Boy, could Jay play!

By CHRIS LARICK
Staff Writer

The basketball game of Jay McHugh's life couldn't have come at a better time.

With the Class AAA sectional championship on the line, McHugh's Geneva Eagles squared off against West Geauga, led by Terry Teachout, at Euclid High School in 1979.

The Eagles trailed the Wolverines by 16 points with less than a minute remaining in the third quarter. But McHugh, who had been hot in the third quarter when he scored 11 points, started to sizzle. In the fourth quarter he scored 14 points as Geneva pulled even with West Geauga, then four more in the first overtime, which ended with the teams still knotted. The four points he scored in the second overtime (overtimes were just three minutes long at that time) clinched the victory for the Eagles, 90-89.

For the entire game, McHugh, a 6-foot-4 forward-guard, scored 52 points.

Though the Eagles fell in the next game to Eastlake North, the effort brought even more rewards, as McHugh discovered at school not long afterward.

"It was all interesting in various ways," he said. "People around still remember the 52-point game. It was a special game we all had a big part in."

McHugh, who will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation's Hall of Fame on April 2, had had college scholarship offers from schools like Marshall, Cleveland State and Youngstown State. But Randy Knowles, a former star at Geneva, then at Texas A&M, had been following McHugh's career and the 52-point splurge gave Knowles the ammunition Knowles, as a scout for the Aggies, needed to convince his bosses.

"One day, Coach (Bill) Koval came walking down the hall and said, 'You want to talk to Randy about A&M?' Shortly after that, I was on a plane down here (in Texas, where McHugh now lives). I went on the recruiting trip and felt I connected with the players and liked the coach. I felt comfortable."

McHugh scored 508 points in that senior season, averaging 24.4 points per contest. That brought him to 1,158 for his career, the fifth-highest total in county history at the time. Like all of the others before him, McHugh played before the 3-point arc was instituted at the high school level.

Despite his height, at 165 pounds, McHugh wasn't suited to playing inside the paint.

"I had kind of a wiry frame," McHugh told the Star Beacon's Steve Goldman in 1998. "It wasn't suited to underneath play. I tried to stay outside < and actually, I learned a lot about that from my uncle, Steve McHugh (who had played basketball at Geneva under Al Bailey and later at Duquesne University).

"He (Steve McHugh) worked with me a lot and was very influential in growing up. He worked with me to make sure I faced the basket and worked as a guard versus just trying to go underneath."

At Geneva, McHugh played with Tim Hassett, Doug Ellis, Bill Schultz and Ed Clarkson. "Doug and I are very good friends," McHugh said. "I've visited with him quite a bit. Tim Hassett was about my height, 6-2 or 6-3, and muscular. He had gotten into weightlifting long before it became popular."

The Eagles went 17-4 that season after going 8-11 and 18-2 the previous two years, all under Koval, who was a member of the first ACBF's Hall of Fame class. McHugh also played tennis under legendary coach Arnold Bradshaw and ran cross country.

"We liked the Princeton look," McHugh said of the Eagles. "Outside of Tim (Hassett), we were not physically imposing. But we played together and got along with each other. Everybody understood their roles and played with their heads. We were a very cohesive unit. We had fun playing the game with one another and even practicing."

When he arrived at Texas A&M, he played quite a bit early in his freshman year, including at the Great Alaska Shootout. But that playing time gradually diminished.

"I wasn't getting the time that I thought I should have and could have," McHugh said. "In hindsight, I didn't work as hard as I needed to. It was quite an eye-opening experience for a kid from Geneva, Ohio. It was a very good experience. We were a final eight team my freshman year and lost to Louisville in overtime. They had players like Darrell Griffith."

After his sophomore year at A&M, McHugh transferred back to Ohio, to Youngstown State with the intention of playing for coach Don Rizelli after sitting out the required year. But Rizelli retired and Mike Rice, who had previously led Duquesne, became the new Penguins' coach.

"I started out seeing some playing time," he said. "In the second half of the season, I started the remainder of the season. I got my legs back into it. I hadn't had much playing time in two years."

After one season, he transferred back to Texas A&M to get his degree. He eventually married Dorothy, whom he had met as a freshman at A&M, and decided to settle down in the area.

He has worked as a specialty chemical salesman for MPSI, a part of Brenntag Corporation for 16 years and is now accounts manager.

"We sell everything that goes into a bucket of paint except for the solvents," McHugh said < "The color, the binder, the resin additives and fillers. We sell to building products companies along with pharmaceuticals and cosmetics."

The McHughs live in North Richland Hills, near Fort Worth.

"I've been in Texas longer than I was in Ohio," McHugh said. "The next thing, you blink, it's 10 or 20 years later and you're still there. I've grown used to Texas. I've been in the Dallas-Fort Worth area for 20 years. It's home now. It's where I live, but not where I'm from."

McHugh still plays some basketball. About three times a week, he gets together with a group of men he knows and plays at lunchtime. He also plays a little golf.

"I bicycle quite a bit these days on a road bike," he said. "I still play a little tennis, try to keep myself in shape."

Hunt was pioneer for Cubs

By CHRIS LARICK
Staff Writer

One of the best male high school basketball players in Ashtabula County history didn't even play as a senior.

That wasn't Harvey Hunt's fault. His family moved from Cleveland to Williamsfield when he was 16. Since Cleveland was on a different system than Ashtabula County schools were, Hunt was placed in the freshman class. By the time he was a senior, he was 19, too old to play high school ball under Ohio High School Athletic Association rules.

During the three years he did play at Williamsfield from 1955 to 1957, though, Hunt amassed 1,028 points, ?? in county history among male players.

At 6-foot-6, 280 pounds, Hunt was a giant among players of his era, and would even be an imposing player today. But he didn't rely on size alone, Hunt said in a telephone interview with Star Beacon Sports Editor Don McCormack in 1998.

"When I played in high school, I always tried to outsmart my opponents first," Hunt said. "If I had to use my size, though, I would.

"I always tell all the young guys, ‘If you don't have the brains to figure out how to beat someone, you'll eventually run into someone bigger, stronger and faster.’"

Hunt became the second county player to reach the 1,000-point plateau, reaching the milestone in February 1957, but wasn't even aware of the fact.

"I don't think any of us realized it," he said. "I guess it was no big deal."

It didn't seem that Hunt would even approach 1,000 during his freshman year at Williamsfield, when he averaged just 7.9 points a game in 1954–55, scoring 111 points in 13 games.

"I was absolutely terrible my freshman season," Hunt said. "I was really bad. I didn't know what I was doing. I wanted to play football, but Williamsfield was too small a school to have a football team."

That summer Hunt went back to Cleveland and played basketball all summer.

"I just figured if I was going to play, I was going to try and play the game well," he said.

He made his mark the next year, his sophomore season. A left-handed center, Hunt scored 376 points that year, averaging 18.8 points a game.

That was just a prelude to his junior year, when he scored at a rate the county had never seen to that point — 541 points in 20 games, a 27.1 average. The total points and average were a county record that stood until the 1987–88 season and remain the second-highest in county history.

Scholastically, things weren't going so well — until fate, and a certain teacher, stepped in.

"I was very lackadaisical about my studies," he said. "But I had an English teacher, Mrs. Christie. For some reason, she took an interest in me. She went out of her way for me and showed how important getting an education was."

The defining moment in Hunt's junior season came on Feb. 8, 1957, when the Williamsfield Cubs met the Austinburg Pioneers in an important Ashtabula County League game. When the rest of Hunt's Williamsfield team struggled, Hunt took control.

"All I knew that night was that we were struggling as a team and that every time I shot the ball it was going in. They couldn't stop me. As it turned out, we needed every point I scored that night."

By halftime Hunt had 30 points. He wound up with 53 as Williamsfield prevailed, 83–81.

When a man at the scorer's table informed him of the 30 he had scored by then, his Cubs' teammates were angry.

"They knew scoring points was not important to me," Hunt said. "I just wanted to win."

With no football team at Williamsfield and with basketball barred to him because of his age, Hunt was restricted to track and field as a senior, naturally standing out in that sport, too. He also became president of the student council and a member of National Honor Society.

"I had a lot of fun during those high school years," Hunt said in 1998. "All of us kids grew up together and hung out together."

Even though he never played football at Williamsfield and didn't play basketball as a senior, Kent State University offered Hunt a scholarship when he graduated.

For two years he played both football and basketball for the Golden Flashes. In football he played both ways, as a defensive right tackle and offensive left tackle.

"After two years, I gave up football because I couldn't spend enough time on my studies," he said. "Those first two years ended up costing me because I had to go to school an extra year because I didn't get serious about my studies until my junior year."

In basketball Hunt started for three years at center for Kent, earning second-team All-Mid American Conference honors under Bill Bertka, who eventually moved up to the status of an assistant coach with the Los Angeles Lakers.

Hunt played against Nate Thurmond, at that time playing for Bowling Green State University. Thurmond played for the Cleveland Cavaliers late in his career and is now in the NBA Hall of Fame.

"Nate was the man who woke me up to the fact I couldn't play center," Hunt said. "He was enormous. The best I could do was to try to outsmart him because he was so big (6-11, 275)."

After graduating from Kent in 1963, Hunt enlisted in the Air Force and was sent to King Salmon, Alaska instead of Vietnam, where that infamous war was being waged.

Married in 1963 and divorced in 1991, Hunt is the father of three. His sons, now 41 and 34, played college football at the University of Massachusetts and Hampton University. His daughter was an Olympic-caliber volleyball player before a knee injury forced her out of the game.

Hunt left the Air Force in 1976 and worked for a chemical company in Montgomery, Ala. until 1980 when he was hired as an equal opportunity officer for the Internal Revenue Service in Boston. In 1985 he became a physical security officer for the IRS in Andover, Mass.

Though he grew up as a black man during a period of racial strife in the country, Hunt experienced little racism in Ashtabula County.

"In the '50s and '60s, those types of attitudes were there," he said. "But I can't say enough great things about the people of the Williamsfield area and Ashtabula County.

"I never experienced any name calling or anything like that. Everyone we played against played me straight; there were no cheap shots."

Dan was the man!

By CHRIS LARICK
Staff Writer

The chief executive officer of the Major League Baseball Alumni Association will never deny his Ashtabula County roots.

"I realize that Ashtabula County athletes, teachers and coaches' school spirit is as good as anywhere in the country," said Dan Foster, a 1965 Edgewood High School graduate. "The things you learn there will serve you well in life. They provided the discipline and academic platform for me, specifically."

Foster, who will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame on April 2 at the Conneaut Human Resource Center, is currently circulating among the "Cactus League" teams currently in spring training in Arizona. Foster already made the rounds of the "Grapefruit League" teams in Florida.

"During spring training, I speak to the players about the things available to them when they're done playing," Foster, 57, said. "To the players it's pretty much the gospel about what life after baseball is all about. They're very receptive to me. It's great. We talk about things like personal appearances and health care."

To Foster, the public gets a slanted view on former baseball players from negative reports in the media.

"There are as many good stories as bad ones," Foster said. "There are a lot of good guys."

Foster was an outstanding basketball player in his day, first in high school, then in college, then as a professional, though that career was short-lived.

He played on a Jefferson High School team that had big plans for the 1964-65 season. The Falcons had completed Foster's junior season with a 12-8 record with a team that consisted primarily of juniors. Foster himself had averaged 16.2 points and 13.7 rebounds a game, shooting 42 percent from the floor and 82 percent from the foul line.

Before his senior basketball season began, though, a school bond levy failed and all winter sports were canceled. With hopes of a college scholarship at stake, Foster and his parents racked their brains for an idea.

"The situation was extremely stressful," Foster said. "We looked at our options. One option was to transfer. My parents and I decided I'd go to Edgewood."

Jefferson's loss was Edgewood's gain. When Foster transferred, the Warriors were 1-4. With their new 6-foot-4 swingman contributing almost 25 points and 17 rebounds a game, Edgewood went 15-2 the rest of the year, sharing the Western Reserve League championship with Fairport, an eventual Class A regional finalist.

The Warriors themselves didn't do badly in the tournament, upsetting top-seeded Geneva in the first round and moving to the district finals at Eastlake North, where they suffered a 73-55 loss to Cleveland East in the district final. In the semifinals, Edgewood scored 30 points, pulled down 17 rebounds and set a tourney record by making all 16 of his free-throw attempts in a 73-58 triumph over Conneaut.

Meanwhile, just three weeks after Foster's transfer, Jefferson reinstated winter sports.

"It was unbelievable," Foster said. "But there was nothing I could do. My transfer had already been processed."

Back in Jefferson, the Falcons made the most of their reprieve but could go just 6-9 in an abbreviated schedule. Though the Falcons had good players left in Rick Stevens and Rick Havens, they found themselves unready for the season.

Foster was good, but the Falcons had lost Mickey Zigmund from the previous year's team to graduation. Those two had been a good one-two punch for Jefferson.

"Mickey (Zigmund) was pretty good," Havens said. "They (Foster and Zigmund) were pretty close. (In our junior year), Mickey was our outside threat and Dan was our inside guy. Dan was playing against some very big kids. Jim Gilbert at Ashtabula was 6-11. Everybody had somebody.

"Dan was very smart. He knew how to use his height. Someone on the team would get the ball into him and he'd kick it back out. They'd throw it in and he'd kick it back out. About the third time, he'd fake the kickout and pop it in.

"He was a very heady ball player and an excellent shot. As sophomores, we played JV ball and went 15-3, beat Geneva when they were their toughest. Our junior year, we ended up second to Fairport. We had a chance to beat them. We were up about eight or so with three minutes to go, but we wound up losing that game. Mickey was the only senior on that team.

"We had a very good group coming back. At that point in time, you were allowed to scrimmage other teams after the season until the (state) tournament was over. No one came within 35 points of us. We weren't big, but we were quick and played excellent defense. We were looking forward to our senior year."

With winter sports supposedly canceled, the Jefferson players spent their time playing backyard football in the snow and rain during Christmas vacation. Then came the decision to have sports, after all, and the Falcons weren't ready.

"It'd been a month-and-a-half," Havens said. "I got shin splints. We were behind everybody. We weren't in shape and Danny was gone. It was kind of a miserable year. Dan was such a good shooter, had to be in the high 80 (percent)s as a foul shooter."

The highlight of Foster's senior year (and the lowlight for Havens and the rest of the Falcons) came against his former team. Foster wound up scoring 49 points in a 92-52 victory in the second of three games between the teams.

"It was a situation where I was trying to miss but I couldn't," Foster said later. "That was a real bittersweet moment for me."

"It was a storybook finish for me, but I had to take the harassment back in Jefferson," Foster said in the recent interview. "It was eerie. All those guys were my friends and had been since the first grade.

"I remember I had 30 points through the first three quarters. I told the coach (Clint McConnell) that the game was over. But they gave me the ball all the time and I scored 19 in the fourth quarter. I don't think it was revenge or thoughtlessness (on McConnell's part). I don't think he did anything intentionally."

"We couldn't stop him," Havens said. "Our coach pulled us out after the third quarter, but their coach kept (Foster) in. Dan didn't enjoy it. He came over and apologized.

"Dan was a good student and a good friend. Rick Stevens was on our team and they grew up together. They were like brothers. That was the hardest thing."

In high school, Foster scored 324 points as a junior at Jefferson and 554 as a senior at Edgewood, totaling 878. Had he played varsity as a sophomore, he would have doubtlessly achieved the 1,000-point plateau, but the Falcons had a great varsity team Foster's sophomore year, posting an 18-3 record and winning the Western Reserve League championship.

At Ohio Northern University, Foster did surpass 1,000 points. In fact, he finished his college career with 1,746 points, a school record that stood until at least 1994. Jeremy Thompson holds the current record, 1,976 points, scored between 1997 and 2000.

"That's since they got the 3-pointer," Foster, who played without such an advantage, pointed out.

Foster started the fifth game of his freshman year and every game afterward until graduation. Though his career point record has been passed, he still holds ONU's free-throw shooting marks for a game (17), season (185) and career (536), even after 37 years.

After college, Foster had tryouts with the Atlanta Hawks of the NBA and the Miami Floridians of the ABA. He eventually went to Israel to play for a professional team in Tel Aviv.

"It was a shot," Foster said. "It was the only place I could go. You always think you have a chance. It was fun and I was young."

The Tel Aviv experience lasted a year. Then, Foster came back to Ashtabula County as a math teacher and freshman basketball coach at Ashtabula High School. From there, he returned to the Ohio Northern area, where he taught and coached both at a high school near there and as a helper at ONU.

Then, after a year, he used his accounting degree from ONU to obtain a banking job, staying in that position for six years before becoming sales director for Hawaiian Tropics suntan products, spending six years in that job.

In 1984, two years after the MLB Alumni Association was formed, Foster took a job with the group, starting as the organization's director of special events. He eventually worked his way up to the CEO position he now holds.

"I've been working for the MLBAA for 21 years now," he said. "I had my degree in accounting and a graduate degree in finance. I had a sports background. That's what they were looking for. It's been a great career."

Though former Baltimore Oriole Brooks Robinson is president of the association and other former players like George Brett and Robin Yount are listed as vice presidents, those positions are largely nominal ones.

"They're volunteers, whose names people on the street know," Foster said. "I have a staff of people who do all kinds of things - celebrity golf outings, personal appearances, health care, those kinds of things."

Does his success in the business world make up for the fact he never made it in the professional basketball world?

"I don't think I was ever disappointed," he said. "Reality sets in. I wasn't good enough; that's the way it is. Some guys don't handle it well, the reality of not making it. But I don't think I ever suffered delusions of grandeur."

Foster married Margaret ("My lovely bride," he says) 15 years ago after meeting her at a celebrity golf tournament, where she was serving as the head of the American Diabetes Association in Houston. Margaret is a Texan, having been born and raised in Lubbock.

He and his family live in Colorado Springs, where the MLBAA is located. The couple has a son, Austin, 11.

"It's all good, my life now," said Foster, who didn't marry until he was 42. "I coach my son in basketball. He's into a lot of things, snowmobiles and plays lacrosse."

Much of Foster's life is spent on airplanes, though.

"There's a lot of traveling in this job," Foster said. "But it's not all bad. I get to go to the All-Star Game, to Cooperstown for the Hall of Fame induction and to the World Series.

"It gets old. Traveling is a pain. But there's a lot of exciting things going on. You've got to do it right or you won't be there. But it's still fun."

Though his life is far away now, Foster won't forget where he came from.

"I feel grateful for coming out of a good place," he said. "Northeastern Ohio doesn't have to take a back seat to anybody."

She stood tall

By KARL PEARSON
Staff Writer

Tonya Eippert has seen this drill before.

"My dad has already bought both of the kids a ball," she said. "Madelyn dribbles the ball pretty good."

Getting the ball in the hands of 4-year-old Madelyn and her 1-year-old brother, Jackson, as soon as possible is the same regimen Dave Tallbacka put Tonya and older brother Tim through when they were the same age at their home in Ashtabula's Harbor district.

It seems like a pretty good plan, too, considering what it led to for both of the Tallbacka siblings. That early training with a ball and a hoop led Tim Tallbacka to productive careers at Harbor for Andrew Isco and at Hiram College for retiring Geneva boys coach Brad Ellis. It also led him into the coaching realm, first with the Mariners, then as the first boys basketball coach at Lakeside and now to Brookfield.

Tonya Tallbacka also benefited from those days spent playing on the court in their driveway. It helped her become one of the few Ashtabula County players that can say they scored more than 1,000 points (1,249) and grabbed more than 1,000 rebounds (1,168) during their career, in this case from 1988–91 for Mike Hassett's Harbor teams.

Basketball opened the door for Dave and Tina Tallbacka's daughter to travel extensively for the first time. It paved the way to a brief career at Division I Morehead State University in Kentucky before legs that just refused to resist injury curtailed her participation in that sport and brought her back to Hiram, where she finished her undergraduate degree and got back into competitive swimming.

It helped her to get pointed toward a legal degree from Cleveland State University’s John Marshall College of Law. The discipline learned in basketball was carried forth into a productive career in the Cleveland law firm of Thompson, Hine and Flory and in-house legal work with British Petroleum-Amoco. Now, she finds those disciplines have applications in her life as a stay-at-home mother who still helps keep an eye on her husband Tim’s ever-expanding MC Sign business, which is scattered throughout northeastern Ohio.

Those lessons learned three decades ago now have led to an additional distinction — Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame member. At just 33, she will be the second-youngest person to be inducted into that organization at the ACBF's annual banquet April 2 at 6 p.m. at the Conneaut Human Resources Center. She trails only Jefferson's Anita Jurcenko Moore, against whom Eippert played several times during their high school careers.

It's all rather amazing to Eippert.

"I was shocked and very honored when I was told," she said. "It's very surprising to be chosen and really quite wonderful. It's nice to be remembered. It makes it even more special to be inducted at this time in my life."

When she watches her preschooler Madelyn, who is also into swimming, gymnastics, cheerleading and dance, working with the basketball outside their home bordering the Little Mountain Golf Course in Concord Township, the memories come flooding back.

"I was probably about 2 when my dad got the ball and turned me loose on Tim," Eippert said. "I remember always wanting to dribble the ball."

Joining the Ashtabula YMCA swimming team when she was 6 was her first organized athletic pursuit, but basketball was always there on the fringes.

"I probably really got started with basketball in fifth or sixth grade at Thomas Jefferson Elementary," Eippert said. "Will Petric had a program after school. I really enjoyed that.

"I think it was a combination of the influence of my dad and my brother. My dad always had me out shooting foul shots and doing all kinds of jumping drills. I loved that."

Swimming was forsaken for basketball at Columbus Junior High.

"Basketball took over from swimming in seventh or eighth grade," Eippert said. "Byron Sargent was my junior high coach. He was great."

Volleyball entered the picture when she got to Harbor, playing for Janna Oppenheimer and John Roskovics. But basketball was firmly in command by that time under the direction of Hassett, now the offensive coordinator for the Lakeside football team and an up-and-coming basketball official.

"My freshman year was probably when I first began to realize I could do something with basketball," she said. "I had great teammates like Julie Pavolino, Diane Acierno and LaToya Scruggs. I really enjoyed the camaraderie and learning about teamwork.

"I used to love the Saturday-morning practices (Hassett) used to have. It may seem kind of demanding, but we always did something fun afterward."

Hassett eagerly received Eippert into his program.

"Tonya is by far the best basketball player I ever coached," he said. "I was very fortunate she came along when I was still a young coach (in his fourth year at age 26).

"Tonya was not a flashy player. She didn't have outstanding speed or leaping ability, but she was so fundamentally sound. She was a 6-footer, but she could play inside and out."

Although she doesn't remember much of her high school career, one occasion early in it stands out that has continued to resonate.

"I remember we beat Jefferson either my freshman or sophomore year when they had Ronda Carter," she said.

Rod Holmes, still the girls coach at Jefferson, remembers those confrontations with Eippert's Mariners.

"I'm glad she's not playing anymore," he said. "Probably the biggest thing I remember about her was the time Harbor was playing at Jefferson. We thought we had the game under control when all of a sudden, she stepped out and starting hitting a bunch of threes. We won the game, but she sure gave us a scare. Tonya always seemed to find a way to help keep Harbor close."

Eippert engaged in some wars with Bob Callahan's Edgewood teams. Though retired, he still remembers the battle between his Warriors and her Mariners.

"She was a real strong inside player," he said. "She played with a group of girls who played together their whole high school career.

"Tonya was very active around the basket. She could shoot effectively out to 15 feet from the high, medium or low post. We had Stephanie Ward and Jenny Hall playing against her. She had a real nice touch and rebounded well, too. She had good hands and could catch the ball well."

Throughout her career, Eippert had to play in pain. She was constantly plagued with shin splints, but Hassett and opponents came to admire how she played through pain uncomplainingly.

"She played hurt all the time," Hassett said. "I don't know how she did it most of the time. She wore braces on her legs all day long by the time she was a senior. I think they drove her nuts, but she put up with it because she wanted to play so much. I put her in the top three athletes I've ever coached, male or female, in terms of toughness."

Holmes admired her grit, too.

"It always seemed like she played with pain, but you never saw any quit in Tonya," he said. "She was a great kid. I knew she always came to play and she was always a class act on the floor. She played hard, but there were no cheap shots. She was a class player."

Callahan respected her, too.

"She got a lot out of her ability considering her bad wheels," he said.

Her love for the game and her work ethic were exceptional.

"I remember playing at Madison and we got beat," Hassett said. "When I got on the bus, she was crying. I asked her if she gave it everything she had, and she said 'yes.' I told her, 'Then that's all you can do.' I remember that more than any winning shot she hit."

Hassett used her as an example for the rest of his days as the girls coach at Harbor and when he continued as the coach at Lakeside.

"I always used to use Tonya as an example," he said. "I used to film practices back then so I could show films of how she played the game. I tried to have the girls emulate her all the time. And she was the first Division I-A scholarship player I ever had.

"I'm very proud of what Tonya has accomplished. She's one of the main reasons I've stayed in coaching. What she's done with her life makes me so proud."

Word of her exploits got out quickly, especially after she set a school scoring record. By her junior year, she was on the recruiting trail with her parents.

"It was all a little overwhelming," Eippert said. "I remember flying out to Colorado for one visit.

"But I always dreamed of playing Division I ball. When we went to Morehead and I saw the campus, I fell in love with it. It was only seven hours away from home, so that was good, too."

Things started out well enough, but problems with shin splints she had encountered even in high school became progressively worse.

"They had even taken bone out of my hip before my freshman year, which did help," Eippert said. "But I got kicked in the shin in a pickup game with some guys after the season and it snapped my shin. I was told I shouldn't play basketball after that."

She turned back to swimming, finishing her sophomore year at Morehead on their team. She transferred to Hiram before her junior year and spent her last two seasons on the swimming team there.

"That turned out pretty good," Eippert said. "I just missed making the Division III nationals my senior year by one-100th of a second."

Always an excellent student, she received the Helen Petrosky Award as Hiram's top female scholar-athlete. Armed with a degree in management, she went to Cleveland State and earned her juris doctorate, graduating in 1998.

She was in private practice for two years and with BP-Amoco for another. All the discipline she had learned in basketball helped guide her through the demands of the legal profession, as well as marriage. She and Tim have been married for 10 years.

Those disciplines still have applications on the homefront with two little children.

"I always thought I'd be a stay-at-home mom," Eippert said. "It's great. It definitely keeps me busy."

She's contemplating taking on even more.

"I try to stay up-to-date with legal matters," she said. "I also usually look over the contracts that Tim brings home from his business. I'm still looking at doing some volunteer work."

There's a pretty good chance she'll eventually be working with her daughter and son in their varied activities.

"Basketball taught me how to work together with people to achieve a goal," Eippert said. "It taught me a lot in college just scheduling my studies and playing a sport.

"Now, I'm dealing with the schedules of three or four people. The kids are involved in a lot of activities, and I want it that way."

Basketball has undoubtedly meant a lot to Eippert and will continue to do so.

"I still may not totally realize the impact basketball has had on my life, but I'm thankful for what it has given me," she said.

Kingsville Hawk soared

By CHRIS LARICK
Staff Writer

At one point, before Ashtabula County high schools consolidated into first nine, then eight units (with the merger of Harbor and Ashtabula into Lakeside), there were as many as 22 smaller high schools as recently as the 1960-1961 school year.

All of them offered boys basketball programs, some of them extremely competitive. In the mid-1950s, the best of the smaller (Class B) basketball teams were found in New Lyme (Deming) and Kingsville.

The Kingsville team enjoyed its best season in the 1953-54 season. With Ed Batanian as its coach and Ron Hanson, the "Kingsville Hawk," the best player, the Kings roared to a 22-5 season.

Exactly how many points Hanson scored that season is in question. One newspaper report had him averaging 16.9 points. Hanson says he has boxscores for 23 of the games. The total points he scored in those games add up to 511, 22.2 per contest.

Regardless, there is no question that Hanson was one of the leading players of his era. He was selected to the United Press Class B All-Ohio team as an honorable-mention choice after the season.

Hanson was recently named as one of the inductees of the Ashtabula County Basketball Hall of Fame's fourth class, the Class of 2006.

"I was called the Kingville Hawk because I had the ability to fake guys out and take the ball," Hanson said via telephone from his home in Lyman, South Carolina.

Of the Kings starters, only Ray Reed at 6-foot-6 was more than 6-feet. Hanson himself, who played guard and forward, was 5-8, though he was listed at 5-10 in the newspaper. Brothers Keith Carlson, a senior, and Bill Carlson, a junior, were about 5-10 and guard Joe Brown stood about 5-6. Despite Kingsville's lack of size, the Kings were capable of scoring in bunches.

"We had five games we were over 100 points," Hanson said. "I scored 41 against Austinburg."

In one of their games that 1953-54 season, Kingsville beat Rock Creek, 119-44. Hanson had 32 points in that contest and Reed added 30. In a game his junior year, the Kings outscored New Lyme Deming, a team that was led by Hall of Famers Frank Zeman and Richie Scribben, 107-95. Kingsville ultimately won the Big Seven championship that year.

In addition to basketball, Hanson played second base on the Kingsville baseball team and competed in the shot and discus in track. During his senior year, he finished second in the Orange High School district in the shot with a throw of 44-11½.

"I weighed only about 150 pounds in high school," Deming said. "I weigh a lot more than that now."

The Kings anticipated great things in the tournament, but were stopped by a Harbor team they had beaten earlier in the season, 71-57.

Hanson's coach, Ed Batanian, also a member of the ACBF Hall of Fame and still secretary on the Ohio High School Athletic Association Northeast District board, recalls that Hanson started at point guard for three years for the Kings.

"He was just a cat, quicker than lightning," Batanian said of Hanson. "I don't think I ever saw a kid back in those days as quick as Ronnie.

"We played a lot of pressure defense. The gyms were so small we scored a lot of points. We played teams like Spencer and Austinburg in the Big Seven. Ron was a shooter. My theory was that if he was hitting, we'd give him the ball and I'd just watch him shoot the ball."

Hanson was such a prolific scorer that, when a baker in Conneaut offered a cake to the team's high scorer in every game, Batanian insisted that the team decide who was going to get the cake. Otherwise, Hanson would have won it almost every week.

The manager of the team, Burton Bartram, kept track of who had and hadn't won the prize. But it got to a point that, despite the baker's idea to let them eat cake, the Kings no longer hungered for it.

"One time, the kids said, ‘We haven't eaten the cake from last week yet,’" Batanian said. "It would have created jealousy if Ron got the cake every week. He got the first one and then I spread it around."

One thing that was unique about some of the county basketball courts, which doubled as auditoriums, was that the teams sat on the stage at one end of the court during games, Batanian said.

"When you had a timeout, you had to jump off the stage to talk to the kids. There was no place to move."

When the Kings got to the tournament, Reed, the big 6-6 center, had pneumonia when Kingsville lost to a Harbor team paced by center Bob Peura and coached by Elmer Gray.

"Ron (Hanson) was not very big, but he was very quick," Batanian summed up. "He wasn't the smallest on the team; Joe Brown was. (Hanson) was a very good shooter."

When Hanson graduated from high school in 1954, he joined the United States Air Force, becoming an aircraft repairman and playing basketball for the Wright-Patterson Kittyhawks in Dayton. He came home in 1955 and played for the Kingsville alumni team that beat the Kingsville varsity team.

"Ed (Batanian) said we were the best team that they played that year," Hanson recalls.

Hanson served four years in the Air Force from 1954 to 1958 and was reinducted during the Berlin call-up in 1960-61, serving an additional 10 months.

Afterward, he began a civil-service career, beginning in Erie, serving 34 years, many of them as a quality assurance specialist, inspecting electronics.

He married a woman from Kelloggsville, Alma. They would have been married 51 years in May, but Alma died on March 6. The couple had four daughters and a son. The family has now extended to eight grandchildren.

Hanson retired in 1990. One year, the Hansons visited one of their daughters in South Carolina and liked the state so well they decided to move down there.

"My wife didn't like the cold weather," Hanson, 71 years old, said. "Today (March 6), it was 75 degrees. My wife's sister lives down here and my son, Ronnie, is an electrician in a school system down here. Ronnie's 44; he was born on my birthday."

Heart of the matter

By KARL PEARSON
Staff Writer

In the space of 35 years, Kelly Boggs has accomplished many things in which anyone can take pride and more than most people have on their resumes. It's been that way since she was a little girl. A member of one of Ashtabula County's most renowned families, Boggs has more than lived up to her heritage.

In her relatively tender years, she has had opportunities as a foreign-exchange student to Japan, work as an intern with the state legislature, participation in a prestigious legal firm, administrative duties at Ohio State University's law school and roles as a wife and mother in a growing family.

But ask the daughter of Ashtabula County commissioner Bob Boggs and Judy Simak about the things she has achieved, and she numbers a rather different accomplishment as one of the more memorable, and surprising, highlights of her life. It all happened in her senior year of 1987-88 at Jefferson High School, when she was chosen Star Beacon Ashtabula County Player of the Year for girls basketball.

"I really was excited when I was chosen County Player of the Year," she said in a telephone interview from her home in Columbus. "That was a big accomplishment. I'm probably more proud of that than getting my law degree."

She was the second Jefferson player to receive All-Ohio recognition, the first being Di Anthony, who did so in 1986-87 and repeated the honor with Boggs in their senior season.

Boggs is part of a family with rich athletic tradition, too. It would appear she has moved to the head of the class, though, with her induction April 2 into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation's Hall of Fame. She will be enshrined in ceremonies at 6 p.m. that day at the Conneaut Human Resource Center.

"This is a nice way to relive my youth," she said. "(Notice of her induction) took me back to those days. I definitely thought people had forgotten. It's nice to know they haven't.

"I was kind of shocked by it. I'm grateful to people like Rod Holmes who helped make it possible."

Even though he's only 5 years old, Boggs' oldest child, Cooper, has gained a whole new respect for his mom. Her husband, Ted Lape, was also impressed.

"I told Cooper this makes me famous up in Grandpa Bobby's backyard," Boggs said with a laugh. "I think my husband was surprised, too. I think I've gone up in stature a little."

Three-year-old Sydney and 6-month-old Aidan Robert (the middle name after her father) may not be able to comprehend it all yet, but it's likely they'll eventually benefit from the skills of their talented family on the athletic field. Mom figures to be right there to impart her knowledge.

"We're real sports fans," she said. "Cooper is in soccer, T-ball and swimming and Sydney is in tennis. We have a program called Sports for Shorties the kids participate in.

"I hope to coach T-ball. I've always wanted to find a way to work with young women and help them with their creative side."

Folks who had a willingness to work with a young girl who wanted to test her skills athletically, as well as in other pursuits, helped set Kelly Boggs on her path. It started out with her family, but there were plenty of others who helped along the way.

"I grew up in a family culture of sports," she said. "I've always heard about my dad's exploits and my uncle (Ross). We had hoops out in the driveway. I played in (Jefferson Area Girls Softball) when I was little, too."

She really got excited about basketball, though.

"The seventh grade team was the first organized team I played on," Boggs said. "In fifth and sixth grade I knew it was on the horizon. Liz Toukonen, Kim Mauro and Linda McClintock were the coaches. From Day 1, it became pretty important.

"When I was in sixth grade, I went to a camp at Edinboro (University). I was the youngest player there, but I was chosen the Most Improved Player. After that, I decided maybe the game was for me."

Actually, Boggs had also developed interest in the sport from a seemingly unlikely source.

"(ACBF Hall of Famer) Beth Helfer from PV was a big influence on me," she said. "My cousin Sue played for her, and I used to go to the PV games to watch her play. I was always impressed with the way (Helfer) worked with her team, and she was always willing to help girls from other teams, too, and really encouraged them. I think she deserves a lot of credit."

Her freshman year was a bit of a struggle, though. She and Di Anthony, who will join her in this year's ACBF Hall of Fame class, started as freshmen for coach John Patterson. The Falcons were 1-20 that year.

A new sheriff came to town from Bristol for her sophomore year as Holmes arrived. But Boggs wasn't around for the first year of his tenure. The Falcons were 2-19 that season.

"I missed my sophomore year while I was in Japan," she said. "I went there as an exchange student through the Rock Creek Rotary Club."

When she got back, she found out what she'd been missing. In Holmes' second year, the Falcons took off, finishing 16-6 and winning the Grand River Conference in their final year there, with Boggs a big part of the renaissance.

"I loved Coach Holmes from the beginning," she said. "He always exuded positiveness. I always felt he was excited about me and the girls. He was the gentle giant. He never got mad. He might get a mysterious little smile on his face like, ‘What were you thinking?’ but he never yelled. He always used to laugh about our girl issues."

She came in for open gyms in the summer before her junior year and could see Coach Holmes had a plan. "We had several really good athletes like Di, Ronda Carter in softball, Kelly Clark in track and Pauline Hamper and Shelly Skeels."

Holmes appreciated Boggs’ instincts. "Probably the thing I remember about Kelly the most was that it seemed like wherever the ball went, she was there," he said. "She always seemed to know where the ball was. She seemed to have an uncanny response in finding the ball."

Her return, along with 5-foot-9 freshman Jackie Whitbey, helped turn things around. Holmes added, "We lost five of our last seven or eight games by two or three points. We could have used Kelly that year."

Boggs and her teammates also brought academic excellence. "Kelly was a super student, too," Holmes said. "Kelly and the rest of those girls set the tone for what we have now with our girls in terms of academic excellence, too."

Her senior year was magical. "I'll never forget those magical moments," she said. "It was just like my body took over. I was only 5-6, but I was playing under the basket. I just felt I could outjump and outhustle everyone."

Jefferson won the Northeastern Conference, then reached the Division II regional semifinals. Boggs set a school rebounding record with 24 in a sectional championship win over Ashtabula and had 29 points and 20 rebounds in a district semifinal win over Beaumont.

"At her size, it was amazing how many rebounds she got," Holmes said. "She was unbelievable. To be honest, I believe she could still play in there."

Boggs and Anthony split top honors: Boggs as County Player of the Year and Anthony as NEC Player of the Year. Both averaged 10.7 points per game for their careers. Boggs finished with 717 points in 67 games and left as Jefferson’s fourth-leading career scorer at the time.

"That program was built with a lot of blood, sweat and tears," Boggs said. "Coach Holmes made it a lot of fun along the way."

Though she considered Division III basketball, Boggs chose Ohio State to pursue her interest in Japanese. She earned her degree in 1992, and her JD from DePaul in 1998. She worked for Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease, and later became assistant director of career services at OSU's Moritz College of Law.

Heart of the matter

"I help law students find jobs," she said.

"The important message is that as a lawyer, you have to be competitive," Boggs said. "I look at basketball as one of the joys in my life development. It gave me the tenacity to practice law and the understanding of the hard work it takes.

"It helped me build the confidence and self-esteem it takes to practice law with and against people from schools like Harvard and Yale and show that you can stand toe-to-toe with them and not be intimidated. I felt I could hold my own."

It also helped her develop a trait even her family doesn't always understand. "I think single-mindedness is one trait that has stuck with me," Boggs said. "That's something I'm trying to develop in my kids. I think Cooper has that single-mindedness. I think my daughter has the feistiness. I think my husband sometimes wishes I had less single-mindedness."

Anthony left her mark

By KARL PEARSON
Staff Writer

Chemistry has been important for most of Dianna Henslee's life.

"I remember being in Mr. Hordeski's class (at Jefferson High School)," she said. "He was doing a demonstration, and he made this big fizzy thing. I was hooked."

So enamored was Henslee, then Di Anthony, with science, especially chemistry, that it became her course of study at Hiram College, from which she graduated in 1992. Chemistry provided her with her first job in Ohio, working in the lab for what was then The Illuminating Company. That job also brought her in contact with her husband, Bob Henslee. When she was looking for career advancement, chemistry played a large part in it, leading her to a job at what was then Millenium Chemicals and the desire to seek further education. It ultimately led to a degree in environmental studies from Gannon University in 2003.

Since then, Henslee has been given a position of great responsibility at what is now Lyondell Chemicals. In 2004, she became the environmental engineer in charge of health and safety at Lyondell's facilities on Middle Road in Ashtabula Township.

"I work with the air permitting at the plant," Henslee said. "I do a lot to make sure we are complying with Ohio and U.S. EPA standards. I'm constantly reading regulations to make sure I'm up to date. I guess you'd say I'm into industrial hygiene. I really enjoy it."

Henslee also relies on chemistry in her family life. She and Bob have been married for eight years. They have two children — 6-year-old Brittany, a first grader at Cork Elementary School, and 4-year-old Danielle, a preschooler at Kids Only in Ashtabula. They are expecting the arrival of their third child in June.

"It's a boy," Henslee said. "That's going to be a nice change."

But the word chemistry has another meaning for Henslee, a more intangible element than the ones with which she is now accustomed to dealing. That brand of chemistry helped turn Henslee and her teammates on the Jefferson girls basketball team from a doormat when she started for John Patterson in 1984 into a powerhouse under the direction of the master mixer, Rod Holmes, by the time she graduated in 1988.

"I think chemistry is what made our team the success that it became," Henslee, who at the time was only the second four-year varsity letterwinner in Jefferson girls basketball history, said. "I think we had great chemistry."

Those elements have come together in a completely different way now. The things she achieved during her high school career, including becoming one of the first two All-Ohioans that Holmes has accumulated over the years, has earned Henslee induction into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame. She and Falcon teammate Kelly Boggs will be inducted Sunday in ceremonies at the Conneaut Human Resource Center at 6 p.m.

"I was very surprised when I was told," the 36-year-old Henslee said. "I didn't even know an organization like this existed. It made my day."

Most of her friends and co-workers aren't aware of her exploits on the court.

"Once in a while, I'll get somebody at work who tells me they saw my name in the paper for something I did back then," Henslee said. "But most people don't know."

Now they will, and they should. After all, during her four-year varsity career, only the second after fellow ACBF Hall of Famer Shellie Crandall to that point, Henslee started 88 games and averaged 10.7 points per game. Her 940 points brought her up just short of distinction as one of Ashtabula County's 22 girls players to reach the 1,000-point mark and were second only to Crandall among Jefferson girls when Henslee graduated.

She saw Jefferson through the tough times of a 1-20 season under Patterson her freshman year. A 2-19 record with Holmes in his first season at Jefferson followed in her sophomore year.

Henslee, Boggs, Ronda Carter, Pauline Hamper, Kelly Clark and Jackie Whitbey were also the catalysts for the Falcons' quantum leap to a 16-6 record and Grand River Conference championship her junior year, earning Star Beacon All-Ashtabula County Player of the Year recognition. Then she helped power Jefferson to a 22-2 record her senior year, a Northeastern Conference championship in the school's first year in their new conference and the Falcons' first trip to the regional tournament. She collected NEC Player of the Year honors that season.

Nobody remembers Henslee better than Holmes.

"Di was just a great shooter," he said. "She could really knock the shots down. She was Miss Outside for us.

"I remember how hard Di worked on her game on her own to shoot the ball. When she shot it, I usually looked for it to go in."

At a mere 5-foot-5, she fit the mold for most of the rest of the Falcons, but Henslee didn't back down from anyone.

"We didn't have a big team, but the girls were very scrappy," Holmes said. "Di was definitely scrappy. She helped create what Jefferson girls basketball is all about."

There are several other legacies Henslee and her teammates passed down to future Falcons.

"Di was an excellent student," Holmes said. "She and the other girls also came back to help out when they left. Those girls used to come in after they graduated when they were home on break and to open gyms in the summer. They started the traditions we have today at Jefferson."

Like so many girls of her era, Henslee got her start in the driveway of the home of her parents, Bev and Jim Anthony, in which they still reside on Lillie Road in Sheffield Township.

"We had a hoop," she said. "I used to play with my (older) sister, Dana, and the neighborhood kids."

Henslee also played in the Jefferson Area Girls Softball program in the summers. But her first formal training in basketball came with Kim Mauro, Linda McClintock and Liz Toukonen in the seventh grade. She and Boggs also attended a summer camp in the Pocono Mountains in the seventh grade, which helped prepare her.

But nothing could prepare her for what she encountered that first year at the varsity level. The starting five for Patterson that year was pretty much a sister affair with Henslee sharing the floor with her sister, Dana, and Boggs on the floor with her older sister, Larissa.

That season, and the 2-19 struggles the Falcons endured in Holmes' first season, didn't get somebody with Henslee's spirit down.

"I didn't get discouraged," she said. "I knew we'd get better. I knew we had a lot of good talent around.

"Even though we were 2-19 for (Holmes), I could see we were getting better. The scores were getting closer."

Henslee was always impressed with how Holmes approached every situation.

"I only remember him yelling one time in three years at practice. That got everybody's attention," she said. "He was quiet, but he always seemed to know what to say and how to encourage you. I can remember the look he'd get. It was like ‘You know better.’"

By her junior year, with Boggs back from a year in Japan, the Falcons did know better. It was reflected in their drive to the GRC title.

"There was a lot of hard work that went into that," Henslee said. "There was so much talent on that team that you couldn't take anything for granted. It was indescribable.

"I felt we could have gone farther than we did. I think it opened everyone's eyes to what we could do."

There were two things Henslee said the Falcons heard a lot.

"We talked about ‘The Eye of the Tiger,’" she said. "Anyone that played at Jefferson back in my day knows what that is."

Defense was also a big part of Henslee's game, even though Holmes relied upon her for her offensive capabilities.

"Who could forget the box-and-one defense?" she said. "Not me."

Little did she know it, but Henslee got an extra jolt of incentive after her junior season and she had earned county player-of-the-year honors.

"I remember looking at the Wall of Fame (in the hallway outside Falcon Gymnasium) one day," she said. "Someone walked by and asked me what I was doing. I simply replied, 'Making goals.' Funny, I received all my local and state recognition the following year."

Her senior year was one filled with special memories, including selection as the NEC Player of the Year. Several memories came against NEC opponents.

"We were playing Ashtabula at Ashtabula, and we were down by two points," Henslee said. "The crowd was going wild.

"I got the ball and put up a jump shot from the left-hand side. Little did I know, Coach Holmes was telling me to call timeout. The crowd was so loud, I didn't hear him. The ball went in, I was fouled, made the foul shot, and we won the game by one point."

Another game against Edgewood is also well remembered.

"I had no points in the first half," Henslee said. "I came back in the second half and scored 20 points."

Then there was the run in tournament play. The Falcons made their first trip to the Division II regionals under Holmes. Their path was ended there by the Champion Golden Flashes, led by future Kent State standout Tracy Lynn. Ironically, Lynn, now Tracy Dawson, is a teacher at Jefferson Elementary School.

"My senior year, I thought we'd go to state," Henslee said. "I was very disappointed then that we didn't go to state.

"Now I realize it was pretty amazing. I have a much deeper appreciation now how much of an achievement that was. I'd have to say it was one of the top five things that have happened in my life. It was a huge accomplishment."

The support those Falcons received in their community is also a fond memory, especially one form of it.

"The boys cheerleaders!" Henslee said.

Heading off to Hiram, Henslee took a brief shot at the college game, but it didn't last for long.

"My first year at Hiram I played, but I pulled a hamstring muscle and had to sit out a big part of it," she said. "By the next season, my studies had become a priority and I didn't go out.

"Looking back, I wish I would have stayed with basketball longer. I think I would have if I could have balanced everything better. Now, I'd like to see what I could have done."

After graduating from Hiram, she went to Virginia to find employment in 1993 before returning home in 1994 to work at The Illuminating Company. She eventually met her husband there before moving on to Millenium and, now, Lyondell.

"The rest is history," Henslee said.

Actually, Henslee didn't totally leave basketball, and athletics in general, behind.

"In 1994-95, I decided to try and get into basketball officiating, so I took Phil Garcia's class and got my referee's license," she said. "It was fun at first, but then they put me in some boys games and I didn't like it as much.

"I was playing softball at the time, too. Finally, I just decided I had to cut back."

Once her children started coming along, some of her relatives tried to equip them for a sports career.

"At my baby shower for Brittany, she received her Little Tykes basketball hoop," Henslee said. "She was still in the womb! It was a gift from my Aunt Marion and Uncle Bill, aka Auntie and Uncle Bull."

Her daughters both have shown signs of her athletic aptitude.

"My little one is in T-ball," Henslee said. "She's a bundle of energy.

"Both girls are in gymnastics with the Geneva Vikings. The youngest one is the one who's more into athletics. My oldest is the one into academics."

Still, both girls share another athletic pursuit.

"Both of my daughters also ride dirt bikes, although not competitively," Henslee said. "They ride with the help of their dad."

The arrival and growth of her children has shown Henslee a need to develop a different side of herself.

"I've always been sort of a perfectionist," Henslee said. "I've come to accept my kids no matter what. I've also tried to instill in them to stick to what they're doing, not to quit."

The lessons of basketball have also carried over into life on the job.

"I learned there's no I in team," Henslee said. "It has carried into work. I've learned not to sweat the small stuff. I learned to try to always get along. I definitely have learned to use what I learned in basketball."

The first voice of county sports

By KARL PEARSON
Staff Writer

How many people do you know who could handle more than two decades sharing time with a lawyer on one side and a person who is generally considered one of the reigning experts in his field on the other?

Such a person does exist. His name is Jim Cordell. And to hear his colleagues on area high school basketball and football broadcasts for WREO and WFUN radio stations, he not only held his own, but thrived under those conditions.

If you listened to what Cordell has to say, you might not believe it. As he puts it, "I didn't play and I didn't coach."

But talk to his broadcasting buddies, Gene Gephart and Pat Sheldon, and they will tell you Cordell was every bit their equal, if not the leader, of their team. They reported the exploits of area basketball and football players from 1970 through the early 1990s for basketball and into the latter part of the '90s in football. As years went, they were joined by retired Kingsville High School basketball coach and Edgewood High School athletic director Ed Batanian with halftime conversations.

"Jim was the dominating personality of our team," Sheldon said without hesitation. "We were the only broadcasting group in the Ohio Association of Broadcasters that was strictly volunteer. He was professional in every way."

"Jim made us into a great team," Gephart said. "I think Jim could have, and did, succeed at anything he put his mind to."

Ask most any basketball coach around in that span why their game received the recognition it did, and they'd probably get around sooner or later to listing the contributions of that radio team. Ask their listeners, and they'd probably speak to the word pictures they presented, with Cordell's rich tones providing many of them.

For all those reasons, Cordell is a logical choice to be the first media member to enter the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame. He will be inducted Sunday at 6 p.m. at the ACBF's annual awards banquet at the Conneaut Human Resource Center.

True to his nature, Cordell accepted word of his induction with a deep sense of humility that even bordered on embarrassment.

"I'm flabbergasted," the 78-year-old Cordell said by telephone from his winter home in Aiken, S.C. "I'm totally surprised and very honored. To be selected just because of what we did on our broadcasts is just amazing."

Cordell's statement that he never played the game isn't completely accurate. He first came in contact with football and basketball as a high school student in Niagara Falls, N.Y.

"I played football at the JV level and basketball at the club level," he said. "I did play basketball when I went to junior college in St. Petersburg, Fla."

Cordell was also fortunate to be in the perfect spot to see some of the greatest basketball players of the late 1940s when they came through Niagara Falls.

"I always enjoyed basketball," he said. "When I was growing up, there wasn't a lot of emphasis on the NBA. The college game was always the attraction back then with teams like St. Bonaventure, Niagara and Canisius around.

"A lot of the eastern schools stopped off in Buffalo when they making a western swing or western schools would stop through on their way east. Every top team in the country would stop. I had the chance to see players like (eventual Basketball Hall of Famers) George Mikan and Dolph Schayes and (Hall of Fame) coaches like Clair Bee, Joe Lapchick and Hank Iba."

Cordell spent from 1947-49 furthering his education in Florida. In the summer of 1950, the lure of employment at Hooker Detrex brought him to Ashtabula. Little did he realize that it would a relationship that has extended more than half a century since, as he met Ashtabula High School graduate Barbara Warren, who would become his wife in 1952.

He finished his education at Denison University in Granville in 1951. With that in hand, he found a job waiting for him back at Hooker Detrex, a firm which produced trichlorethylene, a degreasing solvent, and perchlorethylene, a dry cleaning fluid.

Again, Cordell's contention that he didn't have much to do with basketball proved to be not entirely accurate.

"I became a basketball referee in 1951," he said. "I was called back into the Navy from 1954-56. While I was in, I worked a lot of high school games in the Washington, D.C. and Norfolk, Va. area."

Returning to Ashtabula, he stayed in the officiating game until 1958.

"I worked with men like Ange Candela, Lou Pavolino, Jim Holub and Naz Servidio," Cordell said. "I stopped officiating because I had other things to do."

His return to Ashtabula also brought about a job change.

"I worked at Ashtabula Bow Socket from 1956-77," Cordell said. "Then I went into the scrap business from 1977 until I retired in 1988 with Bob Weiner at Triad Salvage."

He never lost his interest in the game, though.

"I used to go to a lot of the Harbor and Ashtabula games," Cordell said.

It was at the urging of long-time family friend Sheldon that Cordell got into broadcasting when they were recruited by WREO station owners Dave and Dick Rowley. Sheldon said Cordell was a natural for the job.

"Jim brought a great voice to the team," he said. "With his officiating background, he had a real knowledge of the game.

"He also brought a great deal of confidence to the role. He always knew what he was talking about."

"Jim has a natural speaking voice for radio," Gephart, who has preceded his colleague into the ACBF Hall of Fame as a player and coach, said. "Neither Pat nor I have a great voice, so Jim was the voice we really needed."

Cordell and Sheldon were two of the initial elements of the broadcasting trio, starting with the 1970 football season. The basketball broadcasts did not start until 1971, when Gephart retired from his job as the Ashtabula High School head basketball coach.

"Pat and I were interested in doing basketball, and Gene's retirement gave us a natural entry into the sport," Cordell said. "Dick and Dave Rowley were happy with what we had done in football, so they said to go ahead when we brought up doing basketball, too."

Prior to their collaboration in 1971, Gephart and Cordell did not know each other. It didn't take long for Gephart to develop a healthy respect for Cordell's abilities, though. They arrived at a very effective system of broadcasting the games.

"Gene would do the play-by-play for the first half and I'd keep the statistics," Cordell said. "Then I'd do the play-by-play for the second half and Gene would do the statistics.

"Gene would do the first half because he was around the schools and was more familiar with the players. I'd use the first half to get familiar with the names and faces."

Actually, Gephart claims Cordell really didn't need a half to get acclimated.

"Jim has a fantastic memory," Gephart said. "His intelligence and his ability to memorize is amazing. The reason I did the first half was because I also had the time to go scout games. Jim was on the road a lot, so he wasn't able to scout as much."

"His knowledge amazed us," Sheldon said.

Attention to detail was another of Cordell's strengths upon which the team came to rely through the name board and scorekeeping system that was developed.

"We had the board with name tabs and the height, weight, class and statistics of the starters and the substitutes," Cordell said. "I developed the scoresheet and did the scorekeeping for the first half. We had the ability to know right away how many points a player had scored, along with other information."

Gephart had another explanation for how the team divided the duties.

"Jim did the play-by-play for the second half so if the game got down to the end and it was close, I would be able to talk about what the coaches were thinking and the strategies that were being used," he said.

The team came to rely upon other Cordell skills.

"Gene and I are the worst mechanical people around," Sheldon said. "Jim had the technical mind and the ability to fix things if something went wrong. He could set up the equipment if we needed it and he could fix anything. He was able to troubleshoot for us and get us on the air and keep us there many times."

Cordell wasn't willing to just settle for being a run-of-the-mill broadcasting team. He took steps to make sure the threesome was as professional as possible.

"It was through Jim that we got into the Ohio Association of Broadcasters," Sheldon said. "He wanted to be as educated as he could be in the craft, so we went to several seminars to learn all we could."

Because of his officiating background, Cordell brought a definite respect for coaches, players and officials to the broadcasts. Many of the games' participants were spared being placed in a negative light because Cordell, in particular, refused to criticize them, which in turn created great respect from the coaching and officiating fraternity for the broadcasters.

"Jim never spoke negatively of coaches, players or officials," Sheldon said.

There are a couple highlights Cordell holds dear from his basketball broadcasting.

"I think the top memory was broadcasting Harbor's game against Akron St. Vincent-St. Mary in the regional finals (in 1984), and also the game before it against Warren JFK," he said. "I also remember when Ashtabula lost to (current CBS basketball analyst) Clark Kellogg and St. Joseph at Eastlake North (in 1978)."

As the team moved into the 1990s, some changes began to occur. Gephart struggled with a pair of detached retinas and Jon Hall moved into his seat temporarily to share the play-by-play duties with Cordell.

The lure of a warmer climate moved Cordell out of the basketball broadcasting chair after the 1991-92 season as he and Barbara built their winter home in South Carolina. Hall assumed the position on the team.

But the Cordells still pay close attention to what's going on in the area, spending their summers back in Ashtabula. Their sons, Stuart and Bradford, still reside in the area, with the latter living in Ashtabula with his wife and sons Alan and Brian, and the former residing in Perry with daughters Elise, Bethany and Hannah. Stuart Cordell will represent his father on Sunday.

Apparently, Cordell has never completely lost the officiating bug, although he now channels it into a different sport.

"I'm a rules official for the Northern Ohio and South Carolina Golf Association," he said. "We help run a lot of college and (United States Golf Association) qualifiers and other events down here. I've also helped (retiring Geneva boys golf coach) Dennis Jarvi with the NEC championships before."

The Cordells are always keeping track of the area basketball and football scene.

"I enjoyed my broadcasting career and watching all those great area athletes and coaches," he said. "It's an honor to be recognized for that."

Peet was hard to beat

By CHRIS LARICK
Staff Writer

Ramon Peet was the best player on one of the best teams in Ashtabula County history.

But Peet, who will be inducted posthumously into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame Sunday at the Conneaut Human Resource Center, won't be found on the Star Beacon's list of 1,000-point scorers. In fact, Peet would have needed to have started all of his four years at Ashtabula High School and to have scored more points than he did as a senior in 1946-47 to have reached the 1,000-point plateau.

That season was the one when the Panthers went all the way in the Class A tournament to the state semifinals in Columbus before falling. That Ashtabula team was the first to make it to state in county history. Three years later, Geneva got to Columbus in Class B. No county or area squad has been there since, even 56 years after the Eagles made it.

The Panthers clearly didn't do it on the basis of offense. Coached by the immortal Bob Ball, Ashtabula averaged just 32.9 points per game in going 17-8 and qualifying for state. The Panthers had to step that up as the season wore on to get even that high. Through their first eight games they averaged just 29 points per contest.

Peet, a 5-foot-11 senior guard, led Ashtabula in scoring that season with 234 points, averaging 9.36 points (10.3 in the Lake Shore League).

"Mr. Ball would not fast-break," ACBF Hall of Famer Gene Gephart, a sophomore on that Panther team, said. "That's how he beat the big teams in Cleveland. On offense, we sent only two players to the boards to rebound; the other three dropped back so the other team couldn't fast-break.

"Mr. Ball was offensively very, very conservative. He was known in the state of Ohio as a defensive coach.

"We played in lousy little gyms. You couldn't shoot. Harbor had beams coming down. Mentor was the only regulation court in the league."

Though the Panthers were LSL champions that year with an 11-1 record (losing only to Harvey, 27-18), they went 0-6 in their non-conference regular-season games, losing five times to Erie teams and once to Cleveland Heights.

"We played the good Erie teams and Cleveland Heights," Gephart said. "We played a strong non-league schedule. I didn't play as a freshman, but Mr. Ball was 46-2 in league games from my freshman year through my senior year. We dominated the Lake Shore League and Ramon was a big part of that in his junior and senior years."

Ashtabula caught fire in the tournament, topping Conneaut, 36-26; Euclid Shore, 44-38; Shaw, 36-23; Cleveland Heights (avenging the earlier defeat), 40-32; Barberton (17-4 at the time), 46-32; and Cuyahoga Falls, 32-27.

That final regional championship game took them to the state semifinals, where they finally met their match in Middletown, state champions in 1943-44, 1945-46 and 1946-47. The Middies averaged three inches taller than the Panthers and used it for a 36-31 victory over Ashtabula in a game the Panthers led 30-27 after a steal and layup by Peet and a basket by Gephart halfway through the final quarter.

"We slowed it down against Euclid Shore, Cleveland Heights and Shaw," Gephart said. "And some of us scored more points. Against Barberton in the first half, we probably played the best we did all year."

Ben Klepac, who died suddenly of a heart attack at age 49 in 1979, was the center on that team, backed up by Delbert Devaughn. Tom Fish, Bob Halgas, who also recently passed away, and Joe DeChurch also started at times, though a sophomore, Gephart, also started.

Others on the team included Richard Nelson and Wilbert Jordan.

Peet, a guard, was the leading scorer, though his top performance that year was 20 points against Willoughby on Feb. 7. Peet was held scoreless in one game and had two points in another in which he got into foul trouble.

But he impressed enough to be named Most Valuable Player in the LSL, first team on the Lake Shore District team and first-team all-state tournament team.

"You know it was kind of ironic," Peet once said about Ashtabula's tournament run that year. "When I was a junior, I played on what may have been Mr. Ball's best team. We went 19-1 and then went out and got beat in our first tournament game to Bedford.

"My senior year, we lose several games but make it all the way to state. How do you figure it?"

Peet, who died in 2000, was more than a basketball player. He excelled in football as the quarterback, in baseball as a pitcher-third baseman and in track, qualifying for state in the discus.

"He was what they call a natural athlete," Averill Peet, his younger brother by three years, said. "He was a great leader in baseball as a pitcher. He threw the ball so hard they wouldn't let him pitch, had him playing third base.

"In basketball, he ran the whole floor. He played his position like Bob Cousy (former Boston Celtics guard). He was a floor manager who hit the open man. He was the quarterback in football. When he played in Columbus, he had pneumonia, but he still went out and played and never told anybody.

"He should be in the Hall of Fame of everything to do with sports. I tried to get into sports because he was ahead of me, but I looked terrible in comparison. It was hard because I was his brother.

"I have a picture of me and him and our other three brothers, playing in the backyard in the mud. We played basketball every day, enjoying every minute of it. Now, kids don't go outside because there's snow. (Heck), we played basketball in the snow and mud."

Randy Pope, who played football with Peet and saw him play in most of his basketball games, considered Peet an "excellent football player and exceptionally good basketball player. He was just an exceptional athlete.

"He came from a nice, large family. He and his brothers were never in trouble."

Pope played football on the Panthers' 1946 team, a squad that tied for the LSL championship with Willoughby after being beaten by Painesville, which had Pro Football Hall of Famer Don Shula as its star.

"We lined up in the T but shifted to the single wing," Pope said. "Ray had a lot of plays and had an excellent arm. He could throw the ball. Mr. (Chic) Guarnieri was not a passing person. I don't think we threw more than five or 10 times a game. His backfield pretty much shared the running. As fullback, I weighed 170-175 pounds and weighed more than (Peet).

"Bob Halgas and Nick Dellerba were the halfbacks."

Though Pope didn't play basketball, he attended most of the games, including the tournament contests, until Ashtabula reached Columbus.

"Ray was a hustler, a good shot with his set shot. That was before the time of a one-arm shot. Anyone who played for Mr. Ball played good defense."

Jim Sardella, a linebacker and center on the football team, said of Peet, "He was very athletic. He could throw the ball 70 or 80 yards and was very accurate as a quarterback. In basketball, he was a real flashy dribbler and was pretty quick, too. He was just pretty good in everything.

"He was well-liked by everybody. He came from a big family. We had a good team."

Ashtabula went 6-3 that year in football but tied Willoughby for the LSL championship with a 5-1 mark. Though the Panthers beat Willoughby, 14-12, they lost to the Shula-led Red Raiders. To cap the season, they blanked Harbor, 27-0, on the annual Thanksgiving Turkey Day game.

There were good reasons why Peet led the team, why he was the Panthers' captain.

"Number one, he was the only starter who started as a junior," Gephart said. "He was on that good team of 1945-46. His strength was his versatility. He was a really good passer for his day and the leading scorer his senior year. At about 5-11, he could play defense against the pivots or the outside shooters. He could guard any player."

In announcing the LSL All-Star 1946-47 team, the Star Beacon pointed out that Peet, along with Willoughby center George Hilderbrand, was a unanimous selection. The two shared honors as "co-captains" of the team.

"Peet, an all-around athlete, proved well-balanced in all departments of play during the league season," the article said. "A dangerous long-range marksman, Peet could break with the fastest forwards to register from up close. Fortified with plenty of hustle, he helped instill a winning spirit into a green Panther team. The blond West Sider excelled at passing and was sharp on defense."

After graduating, Peet turned down a basketball scholarship to Syracuse University to sign a minor-league baseball contract with the Chicago Cubs. He played three years in the minor leagues, before being drafted into the Army.

He served two years in the service, fighting in Korea before being discharged in 1952 while holding the rank of sergeant. In 1954, he married Dolores (Sippola).

"I met him when he was in the service on leave," Dolores, a 1949 graduate of Harbor, said. "A bunch of us girls were dancing at the Moose Club on Sunday night. He went with his sister, Gloria.

"He had malaria at the time. Eugene DeGeorge and he were on leave. He drove back to camp and got quinine. Anyway, we started going out."

The couple had two sons and a daughter.

The oldest of the Peet siblings, David, graduated from Harbor in 1973 after starring in football and baseball for the Mariners. He moved on to play baseball for Kent State University, lettering all four years and earning All-Mid-American Conference honors as a senior in 1977.

Carl was an All-Ohio baseball player for St. John, graduating in 1977, then went on to play collegiately at Central Oklahoma State, becoming an NAIA All-American. He now lives in Texas and is a school photographer for Provine Studios.

Nancy (now Gardner) graduated from Harbor in 1983 and spent a year in Spain as an AFS student before moving on to Robert Morris College, from which she graduated cum laude. She is now a banker in Erie. She and her husband have a daughter, Isabella, 3.

A grandson, Mike, became one of Ashtabula County's best golfers at Lakeside, earning Northeastern Conference Golfer of the Year honors and a scholarship to the University of Charleston (W. Va)., for which he still competes.

Peet himself never went to college. He worked at Reliance Electric for 36 years before retiring in 1991.

In 1997, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Panthers' trip to the state tournament, Peet talked to Star Beacon Sports Editor Don McCormack about his fond memories of his high school days.

"It was a great honor to represent the students and the administration of Ashtabula High School," Peet said. "Mr. Ball was the greatest high school coach Ashtabula or this county ever saw. I also had a great coach at West Junior High in Mr. Don Hogan.

"As for that '47 team, we all played so well together. We were a true team. I remember playing that season against (Don) Shula when he was at Painesville (Harvey)."

The person Peet remembered the most from those days, however, was the Panthers' coach, Ball.

"I never went into a game where I was not prepared to play, and that's because of Mr. Ball," he said. "He could have gone on to bigger and better things, but he loved Ashtabula. He was such a special man... I was asked to be a pallbearer at his funeral.

"I consider that to be my greatest honor."