah, who graduated with the pair of Deming standouts, knew — and informed the Star Beacon sports department last year, though too late to get them into the second ACBF Hall of Fame class.

Now, Scribben is a known quantity — and his achievements are worthy of induction into the 2005 Hall of Fame class. He will be inducted at the ACBF banquet April 10 at the Conneaut Human Resources Center.

Along with Zeman, Scribben was one of the main cogs on Deming's 1950-54 teams that established a high-powered offense that often scored 100 points and more and defeated opponents by 40 points or more. In fact, the Rangers won six Buckeye Conference championships in seven years, despite the fact that there were only seven boys and eight or nine girls in the 1954 graduation class.

"I'd guess that at that time, the average score was maybe 40 or 50 points," Scribben said. "I had three coaches in four years. Ray Rathbun, from Rhode Island, who was the head coach at Slippery Rock, changed things.

"Everything was ‘Go, go, go' on a fast break. There'd be two passes, but by the third time a person touched the ball, it should be in the net.

"A lot of people frowned on that, said they'd rather have more competition. It started with the fast break. Sometimes, there was only one pass. We had plays, but nothing that took up any time."

Defensively, the Rangers used a man-to-man almost exclusively, though when they played teams with dominant players, they'd go to a 1-3-1 or 2-1-2 zone.

Scribben was the outside shooter on the team, while Zeman worked the inside. They scored points in the teens, or the 20s and occasionally one or both scored more than 30 points.

"It seemed like my best games came in the tournament," Scribben said. "I'd hit between 30 and 40 points. In the tournament my senior year, I averaged about 32-34 points a game."

During his career, Scribben scored 1,208 points, still the 10th-highest total in county history.

"(Zeman) played pivot," Scribben said. "I played the outside sideline. I was a forward, but if we had three-point shots then, all of my shots would be three-pointers. I could jump pretty high, so I jumped center and played forward. I was about 6-1 1/2."

Scribben was named third-team All-Ohio his senior year and Deming was ranked in the top 10 Class B teams in the state for a while.

"We thought that was something, an itty-bitty team was being talked about all over the state of Ohio."

Deming scored many of its points off its defense, a stifling full-court press.

"Opponents couldn't do anything," Scribben said. "The other team very seldom got the ball upcourt. A lot of times we'd (score) and try to steal the ball right away. It was a long time ago."

Scribben admits to a bit of surprise that he was selected for induction into the Hall of Fame.

"In a way it does, because I don't think too many people around the (19)50s," he said. "I think there's a lot more going on now than in those days. Not everybody had cars when I was in school."

He is also not very impressed with modern-day high school basketball players.

"I don't think too many teams in the last 15 years or so could compete with what was occurring in the '40s and '50s," he said. "It's a different ball game. We couldn't breathe without someone calling a foul on us. Three-pointers — half of us could shoot out there. It wasn't anything special, only two points."

When Scribben graduated from high school, he had a few college offers, but turned them all down.

"I wanted to go to work, to help my folks here on the (dairy) farm," he said. "I played independent ball around the area and in the military. I played in the states and in Germany for the Army."

Scribben went into the Army in 1958, more or less volunteering to beat the draft and played basketball while in the infantry. He became an M.P. (military policeman) for a year and played while doing that.

"If we'd won one more game, we would've gone back to the states to play the championship of the Army," he said. "But we lost that game."

After he left the service, Scribben started working for rubber factories in Middlefield and Chardon. From there, he became a machinist in Cleveland, then into UAW (United Auto Workers) management. When his parents died, he took over the family farm.

He now raises whiteface cattle and a little grain and hay on his farm of 83 acres and leases another 83 acres on North Richmond Road, off Stanhope and Route 7.

"I'm slowing down a little," Scribben, 69, said. "But I'm still a dairy farmer. I've thought about eliminating a few head (of cattle) and get down to 25. Last year, I had about 50, but I've thought of reducing it."

Scribben and his wife, Rita, have two sons, Shawn, 30, and Eric, 28. Shawn and his business partner split the business recently and he's looking for a job. Eric got his doctorate in chemical engineering from Virginia Tech and works for a chemical company in Columbus.

Former Harbor great Chris Fitting headed to ACBF HOF Sunday

By KARL PEARSON
Staff Writer

This winter has tested all the disciplines Chris Fitting learned on the basketball court for the Harbor Mariners girls basketball team.

"We worked a lot of 12-hour days, sometimes seven days a week," Fitting said of her work out of the Ohio Department of Transportation facilities on West Avenue, which she has done for the past 11 years. "It was a long, rough, busy winter. It was a lot busier than last winter.

"We'd go in at 1 in the morning and get done at 1:30 in the afternoon. At least I got to stay in the parts room most of the time and I was able to stay warm, but every now and then I had to go out and plow snow."

Such long hours can be difficult to handle.

"I work with five mechanics and a supervisor," Fitting noted. "We all have to get along. The stress level can get pretty high. You have to learn to be patient.

"You have to realize that everybody has a bad day now and then or that somebody may not be feeling the best. It's all about working together and teamwork."

When she roamed the courts for Frank Roskovics' Harbor basketball and volleyball teams from 1981-84, Fitting was all about teamwork and making sure other people shared in the glory. She played in an era when Harbor basketball was at its best, compiling a 56-13 record, three sectional championships and finished as district runners-up her junior year.

Playing point guard for the Mariners, Fitting was named the 1983-84 Regional Press Ashtabula County and Coaches' Northeastern Conference Player of the Year after leading Harbor to an NEC co-championship with Conneaut. As a senior that year, Fitting averaged 16.5 points, 5.4 rebounds and 5.1 steals a game.

Her ability to get other people involved in the game, dishing out 472 career assists and stealing the ball 278 times, is one of the reasons Fitting is joining Roskovics in the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame on April 10 at the Conneaut Human Resources Center. It's also what helped the Mariners' center of that era, Roberta Cevera, enter the hall with her this year.

"Chris was one of our better all-around athletes," Roskovics said. "She had a lot of ability and wasn't afraid to go inside. Chris took charge on the floor.

"We were fortunate to have two super athletes come along at the same time. And they had a strong supporting cast."

Jodi Brockway, Jo Wisuri and Tina Palm were among the other big contributors for Harbor during those years.

"That was too many years ago," Fitting said. "I remember we had a good time. We played well together, and we were pretty competitive the year we were co-champions with Conneaut. That was really fun."

So she is a bit stunned by her induction into the hall of fame.

"It's hard to believe," Fitting said. "I still haven't quite got used to that idea.

"It's hard to think of myself that way. I'm just glad to be inducted."

Fitting was more concerned with creating opportunities for others than with padding her own statistics.

"In our system, my job was to get assists and feed our center and forwards," she said.

But Fitting knew she had to take her shot, too, and she wasn't shy about it. During her four-year career, she amassed 1,218 points, which ranked fourth in career scoring among Ashtabula County girls when she graduated. Today, Fitting still ranks 13th of the 21 girls who are Grand Players in the county.

When Fitting was in school, girls sports in the area were just starting to come of age and interest in the girls events was limited.

"The game sure has progressed. (Girls basketball) seems to be getting bigger," Fitting said. "When we played, it was basically the parents and the boyfriends who came to the games. But the place was always packed for the boys games.

"They didn't have the three-point basket when we played," Fitting said. "I miss basketball. I like seeing the women's game grow. There was no WNBA back then."

She had to learn to hold her own in a competitive family in which she is still the "baby" despite her 39 years.

"I grew up being picked on by my brother, Gary," she said.

Her brother, the second child, now lives in Tennessee. Her sister, Kim Larko, is the oldest of the four Fitting children and lives in Kingsville. The third child, Karen Seier, lives in Boardman.

Basketball remains her favorite sport even though she has pretty much retired from athletic endeavors.

"I had to stop pretty much after I had back surgery a while ago," Fitting said. "I just enjoyed playing the game, and I stuck with it. Individual sports are good for building yourself up. But there seems to be more competitiveness when you're on a team."

She is equally sure the chance to participate in sports was a good thing for her and for other students.

"It helped keep me in shape and out of trouble," Fitting said. "It's good for kids, and keeps them out of trouble."

Fitting's interest in sports didn't end with graduation. A fixture on the local diamonds for many years, Fitting didn't give up softball until the season ended last year. Working construction and playing ball finally got to be too much.

She still very much enjoys the outdoors. Now, she gets her time outside helping her father, Fred, with work at the family's trailer park in Saybrook Township, which is owned by her grandmother. Her mother, Marge, died in 1990.

"My dad helps take care of things at the trailer park," Fitting said. "I've been helping him out lately."

She knows the disciplines she learned at Harbor will come into play again this summer. She knows there will be plenty of work ahead. She hopes people will exercise some of the patience she has to as ODOT crews work on repairing potholes and the like.

"People don't like us," Fitting said. "They need to realize we're trying to do a job. They need to give us a minute, and we'll get them on their way."

Harry Fails took Spartans to Sweet 16 in 1969-70 season

By CHRIS LARICK
Staff Writer

Harry Fails is one of a handful of Ashtabula County basketball stars — Gene Gephart, Bob Ball and Bob Walters come immediately to mind — who returned to this county to excel as coaches, too.

Fails served a relatively short time — three seasons — as Conneaut's head coach before moving on to lead Alliance's Aviators to dominant years. But his contributions on the county's courts and sidelines more than qualify him for induction into the Ashtabula County Hall of Fame.

Fails will join 11 other luminaries who will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation's Hall of Fame on Sunday at the Conneaut Human Resource Center.

As a player at Rowe High School, Fails averaged 19.3 points per game as a junior to rank as the county's leading scorer. He followed that by averaging 19.5 points as a senior, second in the county, and was selected to the first-team Star Beacon All-Ashtabula County first team both years.

"I could flat-out shoot it," Fails said of his contributions to the Rowe team coached by Stan Humphrey.

"I think we started out at 7-0 my senior year, but then we didn't practice over Christmas. When we came back, Pymatuning Valley romped us. We weren't ready for the press, didn't get the job done and got beat."

Despite his impressive numbers, Fails didn't play basketball in college after graduating from Rowe in 1959. In fact, he found college studies tough to handle in his first go-round at Kent State.

"I was on the verge of flunking out the first time," he said. "I got out while the getting was good. I wasn't ready for college."

When he was ready to return to Kent, Fails had his act together and wound up graduating with honors in 1963.

"I studied my butt off," he said.

After graduating from Kent State, Fails was fortunate enough to land a teaching-coaching position at Conneaut. He guided the eighth-grade Spartans team to an 11-3 record, then moved up to freshmen the next year and went 16-1. He was JV coach the following season, with the Spartans posting an 8-10 record.

In 1968, legendary coach Andy Garcia retired from the head coaching job and Fails took over. He showed his mettle immediately, coaching Conneaut to a 17-5 record and to a sectional championship.

But the next year was even better. In 1969-70, the Spartans went 19-4 and won a district championship, the first Conneaut team to do so since 1934-35 and, to this point, the last. Both years, he won the Northeastern Conference championship and was named as the Star Beacon Ashtabula County Coach of the Year, the first man ever to accomplish the latter feat.

That Spartans squad, led by Scott Humphrey, Al Razem, Jeff Puffer, Tim Richards, John Colson, Mike Mucci and Dave White, wound up losing by two points, 62-60, to Akron Central in the regional semifinal. Conneaut was the first county team to make it to regionals since the 1961-62 Pymatuning Valley squad coached by Joe Shantz.

"We were down about 19 (points) with 2:43 to go and came back and lost by two," Fails said. "One of our kids missed a layup with 11 seconds to go that would have tied it. But we've had to play Boardman (in the regional finals). They were big that year."

"That was a tough loss," Humphrey recalled later. "(Fails) hadn't been able to scout them. We got behind by 16 points. We pressed them and came within two. If we got to overtime, I'm sure we could've beaten them."

"He came up in the seventh and eighth grades," Humphrey recalls. "He kind of came up with us. He also played for my dad. He was a heck of a coach. I played for Harry — that's kind of a cool thing. He was a great player."

"He wasn't a whole lot older than us. He had a lot to do with us being successful. Every time we got in a tough game, he diagrammed a play and it worked. We won a lot of close games like that.

He was very innovative. We played every kind of defense. We pressed all the time; it was a big change from Andy. We pressed and scored off the press. If we needed to slow it down, we did."

After that big 1969-70 season, the Spartans went 12-7, making his three-year record with Conneaut 48-19 (.716). But it would be his last season as head coach for the Spartans. He got fed up with his teaching load and went to Alliance High School.

"It's a long story," Fails said. "The principal was Larry Colson. The year before, I had volunteered to take the girls team for him. I said I'd do it and we went 5-1 and were co-champs of the girls league.

The next year, they assigned me to six classes [to teach] with three preparations. I said, ‘I'll be leaving,' said I wouldn't be there."

Fails moved on to Alliance, where he continued to coach winning teams. In 16 seasons, through 1986-1987, as the Aviators' head coach, he posted a 228-103 (.689) record, making his overall mark 276-122 (.694).

At Alliance High School, his teaching load was four classes with one preparation, in American History-American Government. He was named Teacher of the Year in 1975-76.

Asked to compare his Conneaut and Alliance teams, Fails said, "I think Alliance kids were tougher. We played Canton McKinley and Barberton, year after year."

Overall, he liked playing better than coaching he said. He had no regrets when he quit coaching in 1987, either.

"I'd had enough," he said. "My son was going to be playing for Alliance, and if I was coaching it'd put him in a no-win situation."

Fails had a stroke in 1994 and took disability retirement from education. He had become an administrator, an assistant principal, then athletic director, as time went on. He's now almost fully recovered and attends games.

In fact, someone (who prefers to remain anonymous) spotted Fails at a Louisville-Alliance game this year.

"He was yelling at the refs," the anonymous source said. "The refs stopped the game and warned him."

"That was the only time all year I yelled at an official," Fails said. "This guy was terrible. I called him ‘Pretty Boy.’ He said, ‘Let's not get personal,’ and I blew him a kiss. All the other fans supported me.

I'm on medication to calm me down since my stroke in 1994. The biggest mistake of my life was going into (school) administration. I went from the most popular person in the school to the most hated. I didn't give much slack to anybody."

Fails has his opinions about what makes a good high school coach.

"You have to care about kids and they have to know that," he said. "A lot of them understood that I cared about them. One of my best players, Kevin Gaffney, who went to the University of Cincinnati and started two years, called me Dad. He was a good kid. His mom was even better."

Fails married Rosemary (Reo), "my beautiful sweetheart," as he calls her. "She lived up the block from me."

The couple has four children. Tammy, 39, has had two strokes. Fails admits he's mystified why he and his daughter have had strokes, which have not run in the family.

Diana, 37, teaches in Alliance; Tim, 32, works in management for Fidelity and Mary Beth is the fourth of the children.

Tim was named after Tim Richards, one of Fails' former players at Conneaut.

"Tim Richards was one of the greatest kids I ever coached," Fails said. "When I had to leave the team, he was going to be a senior. He was a good player who started for me as a sophomore."

One of the area coaches Fails knew while coaching at Alliance was Tim Mizer, now Jefferson's assistant boys basketball coach and a former head coach for the Falcons.

"He used to coach basketball at Massillon Perry and used to be a baseball coach," Fails said of Mizer. "He's a good guy."

The news of his induction into the ACBF Hall of Fame came as a surprise to Fails.

"I'm really surprised, but happy about it," he said. "I told my wife about it and she was pretty excited. I think that's a great thing they're doing."

Many consider the former Harbor star to be the best player in county history

By CHRIS LARICK
Staff Writer

On one hand, it seems unusual that, of the many thousands of boys who have played for Ashtabula County high school basketball teams, so few — 29 — have scored 1,000 points.

On the other, maybe it's not odd at all, considering how difficult it is to accomplish that feat. If a player starts as a freshman, he'll have to average more than 12 points per game to reach 1,000. If he doesn't start until his junior year — and the vast majority of players don't — he'll need to average nearly 25 per game. Very few players average that for one season.

In fact, when Harbor's John Coleman scored 506 points in 1973-74, his senior year (averaging 23-plus points per game), that total was thought to be a county record. Later, it was discovered that Williamsfield's Harvey Hunt scored 527 points in 1956-57.

Despite the introduction of the three-point arc since Coleman played, no county players in the past few years have come close to Coleman's average. For his career, mostly based on his junior and senior seasons, Coleman scored 1,167 points, 11th on the all-time county boys list.

"It's too bad he was pre-three-pointer," Coleman's coach at Harbor until his senior year, Larry Bragga, said of his 6-foot-2 guard in an interview in 2000 for the Star Beacon's series on "Grand Players," ones who had reached the 1,000-point plateau. "He had a sense of basketball. He knew where the basketball was going to go. He had vision, court sense and innate ability."

Bragga, for one, considers Coleman the best player Ashtabula County has ever produced and he's seen all of the good ones over the past 30 years.

As a result of his ability and production, Coleman will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame on Sunday, April 10, at the Conneaut Human Resources Center.

Whether Coleman will be on hand to accept his award seems doubtful. He has had a tough time since an automobile accident not long after high school and apparently has no permanent address. People who recognize Coleman when they do see him in Ashtabula locations report that sometimes he seems cogent, other times not.

Everyone who saw Coleman play in high school expected great things of him in college basketball. But Coleman passed on a couple of closer opportunities, went to Wisconsin-Green Bay, became a sixth man as a freshman and soon quit the team and college altogether.

That was too bad, because Coleman seemed to have all the attributes needed to become a competent collegiate player.

"John was a slasher," Bragga said. "He'd drive to the basket or he could hit the outside shot. Offensively, he was a flat-out player. He could rebound and had a nose for the ball."

Ed Armstrong took over the Mariner reins from Bragga, who became an administrator, for Coleman's senior year, 1973-1974. With Coleman leading the team, Harbor had one of its best years ever, winning the Northeastern Conference and advancing all the way to the regional tournament. Coleman received the highest number of votes for the Coaches' All-Northeastern Conference and Star Beacon All-Ashtabula County first teams.

"John was the best player in the league, no doubt about it," Armstrong said.

But when Armstrong was considering the job, some had doubts about Coleman's willingness to accept instruction.

"The athletic director at Harbor, Bill Wasulko, said I'd have a great Harbor team, but that John Coleman was uncoachable. I didn't know what to expect.

"After three or four games, we came to the understanding that I was the coach and he was the player. From that time on, he was one of the most coachable kids I ever had."

Coleman was capable of hitting from long distance, as he did against Conneaut as a senior, sinking shots from beyond halfcourt at the end of both the first and third quarters. He was also a good rebounder.

"He was a 6-2 off-guard who averaged around 23 points a game," Bragga said. "He was a great shooter and had a knack that a lot of kids never get, of knowing where the ball was going to go. He'd go get it. He was a scorer, but he also led us in rebounds and steals and was second in assists."

Armstrong saw Coleman's skills a bit differently.

"He wasn't the greatest shooter I've ever coached or the best rebounder, but if he wasn't scoring from outside, he'd go inside and score.

"The thing I remember most is down at the tournament at Warren, playing LaBrae. He wasn't hitting at all in the first half, wasn't shooting good. He had become so team-oriented. He said, ‘I'm not shooting good, should I just not shoot anymore?' I said, ‘Don't ever quit.' He started hitting and made about seven straight jump shots. He was just great."

Possibly Coleman's best game came against Madison his senior year. He scored 17 points in the half, then got really hot and scored 24 in the third quarter alone, giving him 41, a school record at that time. Armstrong took him out, then, since the Mariners had a big lead.

During the three years that Coleman started, Harbor went a combined 49-17 (.742), including a 19-4 record when he was a senior. Several colleges recruited him. Then-Indiana coach Bobby Knight sent two assistants to look at him. According to one source, Frank Cicogna, a classmate of Coleman's, Duke offered him a full-ride scholarship.

The offer that Armstrong preferred was Kent State's offer of a full scholarship.

"I tried to convince him to go there," Armstrong said. "But he didn't want to. He went to Wisconsin (Green Bay). They had two senior guards, but John was the sixth man.

"One night, their coach called me and asked me to encourage John to stay. John said he wasn't going to stay. I could never figure out what made him go there; it was so out of character. After that, everything went downhill. But he was a great, great player."

Cicogna, a confidant of Coleman's for years, agreed, saying in a 2000 interview that Coleman didn't like being so far away from his mother.

"His phone bill had to be astronomical," Cicogna said.

Whatever happened to Coleman at Wisconsin-Green Bay changed him, Armstrong said.

"He was a totally different person when he came home."

Bragga said he tried to encourage Coleman to go back to school and finish his college education, but to no avail. Bragga even hired him as freshman basketball coach and hall monitor at Jefferson.

"But it just didn't work out," Bragga said. "He knew a lot about the game; he was a very bright kid. He was kind of a loner. He had a lot of friends at Ashtabula, but he played at Harbor."

Matters got worse for Coleman. According to Cicogna, he was driving on Route 20 in Painesville when his car crashed, taking one life and seriously injuring Coleman.

"He totaled his car and messed up his mind," Cicogna said. "It messed him up physically, too, but he recovered from that. He hit his head really bad and something went wrong up there."

Coleman eventually became a nomad on the streets of Ashtabula, walking the streets, living off a little money from the government.

"It's a little difficult to talk to him today," Cicogna said in 2000.

"About a year ago, I ran into him at the hospital," Armstrong said this month. "He knew me and my wife and was so cordial. A little later, I ran into him again and he didn't even know me."

ACBF HOF nominee Melody Holt has come full circle at PV

By KARL PEARSON
Staff Writer

A story she tells on herself from back in the early stages of her athletic career gives the observer a notion of Melody (Holt) Nowakowski's nature.

"When I was a freshman, I split time between the JV and the varsity," the 1985 Pymatuning Valley graduate recalled. "We were playing against Jefferson and they were beating us pretty bad.

"Shellie Crandall was a senior for them. (PV coach) Beth (Helfer) sent me in for the last few minutes of the game. When she put me in, she told me to deny Shellie the ball."

"I did everything I could think of to make sure Shellie didn't get the ball, and she didn't. I wasn't even paying attention to anything else.

"Anyway, after a while, I felt a tap on the shoulder and realized it was Shellie. She had a big smile on her face and said ‘Say, you know your team has the ball.' One of (Nowakowski's teammates) had stolen the ball. It was pretty embarassing."

When relating the incident to her later, Crandall, who confessed to a hazy recollection of her basketball exploits at Jefferson, did recall that moment.

"Yeah, I do remember that," she said with a chuckle. "It was pretty funny."

Now, nearly 25 years later, the three protagonists in that little play will be linked again. Nowakowski and Crandall will be entering the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame as members of the third class at the annual ACBF awards banquet on Sunday at the Conneaut Human Resources Center. They will be joining Helfer, who was in the inaugural group of inductees two years ago, in that distinction.

That memory may be a bit embarassing to Nowakowski, but she did little, if anything, to be chagrined about during a stellar career at PV. Her 1,139 career points, which ranked fifth among Ashtabula County girls when she graduated, is still holding up, standing 15th of the county's 21 Grand Players, girls who have scored 1,000 career points.

Nowakowski averaged 25 points a game her senior year and was named the Star Beacon Ashtabula County Player of the Year. Despite those accomplishments, plus a solid career at Lakeland Community College and Baldwin-Wallace College, Nowakowski seems somewhat amazed by her selection.

"I guess it still hasn't sunk in," she said. "In fact, it's somewhat embarassing to see the girls I'm going to be joining. Going in with people like (Crandall), Roberta (Cevera Blakeslee), Chris (Fitting) and Tammy (Busser Moodt) is pretty amazing. I guess it's nice to still be remembered."

She figures to have one of the larger family contingents at the banquet, led by her husband, Andy, and twin sons Austin and Grant. Her parents, Shirley and Warner Holt, brothers Gus and Myke, and in-laws Gene and Wilda Nowakowski, will be among the supporters, too.

Nowakowski's path has never taken her far from the basketball court, even heading back to PV for a teaching and coaching career.

"I didn't do it on purpose," she said. "That's just how it worked out. If you had asked me in high school, I would have said I would never do it.

"I put my application in at a lot of schools, but the pieces just fell into place," Nowakowski said. "PV was the first school to offer me a job. Some other places called after I got the PV position, but I already had a job."

When she returned to her alma mater, Nowakowski was reunited with Helfer. For four years, Nowakowski was the Helfer's junior-varsity coach. Then, in 1994, she was named to replace Helfer when the latter was fired.

Coaching had its own frustrations and rewards.

"The biggest challenge is motivation," Nowakowski said of coaching. "You always have two or three girls who are serious. But it's tough to get your whole team to want to be a success. It can get to be frustrating."

But she benefitted a great deal from the tutelage of several fine coaches.

"I learned a lot from Beth," Nowakowski said. "She was always very supportive of the girls and truly cared about each player and tried to bring out the best in them. She took me to games all over and I learned a lot just by watching.

"I learned a lot from my coach at Lakeland, Ken Bollam, too. He really tried to build things up there and brought in players like Heidi Litwiler and Stacy Cover (both of Conneaut)."

Moving on Baldwin-Wallace as a junior, she learned an entirely different set of lessons from her first coach there, Bonnie Raye.

"She was very laid back, but very sincere and very truthful," Nowakowski recalled. "I respected her honesty."

But Raye kept one matter from her team — her battle with lupus. It claimed her life before Nowakowski's final season at B-W. Cheri Harrer, the present Yellow Jackets coach, was her final coach with the Yellow Jackets.

"What a brave woman (Raye) was!" Nowakowski said. "We had a feeling she was sick, but she never complained, and we didn't know until toward the end. What an example!"

Nowakowski used the sum of the knowledge she had gained over the years to lead the PV girls to unmatched heights.

"I think I was able to take something from each of my coaches," she said. "Then you hope to add your own personal touches."

The Lakers won 21 straight under Nowakowski in 1996-97 before falling to Brookfield, 60-39, in a Division III district semifinal. The next year, they repeated as East Suburban Conference champions, defeating archrival Grand Valley, 53-48 in overtime, to clinch the title. PV's 19-3 season ended in equally dramatic fashion with Mandy Burzanko's three-point basket at the buzzer giving Berkshire a 57-55 win over PV in a Division III sectional final.

"Nobody can take the 20-0 (regular season) away from those girls," Nowakowski said of her 1996-97 team. "But the next year might mean more to me. We lost three girls who all went on to play college basketball. No one expected us to do too much. That was just as special as the year before."

Nowakowski found other things back home in Andover, namely her husband, her "No. 1 supporter." Her sons, Austin and Grant, were born while she was still coaching basketball, but she stepped down as girls basketball coach after the 1998-99 season to devote more time to her family.

Note the basketball connection in naming her children, now 10 and fourth graders at PV Middle School, where she teaches. Austin's namesake is Cleveland Cavaliers great Austin Carr, while Grant is named after another player Nowakowski admires, the Orlando Magic's Grant Hill.

It seems she can never get far from athletics and basketball. She is completing her first year as PV athletic director, succeeding, of all people, Helfer. Her basketball lessons still apply with matters like the girls Division III sectional-district tournament PV still hosts.

"I learned to be disciplined from basketball," Nowakowski said. "It helped me be a better person. It helps in dealing with people and getting along with me. They may not always agree with you, and you may not please everybody, but you can still work together.

"I had to learn to be organized. I know how important it is to communicate. It was never a goal of mine to have this job, but I love it."

Basketball will be a big part of the Nowakowskis' lives for a long time to come, too.

"The boys are already gym rats," she chuckled.

As Chuck Hirsimaki, the youth, captained the Conneaut Trojans boys basketball championship team of 1931-32, then went on to star at Findlay College, where he was eventually named to that school's Hall of Fame.

As Charles Hirshey, the same athlete, now an adult, became one of the best coaches this area has ever seen before moving on to accomplish even greater things in athletics and in the field of education.

As a result of all of those accomplishments, Hirshey has been selected to be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Hall of Fame. That induction will be held on Sunday at the Conneaut Human Resources Center.

Hirshey's daughter, Shirley Emin, recounted his days at Conneaut High School in a recent letter:

"As a member of the Class of 1932 of Conneaut HS, Charlie demonstrated strong interests in athletics and education," Shirley wrote. "In addition to playing football, basketball (Captain in his senior year) and competing in track events each in high school, Charlie also found time to be vice president of the Literary Club and president of the junior class. He accounted for one of the six league track records held by Conneaut High School by jumping 5-91⁄4 in the high jump."

While Hirshey was a fine athlete at Conneaut in his own right, it is as the coach of the Rowe Vikings that most people of his generation and the one following it remember him. The name change wasn't unique to Charles in the family.

"I had four brothers who changed their name, some to Hirshey and some to Hershey," said Fred Hirsimaki, one of the brothers who didn't change his name.

After graduating from Conneaut, he went on to Findlay College, where he played football, basketball and track. He was a co-captain of the football team, earning three varsity letters as an end. He also captained the track team.

"Recognized as an outstanding athlete, he held the state extra-point record and Findlay's broad jump record," Shirley wrote. "Twenty-five years later he was to be in the first group of men inducted into the Findlay College Athletic Hall of Fame."

His tenure as coach of all of Rowe's sports lasted nine seasons, during which he compiled a spectacular won loss record of 172-38 (.819) between 1938-1947, after taking over the coaching job in his third year of teaching at the school. Many schools never win 19 games in a season; under Hirshey the Vikings averaged that many. His worst record at Rowe was 19-8.

"He left Rowe the year before I got to Kingsville," Ed Batanian said. "All I heard at Conneaut Rowe was ‘Hirsimaki, Hirsimaki, Hirsimaki.' He was well respected there. I remember his brother, Ted Hirsimaki. I didn't want to coach against him. I guess he was an institution at Rowe."

"When we were in the seventh and eighth grade, he coached us," said Gordon Griffey. "In high school, he had left, but he was very well known by us. All of us knew Charley — and knew him by that name. He wasn't just a basketball coach; he was a coach of all sports we had at that time. We only had one coach. Charley was a fine coach, a coach that you did it his way if you didn't want to sit the bench."

Duane Punkar played varsity basketball for Rowe in 1947 and 1948. "I was a junior in 1947, Charlie's last year," Punkar said. "He was obviously a very good coach. He won a bunch of championships in a row. He was kind of old school, very much a disciplinarian. He stressed conditioning. We did a lot of running, inside. That was before we had any weight rooms, and we didn't have a lot of equipment."

"He used a lot of full-court press before other people were doing it. We never had a heck of a lot of height. I was a starting guard as a junior when we won the championship. We also won the championship the year after Charlie left. We graduated most of the team, but we won.

Don Horwood, who would go on to become Superintendent of Schools in Conneaut, also played under Hirshey, during the 1945-46 season, when Rowe set a county record for wins, 24, that still stands. The Vikings went 24-2 that season. "I also played baseball for him and ran track for him," Horwood said. "He was very nice, but he had that look. He'd fold his arms and give that look, like, ‘Is that all you have to say?' That was when teachers had respect and authority."

Dr. Charles E. Hirshey passed way in March, 1998, at the age of 84 and is buried in Conneaut, having fulfilled many of the goals he had set for himself.

"Charlie would have been very pleased and excited to be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Hall of Fame," Shirley Emin said. "He would certainly have enjoyed imparting anecdotes about any of his players from Rowe High School who might be in attendance at the awards dinner. Charlie would also have been quick to acknowledge the dedication and hard work put forth by the men and women he coached. Their success contributed to his."