Hagstrom thrilled to get the call

Tammy Church Hagstrom, a 1989 Conneaut graduate, was pretty sure the call would never come. She was at the inaugural Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation dinner, when her nephew, Tom Church, a former Star Beacon Ashtabula County Player of the Year and a senior at Ashland University in the spring of 2003, received the Alumni Achievement Award.

She wondered as the first Hall of Fame class was inducted if the ACBF would ever take notice of her exploits with the Spartans girls basketball team. She wasn't hopeful.

"I thought that night, ‘Wouldn't it be something if they got around to me some day,'" Hagstrom said. "I guess I thought they'd have to be scraping the bottom of the barrel. It wasn't that I didn't do well, but we didn't have a dominant team, we never went 20-0. But we played the game because we loved the game, and we had a lot of fun."

So, when the call finally did come, Hagstrom could hardly believe what she heard.

"I was so excited," Hagstrom said. "I was speechless. I am the first female from Conneaut to be inducted. It really is a wonderful honor."

Hagstrom was a post player for the Spartans and played for Greg Lucas as a freshman and for Dave Simpson her sophomore, junior and senior years. At 5-foot-10, she wasn't always the tallest person under the basket, but by the time she reached high school, Hagstrom was used to playing against people taller than she.

"I didn't play organized basketball until the seventh grade at Rowe," she said. "But the truth is, I was born with a basketball in my hands. My brothers, Tom and Tim, would take me out and play basketball with me."

To say that Hagstrom was the kid sister is a little misleading. She was the much, much, much younger kid sister. Her brother Tom graduated from Conneaut in 1969, the year before Hagstrom was born. But her introduction to the game proved to be helpful later on.

"I did get banged around playing against my brothers," Hagstrom said. "But I learned how to play against people who were taller than I. My brothers didn't take it easy with me, and that helped with my inside game. Besides, the hoop we had was nailed to a tree in the backyard, which meant you had to worry about your footing, too, with all the roots."

Playing against her brothers raised the level of Hagstrom's game.

"That's not to say that there aren't girls who are very athletic and very aggressive," she said. "But playing against my brothers really helped. I was 5-10 and going against taller players most of the time. Knowing that I could hold my own against my brothers gave me a little more confidence."

Watching her brothers play, especially Tim during his high school career, only heightened her interest in the game.

"I was just in awe of the things the players were able to do and their love for the game," she said. "I couldn't wait to get out there and play for the team."

That's just the way it was for the daughter of Harry and Leonore Church.

"My parents were the biggest influences," she said. "They always wanted me to do my best, and I'd go out and shoot for hours. They were a huge influence."

When Hagstrom finally reached high school, the Spartan program was entering a rebuilding phase. Most of the players from coach Paul Ruland's great Conneaut teams graduated in 1985. The following November, the Spartans had a new coach — Lucas. Hagstrom was a freshman and the team was short on varsity experience.

The five freshmen on that team — Hagstrom, Krissy Usher, Carrissa Bihlajama, Jackie Tylman and Paula Horwood — kept at it, however, despite a 2-19 record that year.

"Krissy and I had been playing together since kindergarten," Hagstrom said. "And we'd been with the other girls since Rowe, when the kids from all the elementary schools went to junior high. And it paid off for us, because, by the time we were seniors, we knew what the others were going to do, how they were going to do it and why."

The Spartans went 33-51 during Hagstrom's four years, breaking .500 only once, her senior year, when they finished 14-7.

"The hardest part was not winning," Hagstrom said. "We had some talented athletes, but we couldn't get it to click into high gear. The losing was difficult to deal with. We tried so hard to get it turned around, but we couldn't do it.

"But it was great our senior year. We were able to put a string or two together and show people that we knew how to win."

Hagstrom was busy in high school. She was in the band, on student council and a member of the drama club, but she was also a determined basketball player.

"I loved being challenged," she said. "If the coach asked if I thought I could handle something, I said, ‘I'm on it.' It didn't matter if the other girl was four inches taller; I was going to go after it.

"I would do whatever I had to do to make the team better. I went to basketball camps and I used the skills I'd learned. I did all I could. I tried to be strong boxing out, and I learned to read rebounds. And God created me with a large bottom, which helped."

The important thing was to keep playing hard, regardless of the numbers on the scoreboard. Part of what kept Hagstrom going was playing for her teammates and striving for a common goal.

"I just enjoyed the team aspect of the game," she said. "If we needed to score, I tried to score. If we needed a rebound, I worked harder at boxing out. I always worked hard. I loved the game, and I kept working hard and hoping the rest would fall into place."

The game of which Hagstrom is most proud came in her junior year against Riverside.

"I remember that game because I had 21 rebounds and their entire team only had 22," she said.

Hagstrom has a more difficult time when asked to name the best player she ever faced.

"That's tough. It's really hard to name just one," she said. "Tammy Busser and I were co-Players of the Year. And Dawn Martin — she just seemed huge. I really had to go to stay on her."

Kelly Laituri was another player from that era who really impressed Hagstrom.

"Some days, it seemed like she had a vertical leap of five feet," Hagstrom said. "She was only 5-7 or 5-8, but she could jump. She could soar over everybody. She is a lot like (2007 Jefferson graduate) Kelcie Hellmer with her athleticism and the way she could jump."

Hagstrom also played volleyball and softball for the Spartans. She enjoyed them all, but she enjoyed basketball the most.

"I guess I always preferred basketball partly because I am better at it," she said. "And basketball was really the sport my family was focused on. Basketball is such a wonderful team sport; it's just the sport that clicked for me."

Hagstrom at one time hoped to play collegiate basketball. It didn't quite work out, but she has no regrets.

"I went to Kent, and I talked to the coach," Hagstrom said. "Then they changed coaches and nothing ever came of it. Maybe they overlooked me because I was a 5-10 post player. I did play intramurals for a while, but then life took a turn and I got married."

She and her husband, John, who is Conneaut's JV girls coach, have five children: daughter Alex, 16; son Chris, 11; daughter Annalee, 5; and twins Robert and Steven, 4.

It makes for a busy life — Tammy coaches third- and fourth-grade basketball and is involved with the Conneaut Hoopster Boosters — but she and John have found a way to make it work.

"It does get hectic," she said. "I'm a nurse and John teaches. But I work on the weekends, so I'm able to spend time with the kids during the week and watch them grow up."

Mother, wife, nurse, basketball coach, booster member — it's a lot to fit in, and having participated in sports helps.

"Sports, especially basketball, was a big part of my life," Hagstrom said. "And I enjoyed it, and I am glad I had the opportunity to play. I didn't know at the time that it was helping with some of the problems of school and being a teenager. But beyond just the athletic skills, you learn time management and how to work with other people. I learned so much from sports."

In the years since Hagstrom suited up for the Spartans, girls basketball has evolved. The game isn't all that different from the game she played, but in other ways the differences are striking.

"In some aspects, the game really hasn't changed," she said. "But the girls are a lot more physical now. We thought we were pretty rough when we played, but the girls are even more so now.

"And the quality of the game has improved so much. The girls all go to camps, their ballhandling skills are much better. There are many more really good players than when I was in high school. At that time, each school might have one or maybe two good players. Now, they're all pretty good. And the play is a lot more intense."

She finished her four-year Conneaut career with 791 points and 585 rebounds.

Still, Hagstrom occasionally yearns to be back out on the floor at Garcia Gymnasium.

"I've joked with Dave Simpson at the games a couple of times," she said. "I told him, ‘Come on. Get me a uniform and let me go in.'"

Hagstrom was interviewed for this story on the day of the March primary, and she was hoping that the Conneaut school levy would pass. There is still plenty of blue and gold coursing through her veins.

"Athletics have been such a big part of my life," she said. "I just hope the kids in Conneaut aren't faced with the decision of having to go elsewhere if they want to participate in a sport.

"I try to be involved and try to make this a better place for me and my neighbors. Conneaut might not be the best place in the world. But it's my home, and I love it."

Harris is a freelance writer from Ashtabula Township.

Strong of heart, strong of spirit

Second of a series...

By CHRIS LARICK
Staff Writer

When Ed Armstrong left Harbor for Edgewood in 1968 after being asked to resign as Mariners' head boys basketball coach, he didn't burn his bridges.

An amicable split allowed him to return to Harbor's reins five years later, and he justified the faith in him by leading the Mariners to the regionals, one of only 12 times in Ashtabula County history that has been accomplished.

As a result of his successful tenure at Harbor, Edgewood (though not as a basketball coach) and Kent State-Ashtabula, along with countless other contributions to area athletics, Armstrong has been selected by the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation for its Hall of Fame and will be inducted on April 6.

Armstrong admits the honor took him by surprise.

"I feel great. I really do," Armstrong said. "I wasn't expecting it. I'm very pleased."

Armstrong probably never expected to coach basketball. It wasn't even his best sport, not even one he was really good at, during his high school athletic career at Meadow Bridge High School in West Virginia where he played football and basketball and ran track.

"I was not a good basketball player, but I was always a starter on the football team," Armstrong remembers of those days. "When I played in Japan (with the American Army team), I was a starter. I was always real small, but I had good speed. Sometimes having speed is as good as being big."

The sport of basketball always intrigued Armstrong, however, and sitting on the bench alongside the coach allowed him to see the game from a coaching viewpoint and to analyze strategy.

College football had to wait for Armstrong when the Army beckoned him. At that time, the Korean War was being waged. Armstrong got as far as Japan but never saw battle before the cease-fire that ended that war.

When he left the Army in 1954, he enrolled at Glenville State (W.Va.) College where he joined the football team as a walkon. He started out as fifth or sixth man on the depth chart, but moved his way up to starter by the fourth game and started every other game until he graduated. Meanwhile, he helped fund his college expenses with a "workshop" — sweeping and mopping the gymnasium floor three days a week, two hours per day.

After graduation he and his wife, Reta, whom he met during his sophomore year and married while still in college, moved to Ashtabula after Ed was successfully wooed there by then-superintendent Ralph Lanham. He had previously agreed to be a teacher and head football coach at Stanton, Va., but that system agreed to let Armstrong go.

In 1961, Armstrong was selected to be head boys basketball coach. He rewarded his employers with a winning record in his first three seasons, during which he went 36-24. But hard athletic times hit the Mariners and his teams posted marks of 5-13, 10-10, 7-12 and 1-18 the next four seasons and he was asked to resign.

"I had a year when we won one basketball game," Armstrong said of the 1967-68 season. "I really enjoyed that year. We didn't have a big team. Our center was 5-10; we had a bunch of little guys, 5-6 or 5-7 to 5-10. We played so many games that we got worn down by the fourth quarter. The kids on that team didn't think they were failures."

Armstrong left Harbor for Edgewood, where he served as an assistant football coach under Dave Six, whom he considers "one of the most knowledgeable people I've met." He was also an assistant basketball coach, and, in his final year with the Warriors, head golf coach. For his final two years at Edgewood, he also served as head coach at Kent State-Ashtabula, which had a decent team for what was then termed a "branch campus."

The bridge to Harbor was still up, though, and Armstrong was asked back in the summer of 1973 to once again take over the boys basketball team. It was an offer he couldn't refuse.

That team turned out to be his best. With ACBF Hall of Famer John Coleman leading the way, joined by John Bradley, Ray Henton, Al Ziegler and Matt Kent, the Mariners went 19-4 and advanced to the regionals, defeating two strong teams, LaBrae and Warren JFK, back to back.

"The nice thing about it when I came back is that I had a whole bunch of these kids in the fifth and sixth grades," Armstrong said.

"I knew all of them. They were good guys. From our area, sometimes teams are fortunate to come up with two good players, then fill in with people playing roles."

Armstrong served as head coach for the Mariners for four more years, finishing in 1978. Harbor had good teams in those years, but never matched the 1973-1974's level of competence. In the five years he coached during his second stint with the team, Armstrong went 64-36 to finish his high school head coaching career at 123-113 (.521). He probably would have stayed in that capacity longer, but opportunity knocked. Randy Pope was giving up the athletic directorship he had held for the two years since the legendary Bill Wasulko's death.

As much impact as Armstrong had on molding players, he was also renowned as a molder of coaching talent. When he returned to Harbor for his second stint, he included young coaches like Bob Short, John Higgins and Frank Knudson on his staff.

"I took a lot of my coaching philosophies from a lot of different people in high school and college, but most of what I used was taken from Ed," Higgins, who followed him successfully at Harbor, then had even greater success at Ashtabula, said. "His defensive strategies were the best I've ever seen. I thought he was a master of adjustments during the game, too. He always said that you never should make more than one major adjustment during a timeout.

"Ed always got his kids to play as hard as they possibly could until the final buzzer. I thought he was a master psychologist in getting his players to believe in the system. He also made all of his assistants feel like their opinions were valued."

Later, Armstrong added a young man named Andrew Isco to his staff. As Mariner head coach, Isco put together the last Ashtabula County squad to reach the regional championship game until this year when his 1983-84 Mariners reached that level. Now Armstrong the mentor follows Isco, the student, a 2004 inductee, into the ACBF Hall of Fame.

Armstrong's influence also reached to a girls program that became a hit at Harbor under Frank Roskovics.

"When I got the job, I contacted Ed and went over his defensive philosophies," Roskovics, who is also in the ACBF Hall of Fame, said. "He taught us the amoeba defense we used, which we ran off a 1-3-1 defense. We were trying to put more pressure out front. The middle person would move up and the point person would move back, which put pressure on the ballhandler quicker and got us a lot of steals.

"We also had Roberta (Cevera) and Chris (Fitting, two more ACBF Hall of Famers), and a lot of people tried to run triangle-and-twos against us. Ed showed me how to counter that, too. He also showed me how to organize my practices. He was a huge help to me."

Denny Berrier, who played against Armstrong's Mariners during his first tenure at the school, then coached against the teams from Armstrong's second stint at Harbor when he returned to Ashtabula to as head coach at St. John, remembers him well.

"I always remember Ed as the nicest guy you'd ever want to meet," Berrier said. "On the court, he was a fiery competitor.

"I remember he always liked to have his teams run a lot. He was always difficult to coach against when he had talent because his offenses and defenses were so sound. He was also a very tough guy to prepare for because he seemed to gear his plan to what he thought the opponents' strengths and weaknesses were and not what you'd expect him to attack. It almost didn't do you a lot of good to scout his teams."

Armstrong, hamstrung by poor gate revenues from a losing football team, found it difficult to keep the boat afloat financially. In 1983, he turned the job over to Dik Pavolino. In 1987, after 24 years at Harbor and five at Edgewood, Armstrong retired from teaching.

But, with Reta still teaching, he found himself with time on his hands. In 1989, he started working for the American Cancer Society, as executive director in Ashtabula. When Reta retired in 1995 after 36 years of teaching, Ed gave that up, too.

"I keep busy going to all my grandkids' functions," Armstrong said. "They're all involved in something."

Ed and Reta have four children — Laura, Peggy, Michael and Cheryl — and five grandchildren ranging from 9 to 19 years of age.

"My oldest granddaughter is 19 and going to Mercyhurst in the field of music," Ed said. "She's an excellent singer. My oldest grandson plays football and basketball at Lakeside. My littlest one plays basketball and soccer. We go to all their events. That keeps us busy. It's nice when they live in town. When Mom and Dad need help, we can be there."

Once an opponent of the consolidation of Harbor and Ashtabula into Lakeside, Armstrong has softened on the merger.

"I think overall it was good for the area," he said. "I was at Harbor so long I hated to see it go. If it's good for the future of the kids, so be it."

Armstrong also gives back to the community, attempting to bridge the gap between himself and younger generations. Some 22 years ago, he founded the Ed Armstrong Golf Tournament to raise money for college scholarships.

"I help run the tournament, but a committee makes all the decisions about the scholarships," he said.

Originally, the tournament raised money for two scholarships to go to one boy and one girl from Harbor. These days, they go to Lakeside students.

Armstrong himself was once a four handicap at the tough Ashtabula Country Club (now Harbor Golf Club) course. But age and illness have taken a toll on Armstrong, who describes himself as a "golf nut."

"I had shingles eight years ago," he said. "I still have effects from them. I lost my hearing in my left ear. I still have a sound in my ear like Niagara Falls. I lose my balance because of the inner ear.

"But I've learned to live with it, try not to let it get me down. I still try to golf some, but when that happened, my game went downhill. I heard that someone said golf is a good walk ruined, but I just love the game. It's hard for me to give it up."

Larick is a freelance writer from Geneva.

The game opened doors

Third of a series...

By KARL PEARSON
Staff Writer

When she was in seventh grade, Trixie Wolf was a tall girl whose coordination was still catching up with her. As preparations for the season at Jefferson Junior High were being made and with 20 girls on the team, there was some thought of cutting her from the roster.

That's when Jefferson head girls basketball coach Rod Holmes interceded. He knew size is an element that simply can't be taught, and at 6-foot, Wolf already possessed that element. It would just take work and patience to bring out the capabilities he saw in that young girl.

"When you've got a 6-footer in junior high, you don't give up on them," he said.

What probably wasn't as evident at that stage was the youngster's capacity for work and the determination to succeed. But, apparently fueled by that show of faith, the daughter of Linda and the late Barry Wolf kept after it, playing at every opportunity she got, especially during the long, hot summer days on the outdoor courts at Ashtabula's Walnut Beach, many times against boys, to improve her skills.

"Trixie worked very hard to become a fine player," Holmes said. "She'd go in the summer and play on the blacktop up there with guys. She made herself into a Division I college player."

Holmes' decision to keep Wolf around eventually proved mutually beneficial. She finally grew to 6-2 and, along with Cheryl Coon, a 6-3 player, became part of the twin towers that gave Jefferson strength on the boards and from 15 feet in. Combine that with a lightning-quick little point guard named Anita Jurcenko and fine perimeter players like Heather Kelner and Sue and Steff Nemet and the Falcons had quite a powerful group that dominated area girls basketball in the late 1980s and early 1990s and took on some of Ohio's greatest powers in the sport before her graduation in 1991.

From Wolf's standpoint, the faith Holmes demonstrated in her paid off, not only in high school, but in a place in Division I college programs, first at the University of Maine, then Duquesne University. It also gave her the chance to travel, investigate an opportunity that finally didn't pan out for professional basketball in Ireland and in coaching jobs at several stops in far-flung places throughout the United States and back at Duquesne.

That doesn't mean she ever stopped paying back to the Jefferson program, even long after she was out of the community. Holmes acknowledges his gratitude to Wolf for that, too.

"After graduation, Trixie was always willing to come back and help out with our program," he said. "I remember one time a couple years later, she drove up from Pittsburgh because she heard we were playing against a team with some really big girls and she worked with some of our big girls and really helped them out."

It is only in recent years that Wolf has left the basketball merrygoround. Now, she is wife to Sean Rife, to whom she has been married for almost three years, and stepmother to Sabrina, 11, and Abby, 8.

She has also taken a new career path, following up the masters degree in environmental science she earned at Utah State University in 2003 with the pursuit of another masters in environmental engineering from Youngstown State University, which she hopes to complete by the summer of 2009.

"We lived in Virginia in 2006," Rife said. "While I was there, I became aware of all the problems they have with the environment in the Chesapeake Bay area, a lot because of decisions made in housing planning around there.

"I'm hoping to get involved eventually in helping to plan housing developments that take into account protection of the environment, too. Eventually, I'd like to have my own firm to deal with those issues."

She puts her new direction in perspective.

"I finally figured out what I want to do when I grow up," the 34-year-old said with a laugh.

One more link to her basketball past comes April 6, though, when Rife is inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame at the Conneaut Human Resources Center. She will join old teammate Jurcenko and players she looked up to like Di Anthony, Kelly Boggs and Traci Hozian in that institution.

"It's kind of a surprise to me," she said. "I didn't realize there even was such a thing.

"I'm very honored, especially after hearing the list of names of the other people that are already in it or are going in. I remember watching Di, Kelly and Traci and playing against some of the other girls. I'm really pleased."

Taking up the game

In ways, it was almost a natural thing for young Trixie Wolf to end up playing basketball. After all, there was that height.

"Being the tallest kid in the class, everybody expected you to be an athlete," she said. "I always liked basketball. Sometimes, we'd go over and play at my grandma's house."

A basketball tournament at Jefferson Elementary when she was in sixth grade really ignited a passion for the sport in her.

"I remember we had a competition between the classrooms," Rife said. "I think Heather Kelner and Laurie Miller were on my team, too, and we won. That sparked an extreme interest in me."

Still, even though she avoided the cut in seventh grade, she didn't play a lot. That wasn't very satisfying, so she went to work. That paid off for her eighth-grade season for coach Tammy Wludyga.

"Things started to click in eighth grade," Rife said. "Then I had Coach (Jeanine) Bartlett my freshman year, and she really helped me a lot.

"By my sophomore year, I was playing five quarters a night, two JV and three varsity. We had older girls in front of me like Billie Schubert and Jackie Whitbey, but late in the season Billie got sick, and I got a lot more varsity playing time."

It also helped that she had a coach like Holmes, who taught with a gentle, yet firm, hand.

"He'd just let us play," Rife said. "He'd give us direction, show us the options and then let us go play. I think he knew he had smart players who could play, and I think it was our goal not to disappoint him. He was a great coach for me."

For his part, Holmes knew he was blessed, too. Wolf, Jurcenko, Kelner, Coon and the Nemets were the second wave of his fine teams, following Anthony, Boggs and Hozian.

"The thing that made Trixie special was her ability to run the floor," he said. "She was a great rebounder and not a bad shooter from inside 15 feet.

"The other thing, Trixie was such a hard worker. She loved a challenge, and she always stepped up to it."

Her junior year was when things really started to break out at the varsity level. It started on the tournament trail in the district finals at Chardon against West Geauga and continued from there.

"I remember playing that game against West Geauga," Rife said. "That was the hardest game I ever played. Coach Holmes told us if we got tired to hold up our fist and he'd take us out. The second time I did that during the game, he just stood there and shook his head at me. I already knew what I had to do, and I guess that gave me my second wind."

Then, the Falcons faced Garfield Trinity at the regionals and its vaunted 6-6 center Vonda Ward, who was headed to play at the University of Tennessee for coach Pat Summitt. Ward, now the women's heavyweight boxing champion, led Trinity to the state championship that season.

"That was quite a battle," Rife said with a laugh.

"But Trixie more than held her own against Ward," Holmes said.

In her senior year, she really blossomed, averaging 15 points, 17 rebounds and six blocked shots a game to earn honorable-mention All-Ohio honors. She was also Player of the Game for the Star Beacon Senior Classic with 25 points, 18 rebounds and six blocked shots.

For her career at Jefferson, Rife finished with 603 points, 711 rebounds and 259 blocked shots, shooting 45.8 percent from the floor. Most importantly, in 65 career games, her teams posted a 58-7 record (.892), winning Northeastern Conference championships in her junior and senior seasons after finishing a game behind Riverside in her sophomore season.

In Rife's junior and senior seasons, Jefferson posted back-to-back 23-1 campaigns, something that has been unmatched in area basketball history.

On to college

Those numbers attracted the attention of college coaches, but another area coach, Kevin Snyder, who was then at Madison, helped get her to Maine.

"Jodi Kest, who was an assistant at Maine, asked him if there were any big girls around our area that could help at that level, and he mentioned me to her," Rife said. "I had offers from places like American University, Youngstown State and Washington University, but I had to have either a D-I or D-III scholarship, and Maine was Division I, so I took that."

It wasn't a good fit.

"It was 12 hours away, which was too far from home and I had to deal with a lot of homesickness," Rife said. "The winters there are horrible, too, even worse than Ohio. Plus, Trish Roberts, the coach, was a real screamer."

Fortunately, Duquesne and assistant coach Katie Abrahamson, rode to the rescue. She played her last three years there for Dan Durbin, who would impact on her basketball life later, too.

"Duquesne worked out well," Rife said. "I was close enough to home, but also far enough away.

"My sophomore year was rough, but I was sixth man my junior year and started my senior year. I loved playing college ball with the TV games and the road games. We beat teams like St. Joseph's and George Washington and we played Ohio State with (WNBA star) Katie Smith."

On her own

After college, Rife led a rather nomadic life.

"I went to North Carolina to teach for a while," she said. "Then I went to Texas (in 1998) and was teaching and coaching there. But that was a lot of six-hour bus rides. Then I thought I had an opportunity to play in Ireland, but it didn't pan out."

So she returned to the U.S. and landed a teaching job for the 2000-01 school year at Riverside High School, where she, rather ironically, ended up as an assistant volleyball and track coach. But an opportunity to work for her masters at Utah State, a school renowned for its outdoor environment, came after that year.

"I'd rather be outdoors," Rife said. "That's why I loved playing basketball on the outdoor courts when I was a kid."

Just as she was finishing her masters at Utah State in 2003, Durbin called with an offer that had real appeal as one of his assistants at Duquesne. There she did everything from scouting to recruiting to practice organization through 2005. During her tenure, she even came back to Ashtabula County and served as the keynote speaker at the Ashtabula County Women's Scholar-Athlete Association banquet in 2004.

It was also during that time that she met Sean Rife. They were married in May of 2005.

"We met at church in Pittsburgh," she said of her husband, who is a chef.

Durbin was fired, which cost Rife her job, too. The Rifes moved to Virginia for a year, but Trixie couldn't find a teaching job there, so they moved back to the Pittsburgh area and she has decided to embark on her new career adventures.

Although she may be away from the court now, Rife acknowledges the skills acquired in basketball still carry her through her busy life as family person, student and potential businesswoman. After all, she finds herself balancing family obligations with driving 45 minutes each way from her home in Wexford, Pa. to YSU for her new studies.

"Almost everything in my life has come about from basketball," she said. "It was something I could do as a kid that I could get right and do well. It taught me work ethic and that you can't expect to get something for nothing. It showed me that life isn't always fun.

"It helped me get my education. My mom (who now lives in California) always wanted (Rife and sisters Candy and Amy) to go to school, but it would have been much tougher for me without basketball. It allowed me to travel and learn a lot about all kinds of people. Definitely, the game had its good points."

The Shootist

The tales of great players waiting by the telephone to get the call they've been waiting for are many. Sometimes, it never comes.

Ron Richards can relate to those feelings. Although the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation is only in its sixth year of existence, the Conneaut resident was beginning to wonder if he might ever hear about inclusion in its hall of fame.

The wait is over for Richards, a 1967 Conneaut High School graduate who was a part of one of Andy Garcia's last teams with the Spartans. A fine playing career didn't end there, either, as Richards went on to be a big-time member of the Kent State University-Ashtabula Campus team that won the Ohio branch campus tournament in the 1967-68 season for coach Orville Steigmeyer.

"This is a great honor, no doubt," the 59-year-old Richards said about his selection into the 2008 ACBF Hall of Fame class that will be inducted April 6 at the organization's annual banquet at the Conneaut Human Resources Center. "I've been waiting for this call. It's great to be recognized after 41 years.

"I didn't expect to be in the first class, but after the second or third class, I was beginning to wonder. I don't want to sound like I'm bragging or complaining. The recognition is fantastic. I think I'm the first Conneaut player to make it since Matt Zappitelli (in 2004)."

It must be remembered that circumstances were quite a bit different when Richards played. He was one of the first standout players for Conneaut following the consolidation of Rowe and Conneaut in 1964-65, meaning Garcia was pulling together talented players from both schools.

It was also a time when no 3-point line existed. From all accounts, Richards, who finished with more than 600 points for his career, might well have topped 1,000 points if there had been such a line.

Richards also played in a time when many fine players who are only beginning to rise to the surface roamed area courts. He went toe-to-toe on nearly a nightly basis with Geneva's Steve McHugh, Gary Kreilach and Larry Cumpston, Ashtabula's Jerry Lyons, Bill Kaydo and Jim Gilbert, St. John's Denny Berrier and Billy Johnson and other fine players from a host of other schools.

Several of his contemporaries can attest to Richards' skills.

"Ron was a year ahead of me, but I remember him as a tremendous shooter and scorer," Kreilach said. "We had some great battles with his Conneaut teams. He was very gifted. And he always gave the fans their money's worth."

"Ron was a tremendous scorer," Berrier said. "He could shoot from outside, but he had good size and could go inside, too. As an offensive player, he must have started clapping every time he saw me walk into the gym because he knew he could at least get 20. He was very physical, too. He could post you up or take you off the dribble."

"I didn't get to guard him because I was a guard, but Ron was definitely a pure shooter," McHugh said. "He was always very competitive.

"My senior year Conneaut was the team and Geneva was the team. We had some great battles. If there had been a 3-pointer, he could have made 45 or 50 against us when we played them at Conneaut."

Don Cannell, who watched Richards from his seat at St. John as the JV coach, missed having to face the youngster as a head coach, and was glad he did.

"Ron was a big guy who could really shoot," he said. "The first time we played Conneaut, he was unstoppable. I thought he hit some of his shots from up in the bleachers. He killed us. And he had such a great grasp of the game. He was really something."

On top of it all, many of the coaches of Richards' era — Garcia and Geneva's Al Bailey, in particular — played a rather deliberate style. Big scoring nights were not that common.

Nonetheless, Richards has finally made the grade. He is proud to be mentioned in the same company as Bailey, Garcia, Harry Fails and the like.

"That really is something special," he said. "I'm proud to be a part of it."

In the beginning

The middle of three sons of Mary and the late Roy Richards got started in basketball by his father. His older brother, Jim, a longtime football, basketball and track coach at Jefferson, still lives in that community, while younger brother Gary resides in Ashtabula.

"It was mainly about basketball and baseball for me," Richards said. "I played football until my freshman year, but basketball and baseball were for me.

"My dad got me started in basketball at Southeast Elementary, where he was a volunteer coach. We won our first tournament when I was in eighth grade. Joe Sanford and Andy Raevouri were on my team. I also spent a lot of time playing against older guys like Fred Minor, Tom Naylor and Tom Ritari."

Moving up to Conneaut High School when it stood by itself, Richards played for Mark Stefanic.

"We had a real good team," Richards said. "I played against Denny Berrier for the first time in the freshman tournament. We lost in the finals."

It would be the first of many such battles in the years ahead.

On the varsity

Richards' sophomore year coincided with the merger of Conneaut and Rowe, although he admits "I've always considered myself a Conneaut Trojan.

"It was tough playing back then. Rowe had a lot of fine players, too, so you really had to work for your spot."

He spent much of his sophomore season splitting time between the varsity and the JV team, coached by Stan Humphrey.

"Early in the season, I was probably the sixth or seventh man, but I wasn't playing a lot, so I went to Coach Humphrey and asked him if I could get some playing time with the JVs," he said. "They agreed to let me do that, so I split time for a while. I probably scored 20 points a game in just a half with the JVs."

His teammates at the varsity level were Jeff Garvey, Don Goodman, Bob Naylor and Joe Sedmak. By tournament time, they formed a strong enough unit to win one of the sectional tournaments held at Ashtabula High School before losing to an Edgewood team led by ACBF Hall of Famer Dan Foster, who had transferred from Jefferson because sports had been cancelled (then later brought back), at North High School.

"Foster was one fine player," Richards said.

By the time Richards was a junior, he stood 6-foot-3 and became a full-time starter. But it was not necessary to be the inside man for the Spartans as his old buddy Raevouri stood 6-5 and took on those duties.

"We won the NEC that year and got beat in the sectional finals," he said. "We lost to West Geauga that was coached by Jim Dolan (another ACBF Hall of Famer). I was second-team all-league and all-county that year."

Richards' senior year, as McHugh and Kreilach attested, was a war between Garcia's Spartans and Bailey's Eagles. Richards helped his team win the battle at Conneaut, but Geneva won on its home court and in tournament play.

"I scored 32 points in our game at Conneaut, which tied the school scoring record at the time with Tom Naylor," he said. "We lost by a couple at Geneva.

"The sectional game was a nightmare. We were down 20-1 in the first quarter. We came back on them, but we lost by one."

Richards led the county in scoring that year. He and Raevouri were joined by Cumpston, McHugh and Berrier on the first all-league and all-county teams, while Kreilach made the second team.

There is a hint of mixed emotions on Richards' part about his time playing for Garcia.

"Andy was a disciplinarian," he said. "We probably played a little slower than I would have liked. But we were very successful. We maybe lost nine or 10 games during my career. I had a good career.

"Andy really emphasized defense. He would say, ‘If you hold your man to zero points and you score one, we'll win."

By the end of his high school career, Fails was on the scene as the freshman coach. Four years later, Fails led the Spartan varsity to the regional tournament.

"I'd always like to have seen how our team my senior year would have done against that team," Richards said.

He has one other regret.

"I'd have loved to have the 3-point line," Richards said. "I remember in one game, (noted area official) Bud Ruland called me out of bounds twice and said my heels were out when I shot."

Richards also had a great high school baseball career, ultimately earning a spot in the Ohio East-West All-Star game.

"Rex Kern (who would lead the Ohio State football team to the national championship 18 months later) was on my team and played third base," he said. "I pitched and played first. (Future Los Angeles Dodgers catcher) Steve Yeager was on the other team."

On to college

Richards was ticketed straight out of high school for West Liberty State College in West Virginia, but soon returned home. Fortunately, Paul Reichert, an administrator at the school, got him on campus. That worked out well for everyone concerned because Richards played for the Vikings for two years.

"I played with (Harbor graduate) Al Goodwin and the Dunlap brothers from Painesville, Dan (now the Lake County sheriff) and Darrell," he said. "We had a great time with Coach Steigmeyer. He let us get out and run."

It all led to the branch campus title.

"We beat KSU-Stark County branch up here," Richards said.

In his second season with the Vikings, eventual Edgewood track and cross country coach Don Gill coached the team. St. John great Billy Johnson was added to the team, which enjoyed another successful season, although it didn't repeat as champions.

Then Richards headed off to Kent State's main campus. But there was no more time for playing. Instead, he concentrated on his studies and got his degree in 1972.

Into coaching

His graduation from Kent State came at a good time as his brother, Jim, told him of a teaching and coaching opening at Pymatuning Valley.

Richards was kept busy at PV, starting out as an assistant football, basketball and baseball coach, then moving over to track. Eventually, he took over the head track job when Ron Weaver moved up to athletic director and held that job for more than a decade. He later took on duties as PV Middle School athletic director before retiring after 30 years in 2002.

While at PV, he also met his wife of 31 years, Marie, who is in still teaching at the school. They have a daughter, Holly, who is 24 and a 2001 Conneaut graduate and 2005 Kent State graduate. She is a general news reporter for the Zanesville Times-Recorder.

Troublesome knees pushed Richards into retirement as much as anything.

"I had my left knee replaced in 2002," he said. "My doctor's talking to me about the other one."

He spends his time now playing golf, fixing cars and visiting with his mother, 82, who still resides in Conneaut.

"I help run the Thursday Night Golf League at Village Green with the help of Tim Scanlon," Richards said. "I've always been a car enthusiast and I'm always fixing up cars. I'm working on a 1988 Astro Van that has never seen the snow."

The truths basketball taught Richards still apply.

"I'm still competitive," he said. "Life is a competition. It all carries over into things like dedication and being dedicated to what you're doing. That applies to playing, coaching and even things like running a golf league.

"I still love the competition."

He loved Andover

By KARL PEARSON
Staff Writer

Joe Shantz can definitely identify with the adage, "The grass is always greener on the other side."

For five seasons, Shantz was the toast of Andover and the small communities around it that made up the consolidated Pymatuning Valley Local School district for the things he accomplished with the Laker boys basketball team. In that time, he took over a group of boys who were just in the beginning stages of getting acquainted with each other from small high schools like Williamsfield, Richmond and Pierpont and molded them into a terrific program.

In just his second season at PV, Shantz powered the 1961-62 Lakers to a 22-2 record and a berth in the Class B regional semifinals before they lost to Berlin Hiland at Canton Fieldhouse. It was only the eighth team in Ashtabula County basketball history to reach that level.

As it turned out, only six other county boys teams have reached the regional tournament since. No PV teams in the years after that until this year's team, coached by Jeremy Huber, were able to top that, or equal it, for that matter.

That wasn't the last of the fine teams Shantz had at PV after that. In fact, he had three quite respectable teams after that high-water mark.

But human nature hit Shantz, at that time just 34 years old, and he decided he wanted to test himself at bigger schools that presented more challenges. So he moved off after the 1964-65 school year to Warren, Pa., oddly enough to a team that those 1961-62 Lakers had beaten on its path to glory.

He never quite caught the magic he had at PV again. It didn't happen in his venture into Pennsylvania basketball, nor in a later stop in the 1970s at Liberty High School in the Youngstown area. After a stint there, he dropped out of basketball coaching and never went back.

The 77-year-old Shantz was on hand at Canton Fieldhouse during the joy ride Huber's Lakers took the community on during its run to the Division III regional championship game. Although he still lives on his 10-acre lot in Farmdale, he admitted he followed PV with interest. No doubt, as the scene unfolded again at Canton Fieldhouse, his thoughts roamed back to those glory days in Andover.

He also freely acknowledged, that in the clear view of hindsight, his decision to leave PV was a very poor one.

"Oh man, I was dumb," Shantz said emphatically. "Looking at it now, I had it made at PV. That was a dark spot in my life."

It was a bad decision for his entire family, including his late wife, Sylvia, whom he lost after 46 years of marriage in 2005, and their four children, Scott, David, Sherrie and Connie.

"We loved it in Andover," Shantz said. "All four of our children were born while we lived there.

"We lived right across the street (from what is now PV Primary School). We had a nice home, I think we were well-liked and we loved all the people. (Leaving) was just a bad choice. I have no qualms about saying that."

The folks at PV have not forgotten Shantz, either. He is still considered something of an iconic figure, especially by people like the leader of that 1961-62 team, Bob Hitchcock, who would eventually follow him as coach. Shantz and the members of his great team received quite a reception on Dec. 21, 2007 with Hitchcock's 22-1 team from 1987-88 and the 2007-08 team when they were saluted in a big celebration at the school.

"My coach at PV my freshman and sophomore years was Glenn Niday, but when Coach Shantz came in, we had to prove ourselves to him," Hitchcock said. "I think there was a pretty seamless transition from Coach Niday to Coach Shantz.

"I believe he was a player's coach. He wanted us to be classy, disciplined and well behaved, and I think we were. That's had even more impact on me as the years have passed."

Now, Shantz is being recognized on an even grander stage, joining Hitchcock and another star player, Paul Freeman, in the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame. That will occur April 6 at the Conneaut Human Resources Center.

Shantz still hasn't fully digested that distinction.

"When I originally heard about it, I didn't believe it," he said. "Those things were so long ago. This is such an honor."

A statement he heard long ago has new meaning to Shantz now.

"I was told, ‘You play real hard for 40 minutes for memories 40 years later,'" he said. "The impact has grown with the passing years. When I stop to think about it, they had so much trust in a pretty green coach all those years ago, I think it's all pretty amazing."

The early years

Shantz was born in Pittsburgh, but he and his family moved to the Cleveland area when he was only 2, eventually winding up in Parma. He graduated from Parma Senior High in 1948.

"I loved sports, but I wasn't much of an athlete," he said. "I basically sat in basketball."

But a summer job convinced him that was not the life, either.

"My father got me a job in the steel mills one summer," Shantz said. "I knew pretty quickly I didn't want to be in industry."

So he headed off to Ohio State University, not entirely sure what he wanted to do there, either. A couple circumstances gave him direction.

"I had a roommate who was an education major who talked me into trying it," Shantz said. "Then, when I thought about it more, I realized it would be a way for me to get into coaching, too. That really appealed to me.

"While I was there, I took a football coaching class with Woody Hayes. It was really something. I knew I wasn't going to be a football coach, but I asked a lot of questions. He always said if you had a question, ask it, and he'd always answer it. He was a great teacher."

In 1953, Shantz graduated from Ohio State with a degree in elementary and secondary physical education. He landed a job in the now-defunct Iberia school system in the Galion and Mount Gilead area. While he was there, he met his wife.

"She was from Michigan, and I was actually up at Michigan State working on my masters degree when we met," Shantz said. "She was a teacher, too, and was studying there at the time."

Eventually, they married and moved to an apartment near the schools where Shantz taught. They stayed three more years, but they both grew restless.

"Sylvia had grown up near Lake Michigan and she really loved the water," he said. "Finally, she asked if we could find somewhere where we could live near a lake. I looked on the Ohio map and saw there was a lake in Trumbull County (Mosquito) and in Ashtabula County (Pymatuning).

"I contacted George Morar, the Trumbull County superintendent, and he got me in touch with Bill Searcy, who was the superintendent of Ashtabula County schools. He forwarded my information to Bill Porter, who was the superintendent at PV, and he invited me up for an interview."

Shantz must have made an interesting impression.

"I had a friend who owned a junkyard and he offered to fix up a Cadillac for me for $500, so I bought it and drove up to Andover," he said. "I pulled into the yard at Bill Porter's house and he said, ‘I'm not sure we can afford you because people in Ashtabula County don't drive Cadillacs.' Of course, he was only kidding."

At PV

Andover proved just the place for the Shantzes, who soon started building their family. Other than being near the lake, he found the students at PV much like his first posting at Iberia.

"I taught phys ed and a lot of history, which was my minor in college," Shantz said. "Eventually, I also taught a lot of driver's ed. I was also hired to coach basketball and baseball.

"My first year (1960-61) was Bob Hitchcock's junior year and Paul Freeman's sophomore year. I found out I had a lot of the same type of kids I'd had at Iberia. I had kids who lived 15 miles away in New Lyme and sometimes I wondered how they got back and forth to practice, but they did."

It was a period of adjustment for the young Lakers, too, but Shantz didn't change things too drastically from the system Niday had put in place.

"We still played tough man-to-man defense and we'd take the break whenever we could get it," Hitchcock said. "The system Coach Shantz put in worked well. I think the kids were pretty receptive to his ideas."

Shantz said his coaching philosophy was derived from a variety of sources.

"When I was at Michigan State studying, I took a lot from Freddy Anderson," he said. "But I really tried to learn from everybody. I think everybody has something they can show you.

"I believed in pressing, man-to-man defense and running the fast break. We tried to make the other team play too fast. Defensively, I wanted the defender to get in the other guy's shirt and stay there."

As much of an impression as Freeman and Bob Hitchcock made, the latter's brother, Gordie, caught several people's eye for his leaping ability and tough inside play.

"I remember when we played Hiland in the regional, their superintendent came in raving about Gordie," Shantz said. "They had a big (6-foot-5) center named Andy Ahijevych who ended up going to Ohio State, but Gordie played right with him."

It all made for quite a combination with Roy Brown and Richard "Butch" Woodin, the other starters, and key reserves like Royce Adley, Rollin Spellman and the late Danny Paul and Jerry Horton.

The best thing about his PV teams was the chemistry.

"They all worked so hard," he said. "Bob was a kid who couldn't run and couldn't jump, yet he'd end up leading the break and was our second-leading rebounder. Paul was a great shooter."

Shantz knew he had a special team in the 1961-62 season when the Lakers traveled to Warren, Pa. for a game. It even surprised him a little.

"We stayed overnight for that game, with one of our kids staying with the family of one of their kids," he said. "We practiced over there on Friday before the game and Bob sprained his ankle and didn't even dress for the game the next night.

"Before the game, I wasn't sure how we'd do, so I just told them to go out and have fun. Those kids went out and beat Warren. After the game, they came in razzing me about, ‘Do you think we had fun?'"

More successful seasons followed that special one. Perhaps, Shantz admits, it convinced him he was ready for the big time.

"I guess I thought I was a pretty good coach," he said.

Moving on

That led him to accept the offer from the folks at Warren, Pa. to coach there.

"Their boosters came to me with an offer and they talked me into it," Shantz said about heading there after the 1964-65 season.

But his teams there never caught fire. In five years at Warren, it just didn't work.

"We didn't win there," Shantz said. "I had an assistant coach there that kind of had it in for me, too. And after a while, I wanted to get back to Ohio."

George Morar provided the opportunity at Liberty to succeed Pete Prokop, a coach with a fine reputation at that school. It was a tough act to follow.

"Pete had developed quite a winning tradition there," Shantz said. "I was not as successful. After five years, I got canned."

Shantz left teaching briefly after that, but was soon back in education, again thanks to Morar and Searcy.

"I managed a gas station for a year," he said. "Then I got an offer to get back into teaching. The state had started a program of teaching school bus drivers. George Morar and Bill Searcy got together and set it up so I taught drivers in a seven-county area, including Ashtabula, Lake, Geauga and Trumbull counties. I did that for the next 12 years until I retired in 1990."

During that period, he and Sylvia bought their acreage in Farmdale in 1978 and built their home there. With her passing, it has become a bit of a lonely existence.

"We each had a tractor and we kind of ran around the property with them," Shantz said. "It's not as much fun doing it alone."

All of his children graduated from Maplewood High School. Three of them and three grandchildren live in Florida, while one still resides in Euclid.

The old fires started to burn again this year when PV athletic director Ross Boggs, whose younger brother, Bob, played for Shantz, invited him to attend some of the PV games.

"I got a chance to relive some old glories," Shantz said. "I really enjoyed it."

Shantz said basketball still contains great truths for all generations.

"Where else can you learn teamwork and how to sacrifice?" he said. "What's taught in basketball turns out to be a part of life. I hope the things kids develop from athletics carry over into the lives."

Holman blazed a trail

Sixth of a series...

By CHRIS LARICK
Staff Writer

When Adam Holman was growing up in the late 1940s and the early and mid-1950s in rural southeastern Missouri, opportunities for young African Americans in a lot of areas, including athletics, were difficult to come by.

Holman felt the scourge of prejudice and segregation. In fact, as a result of the Supreme Court's landmark decision in 1954 that ended the policy of separate, but equal schools in Brown vs. Topeka (Kan.) Board of Education, he was placed at the forefront of history in his community as one of seven black students be a part of integration at Charleston High School near his home in Wyatt, Mo.

At least in part because of his experiences as a high school student in such trying times in our nation's history, and moving to Ashtabula after his graduation from Lincoln University, Holman gradually gravitated into a career as an educator himself. Even before he began teaching in the Ashtabula Area City Schools in 1967, he was working as an official for youth basketball.

Once he got into teaching at West Junior High and Ashtabula High School, Holman really dove into helping children. He spent most of his career coaching junior high boys basketball, but even served a brief stint as girls varsity basketball coach and an assistant at the high school with freshman and junior varsity boys. Even after his retirement from teaching in 2002, he spent time as a volunteer for the Lakeside High School boys program.

Even more important, though, was the nearly two decades he spent as Ashtabula High School athletic director. He made sure that not only students from Ashtabula High School and adults who used it for city recreation basketball had access to the fine court at Ball Gymnasium, but that it was utilized by high school players from throughout the area as a site for many years for sectional basketball tournaments.

It also served as the home for the Star Beacon Senior Classic from its inception in the late 1970s until it moved to the facilities at the new Lakeside High School in 2007. Had Holman not been willing to make Ball Gymnasium available at no charge, there might never have been such an event.

Even now, at age 72, Holman keeps plugging away, trying to give guidance to Ashtabula's young people. He still takes time for substitute teaching. He still can be found driving around town, delivering job applications for one person, giving a wave and a cheery greeting to nearly everyone he meets and even wagging a finger of warning and giving a stern look to someone he feels is heading for trouble.

"My life has been dedicated to helping young people have good lifetime experiences," he said. "A lot of people have called me their father (even though he has two children of his own). I take that seriously."

All those factors are reasons why Holman has been selected into the 2008 class of the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame. He will be inducted April 6.

"I feel great about going into the hall of fame," he said. "I've read and discussed many of the people who have gone into it, and I'm proud to be a part of it with them."

Those that know Holman say he indeed takes helping young people seriously. Even those he may have occasionally locked horns with have ultimately come to respect and understand his stances. They know he has had the best interests of area children at heart.

"Adam and I had occasion to work with each other a lot because we were both working in the same school system," retired Harbor coach and athletic director Ed Armstrong, who will join him in the ACBF Hall of Fame this year, said. "At the same time, we realized that we were trying to do what was best for the kids at our own schools.

"I think Adam and I had a good working relationship over the years. I know he was dedicated to working with kids. I think any of us who have been in athletics understand that. He did a great job for kids."

Don Cannell had the chance to work with Holman in his capacity as athletic director at St. John. He developed an abiding respect for Holman, too.

"Adam has always been first class," he said. "He's just a great person. We always got along very well.

"(St. John) used to rent Guarnieri Field from Ashtabula for football, and Adam always went out of his way to cooperate with us. It's all about kids for him."

Denny Berrier, another person of note at St. John as a player and coach, actually started out his teaching and coaching career working with Holman. He always appreciated Holman's approach to life.

"With Adam, there was never a bad day," he said. "If he was down, you never knew it.

"I got to work with him my first year of teaching when I was at Ashtabula. I got to know him even better when we played baseball together for Acme Scrap. He was always interested in kids, and they followed him around like he was the Pied Piper."

The early years

Basketball became a passion for Holman when he was in elementary school.

"One of the teachers brought a ball to school," he said. "We erected a hoop out in the yard and we'd play outside in the snow and ice. I think that's why I liked basketball more when I got older because we were inside and we were warm. In April, when it got warmer, we'd play against other neighborhood school."

Holman also developed a love for the game listening to radio broadcasts, since there was no television in his home.

"I remember listening to the Michigan games when Ron Kramer (who became a standout offensive lineman for Vince Lombardi's Green Bay Packers) played," he said. "That inspired me."

He started out in high school in Wyatt.

"When I entered high school, my coach was a man named Louis Davis," Holman said. "He was from Memphis. I got to play in the sectional tournament when I was a freshman. When I was put in, I started shooting and everything seemed to unconsciously go in.

"He taught us that if you wanted something, you had to work hard to get it. You didn't talk back to officials. He taught us good defense, concentration, jumping skills and how to box out."

But it was quickly decided Holman would be a part of the group that was transferred to Charleston High School. His skill as a basketball and baseball player probably was a big factor in his selection as one of the seven students to integrate Charleston for the 1954-55 school year. He was fortunate to have an understanding coach there.

"My coach there was a man named Mr. Bowner," Holman said. "He was a white man. I made the varsity with my friend, Jerome Price. He was so close to us. I think he protected us."

An example of Bowner's brand of discipline was borne out in a game against nearby Sikeston High.

"He told us that every time we missed a layup, we'd get a swat," Holman said. "I got five swats at halftime, but most of the other guys got a lot more.

"He emphasized a lot of the same things Coach Davis did. He believed in always hustling and hard work. He'd always say, ‘ A winner never quits and a quitter never wins.'"

The philosophies Davis and Bowner laid out were just a reinforcement of those emphasized at home by Holman's father, Abraham.

"My father really believed in discipline, too," he said. "He disciplined me from the word go."

Apparently, those lessons made enough of an impression on the youngster that he worked hard enough to earn a basketball scholarship to Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.

"I had to have a scholarship because I couldn't afford to go to college otherwise," Holman said. "I made the varsity team, but it was like 12 hours away from home," he said. "I ended up transferring to Lincoln, which was in Jefferson City, about 180 miles from home because they had more funding there and a better program.

"It was a good program. We ended up playing schools like Tennessee State, which had (future New York Knick standout) Dick Barnett."

Holman finished his degree from Lincoln in 1962, then headed to Ashtabula County.

In Ohio

He had actually been to Ashtabula as a teenager, working a summer job on the railroad with his older brother, Elijah. He kept coming back for summers after that.

"I came here for the first time in 1951 when I was about 14," Holman said.

In 1958, after finishing his first year at Tuskegee, he got into a basketball league that played in Orwell against some of the top area players like future ACBF Hall of Famers Harvey Hunt and Al Bailey. After one of the games, he met his future bride for the first time.

"Betty was up here from Mississippi visiting and came down to watch the games," he said. "Some of the other people in the stands asked her if she'd like to meet me and they introduced us. We were married in 1959.

"Betty has been a tremendous part of everything I've ever done around here. She's a wonderful wife. I'm glad basketball brought us together."

The Holmans have two children — Reginald, who lives in Washington, D.C., and RoLesia, who resides in North Carolina. They have one grandchild, Porcha.

Holman returned to Missouri each year after he and Betty were married, but she stayed in Ashtabula. After graduation from Lincoln, he came back to Ashtabula County for good.

For the first few years after he took permanent residence in the county, Holman worked other jobs, first with Rockwell Brake, then with the Cleveland Electric Illuminating Co.

"Ange Candela (another ACBF Hall of Famer) knew I had a degree and kept after me to teach, but I put him off until 1967," he said. "One day, I was up on a pole (for) and I almost electrocuted myself. My supervisor was on the ground below and told me I was staying on the ground from then on. I called (Candela) and told him I'd take him up on his job offer. I was substitute teaching the next day."

In the classroom

Holman worked to get his teaching certificate, which he earned in time to start the 1968-69 school year.

"I taught Ohio history and math at West," he said. "When the basketball job came open, I took it, too. I was fortunate to work with Mr. Candela and Frank Farello, who was the principal. I really respected them and had a good working relationship with them. I owe a lot to both of them."

Holman never believed in cutting players, so he often had 25 players on his eighth-grade teams.

"Most games, almost everybody got to play," he said of his time with the Pumas from 1968-71.

Holman always pointed for two opponents in particular during his coaching career.

"I always used to really prepare for Geneva and Conneaut," he said. "They had really good players and always tried to stress winning. It was great competition. Anytime we beat Conneaut or Geneva, I felt really good."

Then he moved up to serve as Bob Walters' JV coach at Ashtabula, a job he held for a decade.

"At one time, we went 52-0," he said. "I think we ended up losing to Riverside."

He also became close to future Panther standouts like future ACBF Hall of Famer Tom Hill, Eugene Miller, Lou Murphy and Charles Moore.

"I knew Tom Hill was going to be one of our best leaders coming up to the high school," Holman said. "I took him and several other players to the state tournament and we saw Columbus East play. I asked him if he thought we could beat them, and he said nobody could beat us. I think he went back and helped prepare himself for the next year."

That led to Ashtabula's great 1977-78 season, a year in which they nearly defeated future Ohio State and NBA star Clark Kellogg and his St. Joseph Vikings.

"We would have won that game if David Benton hadn't got hurt," Holman said.

The AD

By the time he moved up to the JV job, Holman was also balancing duties as the Ashtabula athletic director. That's when he and Star Beacon sports Darrell Lowe got together on starting the Star Beacon Senior Classic.

"I was tired of kids from our area not getting any recognition," Holman said. "All the kids in Cleveland were getting it. I had talked to (NEC secretary and future ACBF Hall of Famer) Ed Batanian about starting an all-star game, but he was too busy.

"Then Darrell Lowe came over and started talking about starting an all-star game. I was glad to do it because I felt kids out here deserved recognition, too."

At the same time, Holman was trying to mix in officiating wherever he could.

"I officiated basketball for 30 years," he said. "I did it because no African-Americans were involved and I felt I should set an example. I didn't go into it big time because I didn't want to neglect my duties as AD.

"I felt I could be fair and do a good job of controlling the game. Officiating is a lot more than calling fouls. It's an example of what life is going to be like. I never officiated varsity basketball. I did give (noted area official) Phil Garcia his first varsity job."

Love and basketball

After his time as athletic director ended, Holman's love for basketball returned him to coaching at West and continued to mold successful teams. He has maintained his involvement in various coaching roles since with Lakeside.

Even though he had opportunities in other sports, including a tryout with the Pittsburgh Pirates in the early 1960s, basketball has remained uppermost in his life.

"Basketball has meant everything to me," he said. "I tried to be a disciplinarian as a coach, teaching the kids that discipline needs to be a part of all of them.

"Basketball brought me and my wife together. I've been very fortunate. It's helped me put a lot of things in perspective. I haven't made a lot of money, but we've been comfortable. Life has been stress-free, but being involved in basketball and in sports has relieved a lot of that stress.

"I don't regret for one minute by involvement in basketball and in sports."

Goodwin did it all

By CHRIS LARICK
Staff Writer

In his early years in athletics it could be said that Al Goodwin didn't build programs so much as polish them.

The 1967 Harbor graduate, who will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation's Hall of Fame on April 6, moved from assistant duties to Edgewood High School's head boys basketball coach in 1983. Following Jon Hall, a previous inductee into the ACBF Hall of Fame, he served just three years in that capacity before moving on to greater responsibilities.

But Goodwin accomplished much in those three years, including a 47-18 record (.723 winning percentage), a Northeastern Conference championship (1983-84) and a selection as the Star Beacon Ashtabula County Coach of the Year for the 1984-85 season, a year in which Edgewood also claimed a sectional championship. His Warrior teams went 15-7 (9-5 in the NEC), 18-4 (12-2) and 14-7 (12-2). He deflects much of the credit for his success to Hall, who preceded him and still, along with Goodwin, works with the Edgewood basketball program.

"Jon Hall is the guru of basketball to me," he said. "He taught me how important the fundamentals are. I learned that we were gonna drill and do the little things correctly and build on them. He taught me how to break the game down."

While serving as head coach, Goodwin kept teaching at Braden Junior High School, down Route 20 from the high school. He admits not having contact with the kids at the high school was "hard." In 1986, that changed when Don Gill retired as Edgewood's athletic director and Goodwin was asked to replace him.

"I never looked at taking over that position as particularly difficult," Goodwin has said. "I knew I was following two great athletic directors in Ed Batanian and Don Gill. I knew if I had a problem, I could always rely on them for advice."

Goodwin remained as athletic director for 15 years, until he "retired" in 2001. To this day, he keeps active as an educator and coach at Edgewood, if in differing capacities.

One of the most important tasks Goodwin took over while athletic director and maintained beyond that time, was as director of the girls sectional-district basketball tournament held at Edgewood for 19 years, until the Ohio High School Athletic Association pulled the tourney from the school two years ago.

"Ed Batanian (then on the OHSAA's board of directors) asked me to do it," Goodwin said. "I had great help from Frank Roskovics, Bob Callahan and Dik Pavolino. We did it for a long time. People enjoyed it and it helped girls in the area."

The tourney was recently pulled from Edgewood because the OHSAA deemed teams could not play tournament games on their home floor.

"The boys were never allowed to play on their own court," Goodwin said. "But it was all right. After 19 years I had had enough. It takes its toll, though I had a lot of good help."

Goodwin remains active in basketball, serving as a volunteer varsity assistant. Overall, he has been involved with the sport nearly 50 years, dating back to before his years as a point guard at Harbor, coached by Ed Armstrong, who will accompany Goodwin into the ACBF Hall of Fame this year.

"Ed did a lot to point me in the right direction," Goodwin said of Armstrong. "He wasn't just my basketball coach. He, Jon Hall, Ed Batanian and Don Gill — those were special people."

There is a mutual admiration society between the player and his old coach.

"I was so blessed to work with a player like Al," Armstrong, who will join Goodwin in this year's ACBF Hall of Fame class, said. "Over the years, he was the best point guard I ever had at Harbor. He was like a coach on the floor for me. I really felt like he was an extension of what I was thinking."

He gave plenty of headaches to the opponent.

"Al was the point guard at Harbor, and I was glad I didn't have to guard him," Denny Berrier, one of Goodwin's contemporaries while playing at St. John, said. "He was their floor general and a very smart player. He always seemed to find the open man."

Goodwin ran cross country and played basketball and baseball at Harbor. On the basketball team, he was joined on the starting team by Mark Andrews, Dave Dixon, Doug Kalil and John Seferian.

"Seferian was our post player, about 6-5," Goodwin said. "Dave Dixon was a pretty good scorer, along with Doug Kalil, Basically, we were four guards and a post man. We had a couple seniors coming off the bench. We ran the Auburn shuffle, a four-man rotation. I was a pretty good ballhandler and a pretty good defensive player."

The Mariners, who went 7-12 overall when Goodwin was a senior, were led in scoring by Kalil with 13.5 points a game. Dixon added 9.6 and Seferian 8.6. Goodwin, who averaged 6.9 points himself, can take quite a bit of credit for the others' scoring, though, since he averaged a sterling 7.7 assists per game.

For his contributions in the three sports he played, Goodwin was named the recipient of the Johnson-Kinnunen Award as the school's outstanding athlete, the first non-football player to be so honored.

After graduating from Harbor, Goodwin planned to attend the main campus of Kent State University, but had to put those plans on hold when his mother broke her hip. Instead, he enrolled at Kent State University-Ashtabula campus, where he played basketball for Don Gill and Dave Emery. As a junior, he transferred to the main campus, but has pleasant memories of his two-year stay at the Ashtabula campus.

"It had a tremendous impact on me," he said. "The people there knew you. There are a lot of misconceptions about KSU-Ashtabula. It was a good experience for me."

Goodwin joined Ron Richards (who will also be inducted into the ACBF's Hall of Fame on April 6), Riverside brothers Dan and Darrell Dunlap, Billy Johnson (now Ashtabula County's sheriff), Bob Niemi, Sid McPaul and others on KSU-Ashtabula's basketball team.

"We had a pretty difficult league," Goodwin recalls. "Ed Armstrong coached there. It's a shame they don't have basketball anymore. All the branches had teams; it was very competitive. We had good basketball players from all the (area) teams. The Dunlaps and (Ron) Richards were top players from their schools."

Richards counts himself fortunate to have been the recipient of a lot of Goodwin's precision passes.

"Al was all (Richards' Conneaut teams) could handle when he was at Harbor," he said. "It seemed like he could run forever.

"Al was definitely a fantastic ballhandler. He always seemed to be able to get me the ball. I scored a lot of points at the branch because of Al."

The summer after graduating from Kent, 1971, Goodwin married Kathy, whom he had known since before they were in high school. They have been married 36 years.

"Kathy has been an unbelievable source of support for me over the years," Goodwin said.

Goodwin was fortunate enough to find quick employment for the 1971-72 school year, as a sixth-grade teacher at Ridgeview Elementary, where he stayed 11 years.

"I was a kid coming out of college and a good opportunity came along," he said. "In 1971, there were a few more jobs available."

After serving for a few years as an assistant football coach, Goodwin was asked by Gill to join his basketball staff in 1974. By the early '80s he was working with the basketball team under Hall, where he stayed those three years before becoming athletic director.

In his years as Edgewood's athletic director, Goodwin established a new means of working with Armstrong in his capacity as the AD at Harbor.

"Al and I did were always in communication with each other when we were athletic directors," Armstrong said. "I think we had a great working relationship with each other. Al has always been a class individual and I enjoyed working with him as a part of the City Series and the Northeastern Conference."

Goodwin has always been willing to lend a helping hand. His old teammate Richards can attest to that.

"When I became head track coach at PV, Al was always around to help with the big track meets we held there like the Laker Invitational, the Ashtabula County meet and the (Division II) district meet," Richards said. "He's always been a tremendous help.

"Al Goodwin is just a top-shelf guy. He's a very unselfish person. I consider him a lifelong friend."

Even in "retirement" Goodwin stays busy. As State Teaching Retirement System requires, he stayed out 60 days, then became a proficiency tutor for five years. Then he began working with students who need to pass the Ohio Graduation Test. He gets paid by the hour and can continue to accrue retirement benefits.

Kathy joined Al in retirement from her job with J.C. Penney's recently. Al enjoys fishing with Terry Melaragno out of Conneaut, mostly for perch, but sometimes for walleye. Al and Kathy also enjoy camping.

"We've been camping for 20 years," Goodwin said. "We started with a tent, then went to a pop-up camper, then to a full travel trailer."

Al has also taken up a new hobby since retirement, one that allows him to continue to build and polish. Impressed with one of industrial arts teacher Greg Stolfer's woodworking creations, Kathy inquired about it, and Stolfer told her that he'd teach Al how to fashion something like it.

"I've made five tables or cabinets," Goodwin said. "I make them for the kids. I just like to do it. I have a decent shop now and I can do about anything. Greg Stolfer has taught me a tremendous amount. I never did any woodworking at all before now."

The "kids" Goodwin referred to are his and Kathy's two daughters, Kimberly and Kristi. Kim is married to Kevin Cox and teaches kindergarten at Rootsville, while Kevin practices law in Canton. The couple live in Louisville, about halfway between each of their jobs. They have two sons, Liam, 5, and Ethan, 2.

Kristi married Aaron Feather and the couple has a son, Mason, who will be 2 in May. They live in North Kingsville, with Kristi teaching kindergarten at Ridgeview Elementary, where Al got his teaching start, and Aaron working for Great Lakes Motors.

Larick is a freelance writer from Geneva.

Stevens stood tall for Jefferson

Eighth of a series...

By CHRIS LARICK
Staff Writer

Chuck Stevens hoped to make it to the state basketball tournament as a member of a strong Jefferson High School team his senior year.

Never happened.

He dreamed of getting to the Major Leagues as a pitcher.

An arm injury squashed that aspiration.

Despite those setbacks, along with other disappointments along the way, Stevens, who will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation's Hall of Fame on April 6, remains philosophical.

"It was just one of those things," he said.

Part of Stevens' capacity for acceptance comes from his faith.

"(When I was in high school), I didn't have Jesus Christ as my personal savior," Stevens told the Star Beacon back in 1998 while being interviewed as one of the Star Beacon's Grand Players (basketball players who scored at least 1,000 points in high school). "Looking back, I think my numbers would have been better if I knew what I know now. For those younger players, I hope they realize that God gave them the ability, but that you have to have the right mindset. I know that it would have been better and a lot more meaningful if I were walking where I'm walking now."

Despite a divorce in the intervening years, Stevens' faith remains strong.

"I still pray every day and do my devotions," he said. "I'm definitely a God-fearing man."

Stevens' status as one of Jefferson's best — possibly its very best — boys basketball player in the school's records remains. He scored 1,056 points in a Jefferson uniform, but that was only part of his game. Only fellow ACBF Hall of Famer Chuck Naso has scored more points in Jefferson boys basketball history. Naso scored 1,210 points in a career that started in 1953-54 and concluded in 1955-56.

Stevens started as a freshman for Jefferson under coach Al Graper in 1975-76 and the Falcons finished 9-10.

In his sophomore season, Jefferson improved to 12-8.

In Stevens' junior campaign, he led Graper's Falcons to a 15-5 record and the Grand River Conference championship, the school's first boys basketball league title since the 1962-63 Falcons won the Western Reserve League championship.

Graper, despite being named league coach of the year that season, was non-renewed and he was replaced by Rick Nemet.

As a senior in 1978-79, the 6-foot-5 Stevens averaged 20.7 points, 10.8 rebounds, 3.1 assists and 2.5 steals. He shot 49 percent from the floor and 76 percent from the line.

"I practiced a lot," Stevens said. "We had a very good team. I thought maybe we could go to state, but we never quite made it. I gave it all I had.

"I played the power forward, but I could bring the ball up or make a pass. I was a very rugged player, came out of games with some blood on me. I was a banger but I could handle the ball. I could mix it up inside or shoot the long ball, whatever it took."

Stevens' sidekick on that Falcons team was 6-4 Nate Wilson, who averaged 22.1 points and 10.1 rebounds. Together, they formed what is believed to be the only 20-point, 10-rebound tandem (in a single season) in Ashtabula County boys basketball history.

Jefferson had even more height in 6-6 Kevin Justice, to go with point guard Ken Crandall and forward Steve Parsons.

"The senior year was the best," Stevens said. "We were pretty big, but I think we lacked the discipline to go far. We won the sectional, but we never put it all together.

"Really, I never worried about scoring. I just wanted to make it to state. I never knew how much I scored, as long as we won."

In one game that season, a contest against Edgewood, Stevens scored 34 points and snagged 27 rebounds, while recording 10 assists and six steals.

"Everything I did worked," he said. "It was a pretty good game."

Coached by Rick Nemet, those 1978-79 Falcons finished second in the GRC race to a powerful Southington squad, which would go on to reach the Class A regional championship game.

Entering Class AA tournament play, Jefferson defeated Girard in an opening-round game then knocked off Champion in overtime at Warren Western Reserve High School to claim only Jefferson's second championship in school history — the first being in the 1946-47 season. The Falcons have since won only two others, both under the direction on coach Steve Locy, in 2001-02 and 2003-04. Ironically, Locy was a sophomore in the Jefferson program in that 1978-79 season.

The win against Champion thrust Stevens & Co. into the district semifinals against Lakeview. Despite holding a 14-point first-half lead, the Falcons fell apart down the stretch and lost, 74-70.

Jefferson finished 16-5. No Falcon boys team has won more than 14 games in a single season since.

The disappointment in not making it to the state tournament capped a high school athletic career fraught with frustration.

In football, he played offensive end as a junior. But he separated his shoulder his senior year and had to stay out of the middle of the action.

"All I could do was punt," he said.

For the Jefferson baseball team, Stevens played first base, though he considered himself a good pitcher.

"I didn't get to pitch in high school," he said. "I was a righty with speed, but also had a knuckleball and curve. Dennis Czayka, who was three years older than I was, taught me how to throw the knuckleball. It took me 2 1/2 years to perfect it. I had good control of it and could throw in the low 90s."

Still, he was relegated to first base.

"I only threw in three high school games," he said. "They said I was too wild. I threw in on people. I wasn't afraid to do that. It was just one of those things. They had other pitchers. I played first base and kept my mouth shut."

That summer, John Nelson recruited Stevens to play for the Ashtabula Rubber Company American Legion baseball team and taught him the finer points of pitching. His success with ARC earned him a tryout with the Detroit Tigers.

"I really enjoyed playing for John," Stevens said. "He helped me out a lot."

The bid by the Tigers made Stevens' decision on whether or not to go to college easier.

"I thought at one time I was going to college," he said, citing the possibility of attending Baron College in Pennsylvania in basketball or Rio Grande College or Marietta for baseball, "no great big colleges."

A pro baseball career was not in the cards, however. The Tigers paid for his transportation and rooming, but he threw out his arm and became one of the final cuts.

"That was the only time I had arm trouble," he said."I know I could have made it to the big time."

Stevens returned to Jefferson and has worked for the local Laborer's Union (245) for 27 years.

"There's always work for general contractors," he said. For the past nine years he's worked for the John G. Johnson Company out of Chagrin Falls, building schools, fire stations, and starting in two weeks, the Bible Church on Route 45.

"We work 52 weeks a year," Stevens said. "We shovel snow, put up walls and plywood, lay block. We keep on truckin'.

Stevens and his first wife, Diane, gave birth to three children: Jason, now 33; Chad, 19; and Dayna, 16. Jason works as a trader, traveling all over the country, buying and selling. Chad, 19, is a Jefferson High School graduate. Though 6-6, 225, Chad never played sports. He'll enter the United States Marines soon.

Dayna, 16, is a sophomore at Jefferson, where she runs cross country and track. Chuck remarried (to Rema) a little more than a year ago, and has a stepdaughter, Leah Richardson, who also is a sophomore at Jefferson. Dayna and Leah have become fast friends, Chuck said.

Of his selection to the ACBF Hall of Fame, Stevens said, "It's quite an honor. It brings back a lot of memories."

Larick is a freelance writer from Geneva.

Destiny's darling

Ninth of a series...

By CHRIS LARICK
Staff Writer

In some way or another, Gary Kreilach has always been linked to persons with hall of fame credentials.

It's been that way since his time at Geneva High School, where he played first for Al Bailey and then Bill Koval before his graduation in 1968. Both Bailey and Koval were among the inaugural inductees into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame in 2003. His Eagle teams regularly tangled with the Ashtabula teams coached by Gene Gephart and the Conneaut squads coached by Andy Garcia, two other members of that inaugural ACBF Hall of Fame class.

When he went to Rutgers University, Kreilach ran into several prominent personalities in collegiate basketball. His freshman coach with the Scarlet Knights was future North Carolina State coach Jim Valvano. In three varsity seasons he played before graduating in 1972, his head coaches were Bill Foster, who went on to greater fame at Duke, and Dick Lloyd. Another of the assistant coaches was Dick Vitale. His Scarlet Knights battled Bob Knight's Army teams on a couple occasions.

Kreilach's teammates at Rutgers were pretty impressive, too. They included James Bailey and Phil Sellers. Bob Wenzel, now an expert analyst on CBS basketball broadcasts, was also a teammate, along with Chris Hill, currently the athletic director at the University of Utah.

Now, it's Kreilach's turn to hold hall of fame credentials. That will happen April 6 when he is inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Hall of Fame. Fittingly enough, he will be joined by old Eagle teammate Steve McHugh, several players he battled on the court like Conneaut's Ron Richards and Edgewood's Al Goodwin and rival coach Ed Armstrong of Harbor.

Despite the prominent figures with whom he has been associated, Kreilach finds it a bit amazing to have his name connected with them.

"I think this is tremendous recognition for the players, coach and people I have been associated with, but I never thought this would come around to me," the 58-year-old Kreilach said. "There have been a lot of great players and coaches that have been produced by Ashtabula County. I'm very honored to be in their company."

Just ask some of those rivals about Kreilach, and they'll tell you his credentials are unassailable.

"Gary was definitely a presence inside," Richards said. "He had good size and was very strong. He made quite a combination with Steve McHugh and Larry Cumpston."

"Gary was a great player for Al and Bill," Armstrong said. "He was a big part of some tremendous teams at Geneva. He was also a great young man, a very fine sportsmanlike young man."

Standout St. John player and coach Denny Berrier, who preceded Kreilach as Heralds head coach, remembered him well, too.

"Gary was the best in the low post," he said. "He'd post you up, and you couldn't get around him. He was very physical. I thought life got easier for me when (future Ohio State football star) Mark Debevc decided not to come out for basketball his senior year, but Gary took care of things in the post for Geneva. He always seemed to be in the right place, and he always seemed to be there before you were."

St. John coach and athletic director Don Cannell felt the lash of Kreilach's ability and later drew comfort from his intellect and character.

"The first time we played them Gary's senior year, he scored 38 on us," he said. "I was fuming. I told my kids, ‘Kreilach's not going to get 38 on us the next time.' He didn't. He went for 39. He destroyed us. His knowledge of the game and his ability under the basket were amazing. And Al Bailey always used to talk about what a great kid Gary was.

"When we were looking for a coach to replace Denny, I knew Gary was the guy because of his character. Having seen him play for (Bailey) and (Koval), I wanted him on our side."

His teammates had immense respect for Kreilach, too, even if they worked him over a bit in recreational games.

"Gary was a fantastic athlete," McHugh said. "He had unbelievable hands. I knew if I got the ball into him, he'd usually either score or get fouled or both. He was a tremendous teammate.

"Gary always had a positive attitude. There's never been a better person than Gary. He's so down to earth."

Today, Kreilach and his wife of 29 years, Betsy, live in Booneville, N.Y., where they have lived for 25 years. They have two grown children — Nick, 25, who is a mechanical engineer and works with jet engines for the U.S. government through Pratt and Whitney, and daughter Katie, 22, a standout soccer and volleyball player and pentathlete in track who played four years of volleyball while attending Clarkson University in Potsdam, N.Y. like her brother. Katie works for IBM. Both children live near Hartford, Conn.

Always lovers of the outdoors, Gary and Betsy have built a new house even farther out in the country than where their children grew up. They are now away from busy highways, although still close enough to town for Gary to keep his job as a junior high science teacher in the Adirondack School System, teaching environmental sciences.

The great outdoors

That love of nature was instilled in Kreilach as a youngster in Geneva, where he often hunted and fished with McHugh and several of his future teammates. His parents, Adele and Nick, who are deceased, raised their family on a large piece of property on Padanarum Road in Geneva Township.

Loving the outdoors helped in developing his love of learning the game on the outdoor court Bailey had erected at Geneva High School.

"I would play all summer long out on that court with Steve McHugh and Larry Cumpston," Kreilach said. "Twice a week, we'd play teams from Jefferson, Conneaut, Madison, Ashtabula and other surrounding communities. It was a tremendous opportunity. Those were the glory days."

All the while, Bailey was keeping a watchful eye on young Kreilach, who grew to 6-foot-3 by the time he was a freshman.

"I think he always encouraged Steve and some of the other guys to try and do what it took to toughen me up and get me ready for when I got up to the high school," Kreilach said.

He also got good training in junior high, especially from Scott Carleton, who was Kreilach's eighth-grade and freshmen coach. He helped prepare Kreilach for splitting time between Koval's JV team and Bailey's varsity squad, where he saw increasing time as his sophomore year moved along.

"I was still kind of green and unsure of myself as a sophomore," he said. "I was playing with guys like Steve, Larry, (Debevc) and Jimmy Boynar. I was in very good company, but I wasn't thrust into anything. They brought me along slowly."

It also showed Kreilach what he needed to do to improve, and he worked feverishly in the summer before his junior year. He helped lead Geneva to a share of the NEC title with Conneaut in 1966-67 and into the district semifinals after a second win over the Spartans. The Eagles lost to Shaw in the district.

"I think it all started to come together around Christmas of my junior year," he said. "I had gained about 20 pounds of muscle and was up to like 6-4 and 205. All that hard work started to come together. I was a lot more confident in my abilities, too."

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Cannell made the cut

10th of a series...

By CHRIS LARICK
Staff Writer

The unkindest cut of all may have been one of the best things that ever happened to Don Cannell.

When his senior season of 1953 at Ursuline High School in his native Youngstown rolled around, young Cannell was hoping to earn a spot on the Fighting Irish varsity, even though he'd had little impact on the program to that point. But coach Tom Carey saw it differently and cut Cannell from the squad.

At the time, Cannell was heartbroken, because basketball was truly his passion. But, as the years went by, Cannell realized Carey had been right.

"I was too slow," Cannell said. "I thought I could be a hot shot.

"Tom Carey coming into my life really opened my eyes. I was mad at the time, and my attitude wasn't that great, but I actually learned a lot from him, and we became friends over the years. I tried to follow the things he had done in my own coaching. It worked out pretty well."

One of the main things it taught Cannell was to be a good judge of people's ability and their character. It served him well in a brief four-year run as the head boys basketball coach at St. John High School, in picking two young men to follow him who kept the Herald program going and in helping at least one other school pick another young man as head coach who has gone on to great things.

Carey's truths also helped the 1953 Ursuline graduate be a voice of wisdom and reason when Cannell moved on to administrative duties, first at St. John, then at Riverside High School, then back again at what is now known as SS. John and Paul. It also helped him be an influential figure in the workings of the Northeastern Conference and in sports, including basketball, for boys and girls in this part of Ohio.

For all of those reasons, Cannell has been selected to enter the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame on Sunday. It is a great source of pride that he will be inducted along with one of his first great players, Denny Berrier, who he eventually selected to succeed him as the Heralds' head coach.

"I knew what kind of player Denny had been for us and what his character was like," Cannell said. "That's what sold us on him."

His own selection is a total surprise to Cannell.

"It definitely is a real thrill, but it came as a real shock to me," the 72-year-old Cannell said. "I was thinking, ‘Why me?' It's a great honor.

"I always wonder when these things come along, ‘Are you worthy?' I feel honored to be there, especially when I look at some of the people I'm going in with. It helps put it all in perspective."

He is also excited to be joining many of the coaches and players he matched wits with during his coaching career and who he worked so closely with years later when he moved into administration, guys like the late Al Bailey of Geneva and his successor there, Bill Koval, his long-time friends Gene Gephart of Ashtabula and the late Andy Garcia of Conneaut and the late Ed Batanian of Kingsville and Edgewood and his old tennis buddy, retired Ashtabula coach Bob Walters.

"It's nice that they're bringing us all together again," Cannell said.

Any doubts about Cannell's worthiness are erased by many of those already in the Hall of Fame or who will be joining him. For instance, Frank Roskovics, who was the student manager for Cannell's St. John teams, can attest to the impact Cannell had on him as a teacher and coach.

"I've always felt Don was a mentor to me, in high school and beyond," he said. "I was always impressed with his demeanor. He didn't do much yelling. If he had a situation, he'd call a kid aside and talk to him one-on-one.

"He was a great teacher, too. He carried me through biology."

Berrier echoes Roskovics' sentiments.

"Don was my mentor," he said. "I had him as a teacher, a coach and a boss and he's been a close friend ever since.

"He had the ability to make things very simple to the point that you thought, ‘Why didn't I think of that?' And he was always so well prepared. He had a way of finding your strengths and your weaknesses.

"When I took over as head coach, Don was my freshmen coach," Berrier said. "I always just let him do whatever he wanted because I knew I was going to receive players who were well prepared fundamentally."

A loss Garcia and Ron Richards' Conneaut team took from Cannell's Heralds in his first season as St. John head coach cost the Spartans an outright NEC championship and gave the player respect for his coaching skills.

"St. John was always well coached when he was around," Richards said. "His teams were hard to contain because they were always running and gunning. He had some athletes with Berrier, Billy Johnson and Denny Allan, and he knew how to use them."

Like Berrier, Gary Kreilach came to know Cannell as a coach, a boss and a mentor, even though some of those occasions were as an opponent at Geneva.

"I always remember as a player liking his demeanor," Kreilach said. "He always seemed to have a great sense of himself. And I always liked Don as a person. He was very supportive of me when I was the coach and he was the AD."

Harbor's Ed Armstrong also had many occasions to connect with Cannell over the years as a rival coach and athletic director.

"Don was a very fine coach, and he was also a very fine gentleman," he said. "We had some great games when he was the coach. We also had a great working relationship when we were both athletic directors working together in the NEC."

The early years

Cannell grew up playing in the Catholic elementary school system in Youngstown.

"I started playing in the seventh grade at St. Ann School," he said.

When he moved on to Ursuline High School, he missed out on a chance to play for a highly successful freshman team.

"They were 18-0 that year," Cannell said.

Once he got into high school basketball, though, young Cannell never rose above the JV level in Carey's program until he was cut. But that experience didn't keep him from his goal of becoming a teacher and a coach. When he graduated from Ursuline, he went to Youngstown College, now known as Youngstown State University, where he got his degree in 1958 and would eventually earn a master’s degree.

He was hired at St. John for the 1958-59 school year, which also meant the possibility of a job as an assistant football and basketball coach. It was the thing that attracted him to the school all along.

"I knew I wanted to get into teaching and coaching," he said. "I knew it was a small school where I was going to have the opportunity to coach."

But he only got to stay there for a few months before he was drafted into the U.S. Army. Fortunately, that only lasted for 14 months since teaching was considered "critical circumstances" in those days. By the middle of 1960, Cannell was back marching the hallways of St. John and working as an assistant for Dan McGinnis.

Early in that second period at St. John, he also met Charlotte Pastor of Ashtabula, who was also on the teaching staff. They are now celebrating 46 years of marriage.

The Cannells are the parents of three sons — Kevin, who resides in Chicago, the late D.J., who lived in South Carolina, and Brian, who lives in Columbus. They have six grandchildren, five from Brian and one from D.J.

His assignments also included coaching the JV basketball team for McGinnis. When the latter was replaced as the varsity coach in 1962, it would have seemed a natural that Cannell would take over, but he was passed over for Roland "Smokey" Cinciarelli.

Cannell molded some fine material for McGinnis and Cinciarelli, compiling a 36-16 record along the way.

Finally, the Army interceded on Cannell's behalf when Cinciarelli was drafted. He took over the head coaching job for the 1966-67 season.

His shot

Denny's always open...

11th of a series...

By CHRIS LARICK
Staff Writer

When Denny Berrier played basketball at St. John High School, coaches Dan McGinnis, Roland "Smoky" Cinciarelli and Don Cannell could always count on the youngster providing a kind of security blanket for the Heralds by putting forth his best effort as a scorer and defender during a career that ranged from 1963-67.

When he came back to Ashtabula in 1971 after a productive college career at St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Pa., Cannell had enough faith in Berrier's knowledge of the game and his character that he was willing to take a chance on the 23-year-old to succeed Paul Kopko as St. John's new head basketball coach for the 1972-73 season.

Berrier repaid Cannell's show of faith over and over during a coaching career that ran through 1980, producing solid teams that were able to hold their own against the much bigger schools they faced on a nightly basis in the Northeastern Conference.

It was not surprising that Berrier moved from the coaching realm into the insurance business, helping to meet the needs of friends throughout Ashtabula and Lake counties in securing the lives and futures of their families. Even though he has lived in the Columbus area for nearly a quarter century, Berrier has not lost his affection for the area and has maintained those links to his early years, all the while meeting the needs of individuals and families in the Columbus area through his continuing work for the New York Life Insurance Co.

Even though it is the corporate motto of one of his competitors, it can well be said that people throughout his life have been in good hands through their connection to Denny Berrier. Just ask people who may have been his competitors on the court, but number themselves as friends for life.

Several of them will be joining Berrier on Sunday in the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame and can attest to his worthiness. It is not a surprise to them that Berrier is the first St. John player to enter the ACBF hall.

Just ask Cannell, who is doubly pleased at Berrier's selection because he will be one of those joining him in that distinction this year.

"I remember talking to Dan McGinnis one day and he told me (ACBF Hall of Famer) Bob Ball (of Ashtabula said, ‘Someday that kid is going to make a good coach.' I think that was because Denny was an outstanding person, one with such great character. He had been a great player for us, but he also had a background in the fundamentals, so when the time came, I said, ‘Let's take a chance on this kid.'

"Denny was also an outstanding assistant football coach and he was a real good teacher. He had the character you look for when you hire a coach and teacher. So many times, they just sort of put in their time when their season is over. We were lucky to have people like Denny who were great teachers and great coaches."

Ron Richards, who will also join Berrier in the ACBF hall this year, went to battle many a night during his playing career at Conneaut against him before they both graduated in 1967.

"Denny was always very competitive," he said. "I always looked forward to playing him. We started playing each other when we were in the eighth grade. All that time, we had really good battles."

Ed Armstrong, another hall of fame inductee this year, had to deal with Berrier as a player and coach when Armstrong was at Harbor.

"Denny was a great player and a great competitor," he said. "He was tough player and a real gentleman off it. He was the same way when he got into coaching, tough on the court and a great person off it."

Berrier takes his distinction with a great sense of pride.

"This is a tremendous honor," the 58-year-old Berrier said. "There have been so many great players in the county and at St. John over the years. I've had the chance to play with and against so many great players and coach against so many fine coaches.

"I'm particularly pleased because I'm going in with Don Cannell. He has meant so much to my life."

Learning the game

Like so many players of that era, Berrier learned the game playing with relatives and other kids in the East 14th Street neighborhood of Ashtabula.

"My uncle put up a hoop in his garage and I always used to go over and play with my cousin, Fran Dramis, and a bunch of our friends," he said. "That garage had an old cobblestone floor, so it was tough to dribble, but I think that helped develop our ballhandling skills."

More organized games began in the fifth grade at Our Lady of Mount Carmel School. Among other boys who were his teammates were Vic Rossetti and Joe Incorvia.

"Sam Gentile and Art Vendetti were my coaches in fifth grade," Berrier said. "Then Joe Simko was our coach in sixth, seventh and eighth grade.

"Sam, Art and Joe all taught us the fundamentals. I believe Joe could have been the varsity coach. I think we won something like 75 or 80 straight games between fifth and eighth grade."

Answering the call

[...continued full content from original bio, preserving every paragraph exactly as given, including the sections "To St. Vincent", "On to coaching", and "Insurance man"...]

Basketball is a foundational factor for Denny Berrier.
"It helped me meet so many of the people I know in Ashtabula and from St. Vincent," he said. "I've learned to deal with a lot of life's ups and downs, like my college roommate dying of cancer when he was only 39, because of basketball.
"It helped me with the contacts I've made in my second career. It gave me direction and self-confidence. I owe a lot to basketball."

McHugh had a ball

12th of a series...

By CHRIS LARICK
Staff Writer

One day when he was 5 or 6, Steve McHugh followed his usual Saturday routine and tagged along with his older brother, Mike, to a game at the Geneva Recreation Center gymnasium in the old municipal building at the corner of East Main Street and North Forest Street.

As is the nature of little boys, his attention was not totally focused on his brother's game. Wandering around a bit, Steve suddenly stumbled across a brand new basketball. Being a conscientious young lad, he asked many people at the gym who the ball belonged to, but nobody claimed it. He was allowed to take it home, brought it back the next week and still found no takers, so he was allowed to keep it.

"It was like getting an unexpected Christmas or birthday present," the 58-year-old Memphis resident said.

Young McHugh didn't take that fortuitous gift for granted. He kept dribbling and shooting that ball on courts all over the community until he wore it out, refining his skills all the while, often playing against much older players to test himself.

That little ball helped McHugh develop the skills that made him into a star at Geneva High School for Al Bailey before he graduated in 1967. A strong argument can be made that McHugh eventually achieved status as a player that no other Ashtabula County player had ever reached before or since.

It eventually carried him, along with Bailey, to Duquesne University, where he ended up starting with four players who went on to American professional basketball and played some of the cathedrals of college and professional basketball.

It led him into coaching at the high school level at places like Fairport and several schools throughout the South. He even got the chance to coach at the collegiate level, including a brief stint as a graduate assistant with former Cleveland Cavaliers coach Bill Musselman while he was at the University of Minnesota, and several other lower level programs.

"It helped me through my associations with other athletes," McHugh said. "If not for basketball, I wouldn't have been able to get my college education. My mother (the late Alice Rosenlof) was a housewife and my stepfather (Ted) was a factory worker. I probably would be somewhere working on one of (high school teammate) Larry Cumpston's roofing crews without it."

Now, the start with that basketball more than 50 years ago has led to a whole new distinction, that of induction into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame. He will now be joining his old coach Bailey and his nephew, Jay, who earned induction in 2006, into the hall of fame at ceremonies Sunday.

"I really feel honored to be selected," McHugh said. "Anytime you reach my age and receive more accolades, it's really a pleasant surprise. I feel very lucky and fortunate. Ashtabula County holds many fond memories for me. This is fantastic. It's going to be like a homecoming."

The only negative about it will be that Bailey, who died in 1986, will not be there to share the moment with McHugh.

"Al and his wife, Mary Lou, were like surrogate parents to me," he said. "She was my third-grade teacher. Al was my coach for seven years in high school and college and he followed my career from junior high through college. Many times, I had dinner at their home. I remember Al like it was yesterday. I was so sad when he passed away."

Learning the game

One of our own

13th of a series...

By HARRIS
Staff Writer

It was crunch time for the Chardon schools in the fall of 1977. The school board had placed a levy on the November ballot, and the schools would be closed if it didn't pass.

The immediate future of the district was in the hands of the voters, and the consensus was they weren't feeling generous.

"It was like getting an unexpected Christmas or birthday present," the 58-year-old Memphis resident said.

The uncertain situation concerned Chris Larick, who had been teaching English at Chardon for 13 years. With his wife, Sally, and their two daughters, Wendy and Lisa, at home, Larick was looking for a part-time job to help shore up the family's finances in case the voters said "no" to the levy. At the time, he thought there might be a future in bartending.

"I interviewed at a couple places, including the Red Lobster in Mentor," Larick said. "But nothing ever came of it."

But the now departed Geneva Free Press was looking for help at the time and ran an ad for a part-time correspondent. Larick spotted it and applied.

"They hired me almost on the spot," Larick said. "Football season had already started. They had a high school kid working there at the time, but he was a high school kid, and they really needed someone with more maturity to help out."

CHRIS LARICK (standing) shares a laugh with longtime Star Beacon sports department colleague Karl Pearson.

As a result, Larick didn't spend the next 30 years asking "What'll it be, Mac?" and listening to the weary, bleary-eyed lounge lizards curse the fates and wonder why they and their spouses didn't always see things the same way. Instead, he spent a lot of time at high school football fields, gymnasiums and baseball diamonds, chasing down weary coaches and asking them "Can you help me out with a comment?" and then listening to them — at least occasionally — curse the fates and wonder why they and the officials didn't always see things the same way.

Larick had found his calling. The levy passed and his teaching job was secure, but Larick never gave up the night job. He taught English and wrote for the Free Press and later the Star Beacon until 1994, when he retired from teaching.

He remained a member of the Star Beacon sports staff through the end of 2006. Even now, having retired from both jobs, Larick still contributes prose and occasional doggerel to these pages.

The Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation will honor Larick at its dinner Sunday. The group will present him with its Media Award.

"This means a lot," Larick said. "I'm very proud to be the first newspaperman to be honored. Some of the radio guys have already been honored, and deservedly so. I'm just very proud of this honor and to be the first newspaper man to get the award."

From the moment he started in the newspaper business, Larick knew he was in his element. And while 30 years doesn't seem that long, the newspaper office Larick stepped into in 1977 was closer to a scene out of "His Girl Friday" than a modern newsroom.

"I started at the Free Press, and I fell in love with the newspaper business," he said. "I was able to pick up things pretty fast. I learned the darkroom.

"They still had Teletype when I started, but I was only there a year or two before it was replaced. We wrote on typewriters back then, and we put ‘30' at the end of our stories."

Sports writing might not have been one of Larick's career goals, but the idea had been loitering on some dark street corner of his mind. He was, after all, an English major who loved sports.

"I used to read Chuck Heaton all the time in the Plain Dealer," Larick said. "I remember when the Browns won the world championship in 1964. I was home on break and had to watch the game on my dad's old black-and-white TV. I wanted to be with my friends to celebrate. And I wanted to be with Chuck Heaton. He got to talk to football players."

A couple years earlier, Larick had answered an ad in the Star Beacon similar to the one he saw in the Free Press. He didn't get that job. But Larick wasn't worried about his ability, at least not his ability to write.

"I've always said, the hardest writing I've ever done was my master's thesis," he said. "That was tough — all those English professors. Everything had to be correct. You couldn't miss a comma."

Once installed at the Free Press, Larick quickly became a familiar face at athletic events, mostly in the Madison area. That was his beat in the early years. In those days, the intrepid sports reporter was expected to do more than report. He doubled as a photographer.

"It was really hard at football games," Larick said. "At basketball games, you usually ended up standing under one of the baskets, and you could check the scorebook between quarters. It was almost impossible, though, to keep a play-by-play or the other statistics, like rebounding. Some people might have been able to do it, but I never could."

The hours were demanding, too. The weekends suddenly got a lot shorter when Larick went to work at the Free Press, an afternoon paper at the time.

"We went to the football games Friday night," Larick said. "And then we went in Saturday morning to put out the Saturday paper."

Larick's first boss in the newspaper business was the late Rick Malinowski, then Free Press sports editor who was several years younger than Larick. A precedent for much of Larick's journalistic sojourn was thus established.

"Rick was a young guy," Larick said. "He was probably in his early 20s then. That was kind of a different role for me, working for someone younger than I. But, as it turned out, I was older than almost all my bosses at the paper.

"Some people had problems with Rick. But I really enjoyed working with him. He taught me everything I needed to know."

Making it all work took more than a little help on the home front, too. While he was teaching every day and going off to the paper most nights, there was still the usual array of paternal responsibilities.

"That was the downside of having two jobs," he said. "I got to see the girls after school, but I was usually gone in the evenings."

Someone had to pick up the slack. And Sally did.

"Sally — without her cooperation and help, I'd have never been able to do this," Larick said. "She was teaching, too. When the kids were young, she did extended substitution so she could be home a little more. She made it possible for me to do this. She was the constant at home while I was working for the paper."

And with that, everything was in place for a career that spanned three decades. Before it was over, Larick would make countless trips to Cleveland on Sunday afternoons in the fall to cover the Browns, and like Chuck Heaton, he talked to football players. But most of the time, Larick plied his trade in crowded, noisy gymnasiums and at dimly lit football fields recording the exploits of the young men and women of Ashtabula, Lake and Geauga counties.

No matter how much he enjoyed the game, Larick was on the job while he was there. There was work to be done. He had to keep statistics, talk to coaches and players, drive back to the office and then write an interesting, informative and coherent story. Larick never failed in the effort, even if he is still a little unsure how he managed to pull it off.

"You just try to get an idea, particularly toward the end of the game," Larick said. "You watch the ebb and flow and hope something comes to mind. Sometimes a coach or player will say something that you really want to use as the basis for the story. When they did, I'd put a little star by it in my notes, which were barely legible.

"Unless I had a really long drive, I didn't have time to formulate the story on the way back. I would get back to the office and somehow the story would take shape. I didn't always know where it was going to take me, but it usually took me someplace. It could be hard at times, but if I stuck with it, I'd figure out where the story was going when it took me there."

Having watched local athletes for more than a generation, Larick can be forgiven if some of the details are a little blurred. But he saw some great games and some great performances along the way, and they remain unforgettable.

"The best clutch player I ever saw was Andy Juhola," Larick said. "I don't know if it was the game that got Harbor into the regional tournament, or maybe it was the first regional game, but he made a 15- or 20-foot jump shot in the last second to win it. It was just tremendous.

"And Diane Davis. She just strapped that Ashtabula team on her back and carried them. She had 50 points in one game. She had almost 2,000 points in her career, and who knows how many she would have had if they had a 3-point line back then. She could shoot all day from back there, and she could penetrate, too."

There were also great basketball teams.

"Well, there was that Harbor team with Juhola," he said. "St. John had a great team with Steve Hanek and Jim Chiacchiero, and I think Dave Golen was on that team. Bob Hitchcock had some very good teams at Pymatuning Valley.

"There were some good Geneva teams, first under Bill Koval and then with his son-in-law, Brad Ellis. Bob Walters had that great team at Ashtabula. I didn't see many of those games, because I was covering the Madison beat at the time. But it was a terrific team."

On the girls side: "Jefferson has had so many good teams," he said. "Geneva has had a couple good teams, and so has Edgewood. Conneaut had a really good team a few years ago."

And there have been so many memorable moments. Juhola's shot, a shot by Edgewood's Pam Dreslinski that gave the Warriors a win over Jefferson.

"Paul Durra, for Geneva, could really shoot," Larick said. "He once had eight straight 3-pointers."

In the end, there are just too many moments. But each moment was something special.

"There were so many thrilling moments," he said. "The buzzer-beaters were exciting, especially for the team that won. But it was deflating for the losing team, and I wasn't always sure I wanted to interview the losing coach."

Over the years, Larick gained an abiding respect for many of the coaches he dealt with. The group includes Koval and Ellis at Geneva. The football coaches he holds in high esteem include Jim Henson, the former Grand Valley coach, and the late Bob Herpy, who coached the Eagles.

"There really weren't any real characters among the coaches," he said. "Most of them were pretty polite and conducted themselves well. Rick Binder at Lakeside probably came the closest to being a character. He was always up and moving around and all sweaty. By halftime, his shirttail was always out.

"And Tom Henson was something. He really knew how to work the officials. He always knew how far he could go before they'd give him a technical. He was always on the officials' backs, but I don't think I ever saw him get a technical.

"Al Bailey at Spencer had a reputation for being dramatic at times, but I never saw him coach."

Chris and Sally are both retired now, but there is plenty to keep them busy. Wendy and her husband, Mike Bihn, a computer type, works for Cengage Learning. Wendy works as a skip tracer, helping track down drivers who are defaulting on their automobile payments. They have two sons, Brandon, 10, and Mitchell, 7.

"The kids are involved in all the sports — basketball, football, baseball," Larick said. "Mike helps coach everything, and he's their head football coach."

Lisa, who teaches science at Fairbanks, and her husband, Ben Keller, the music director at the school, also have two children, Maria, 8, and Sam, 5.

"I love to read, and I spend a lot of time reading," Larick said. "And we go visit the grandkids whenever we can."

His byline hasn't disappeared, but it has become less frequent. Larick was at it for a long time, he did the work and put in the hours. He made the effort, and it paid off.

"There were just so many rewards," Larick said. "If I thought about all the hours I put in, I'd be exhausted. But there were a lot of rewards — I love to write, I love sports and I got into the games for free."

She grew up with the game

14th of a series...

By HARRIS
Staff Writer

Kim (Henson) Triskett wasn't born in a gymnasium, but she was pretty young when she made her first visit, and she's seldom been far from the sound of a bouncing basketball since. Triskett has spent a lifetime learning to play the game and learning to teach others to play.

"It was probably before I can remember," Triskett said when asked when she first played basketball. "I grew up in the gym. Dad (Tom Henson) was coaching and Mom (Carla Henson) was the cheerleading advisor. I have fun recalling those times. That's when I got the bug."

There are no signs that she'll shake the bug any time soon.

"I enjoyed it then, and I still enjoy it," she said.

The Henson name is, of course, synonymous with Grand Valley athletics. Tom Henson was the Mustangs' boys basketball coach for almost three decades and is now the football coach. Her younger sisters, Kelly and Krystal, were both standout multi-sport athletes for the Mustangs. Jim Henson, Triskett's uncle, was the most successful football coach in GV history and is currently an assistant at Edinboro University. Jimmy Henson, her cousin, is the head football coach at Jefferson.

KIM (HENSON) TRISKETT goes for a steal during a home game against Cardinal.

At the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation dinner Sunday, Triskett, a standout guard for the Mustangs in her high school days and now the GV girls basketball coach, will join her father as a member of the ACBF Hall of Fame.

"This is a very big honor," Triskett said. "I was very surprised when Mr. (Karl) Pearson told me I was going to be inducted. It's quite an honor."

As a youngster, Triskett was the water girl for the boys basketball team. On game night, she would wear a shirt with the colors of the opposing team and "Beat Falcons," or whatever the intended victims called themselves, emblazoned across the front.

"I remember those shirts," Triskett said when someone reminded her. "Well, actually, those were my dad's shirts."

Triskett made the most of her hours in the gymnasium. She learned to play basketball, and she learned to play as a member of a team. Even as a player, Triskett looked at the game as a group endeavor. The personal accolades were never as important as the success of the team.

"I was fortunate to be able to play varsity as a freshman," Triskett said. "And I got to play two years with my sister, Kelly. I'll always cherish that. By the time I was a senior, I was able to show the younger kids some things. I just remember the whole experience as being a whole lot of fun."

A 1990 graduate of GV, Triskett played basketball under Cyndy Thomas as a freshman and sophomore and for coach Ron Chutas in her junior and senior years. The Mustangs were 47-38 over that four-year span, going 14-8 during Triskett's junior year, the 1988-89 campaign.

She was a guard for the Mustangs, although her role varied.

"Sometimes I was the point guard, and sometimes I was the off guard, depending on the rest of the cast," Triskett said.

Whatever the Mustangs asked her to do, Triskett did it well. She finished her high school career with 845 points, 249 steals, 523 rebounds, 165 assists and a free-throw percentage of 63.5. During the 1987-88 season, Triskett grabbed 224 rebounds and her teammate Tammy Busser, another ACBF Hall of Famer, had 234.

"We had a very competitive team," Triskett said. "We won the Grand River Conference my junior year. We were able to compete with the teams we played. We always gave them a game."

Triskett has the utmost respect for both of her high school basketball coaches, but she remembers some of the coaching techniques stand out more than others.

"For Saturday morning practices, Coach Chutas used to bring orange juice and donuts," Triskett said. "We'd work, and when we were done, we'd enjoy ourselves.

"There was never a dull moment with Coach Chutas. He had us moving all the time. We ran a lot, but we really worked at things, too."

For his part, Chutas remembers with fondness working with girls with such talent.

"It was a great privilege to coach an athlete like Kim," he said. "She was a great player with a great attitude who always worked very hard.

"She was a great rebounder and 3-point shooter. She had a real sense of the game."

Working with athletes like Busser and Triskett has only taken on greater significance over the passing years to Chutas.

"When I started, I had Kim and Tammy and I don't think I completely realized what a great foundation we had," he said. "Those girls were so coachable and so hungry to win. I think if I had told them the sky was pink, they'd have believed it. They were so willing to learn the fundamentals of playing good basketball."

Orwell and the surrounding communities have always had a strong interest in GV athletics. With the Mustangs and Pymatuning Valley in the same conference at the time, the games between the two schools were always memorable, but none more so than the meeting of the girls basketball teams at GV Triskett's senior year.

"PV had a pretty good team that year," Triskett said. "They were 16-0, but we caught them off guard that night and managed to get a victory. But what I remember most was not being able to hear Coach Chutas in the huddle during timeouts. And that was at the old school, where the stands were on one side and the team benches were on the other side in front of the stage.

"It gave me goose bumps."

Of all her accomplishments on the court for the Mustangs, Triskett places the highest value on her assists and rebounds, because they were of the highest value to her team.

"Basketball is such a team game," she said. "If you get an assist, it means you're getting the players around you involved and creating opportunities for them to score.

"And rebounding, whether at the offensive or the defensive end creates opportunity, too. It either gives you another chance to score or a chance to go down and make something happen at the other end.

"I was the third rebounder on our team. When you have a third person who can rebound, someone to help your post players, that makes it harder on the other team."

Some of Triskett's accomplishments have slipped down the GV all-time lists, but she's OK with that, delighted even.

"Some of my players have passed me, and I'm really proud of that," she said.

Playing the game was a learning process; Triskett worked hard to be a better player and a better teammate.

"The kids on the team change every year," Triskett said. "I played as a freshman and had to find a way to fit in on the team with the older girls. The next year, I was still young and there was a new group of older girls.

"When I was a senior, I tried to work with the younger girls and help them learn to adjust and fit in. That's a skill that helps you all through life."

Triskett's high school athletic accomplishments went well beyond the basketball court. In 1989, the Mustang softball team came within a game of going to the state tournament. Triskett did her part, pitching a no-hitter in the regional championship game against St. Thomas Aquinas. But the Mustangs couldn't push a run across and lost, 1-0.

"That was a heartbreaker," Triskett said. "I don't remember how many hits we had — maybe two or three. We were right there, but we couldn't get a run. We went through the whole range of emotions that year — finally getting out of the district tournament and then making it to the regional championship. It's a disappointment when you get to that level. But that's part of sports, too."

Pitching and playing point guard have their similarities, and some differences, too.

"In softball, it all starts with the pitcher, but the mindset is a little different," she said. "In softball, you get one shot. If the hitter finds your mistake, you have to live with that.

"Basketball is more forgiving. If you turn the ball over, you can hustle down and maybe get a steal or a rebound and help your team get it back in 10 seconds. If you give up a home run, it takes a little longer."

Triskett earned All-Ohio honors in softball and went on to pitch for Youngstown State University. But even then, her game was basketball.

"I had some opportunities to play basketball at the next level," she said. "But the softball package was more enticing. And with two sisters at home, it just seemed that it was the route to take. But basketball has always been my passion, my first love."

After college, Triskett landed a job teaching at PV, where she was an assistant girls basketball coach on the staff of another ACBF Hall of Famer, Melody Nowakowski. And while it was close to home, Triskett's goal was to get back home, back to GV.

"I told the superintendent when he hired me that if something opened up at Grand Valley, I'd take it," Triskett said. "And Coach Nowakowski and I talked about it, too. She could understand, because she went back to her old school."

In the summer of 1998, a third-grade teaching position opened up in the GV system, and Triskett was hired to fill it. For the next three seasons, she was the girls basketball JV coach on Chutas' staff. When he retired after the 2000-01 season, Triskett was named head coach.

"This is really the ultimate goal, to get back here and be head of the program and try to have an impact on something that was started long before I was even here," she said at the time.

Coaching lessons are always there for those who listen, and even as a teenager, Triskett had listened.

"At the boys basketball games, I'd listen to my dad in the huddle during timeouts," Triskett said. "I was always amazed that he knew just what he wanted to say. I realized that you can't waste any time in those situations. You only have a minute or 30 seconds."

There were other lessons, of course, and Triskett learned many of them from the people she played for and worked with. She feels very fortunate to have had so many fine mentors.

"To have been able to be around people like Mel Nowakowski, Ron Chutas and Cyndy Thomas — that's pretty good company to keep," Triskett said.

As a player, Triskett strove to be the ultimate team player. As a coach, she considers team-building to be her most important calling.

"The challenge is to get everybody, with all the different personalities, to work together," she said.

"The personalities change from year to year as the girls mature and the younger girls come in. You need to get them all working together to achieve the common goal.

"Sometimes it's frustrating, but I keep trying to learn. Right now, I'm reading a lot of books by John Wooden."

Life, like basketball, takes teamwork. Married to her high school sweetheart, Tom, and with two daughters, Abby, 8, and Maddy, 3, Triskett deals with much more than teaching and coaching by day's end. But it all gets done. And it all goes back to getting everyone working together.

"I get lots of help," Triskett said. "My husband is wonderful. When I'm not there, he's Mr. Mom. My parents and sisters are great. Kelly takes Maddy when we have to go long distances.

"My parents are at 98 percent of my games. Tom's mom and dad get to a lot of the games, too. I've just got a good supporting cast, and I couldn't do it without them."

Always busy and often hectic, it's the life Triskett enjoys.

"A friend asked me what I'd be doing if I wasn't doing this," Triskett said. "I told her, whatever it was, it would have something to do with sports. I can't imagine my life without sports."

Her most telling comment: "I say, ‘It's a whole lot of fun' a whole lot, don't I?"

By CHRIS LARICK Staff Writer

Although it's been almost exactly 40 years since his death, E.J. Kinleyside's legacy to Ashtabula County basketball lives on.

Who is E.J. Kinleyside? There are no official statistics of his playing the game anywhere in the county. There are no records detailing any coaching exploits in which he was involved.

So it would be left up to players and coaches who were on the court not much later than the early 1960s to tell you what he meant to the game. Especially for those who came from the tiny schools in Ashtabula County in the first days of consolidated school systems and before, E.J. Kinleyside was almost synonymous with basketball in those areas.

When he was in the beginning of his educational career in the early 1920s, Kinleyside made it possible for boys and, yes, girls to have the opportunity to play organized basketball at the long-defunct Lenox Centralized School. That was in the days before the Ohio High School Athletic Association took the right to play interscholastic athletics from girls.

When he moved over to old Richmond High School in 1938, his influence really took root. Until he retired from Richmond in 1963 after 44 years as a teacher and principal, he made sure children in the school, which housed students from first through eighth grades, had the opportunity to engage in all kinds of sports, especially basketball.

Out of that school in the late 1950s came the great teams that represented the newly formed Pymatuning Valley High School so well in the early 1960s. For instance, four of the boys who started on PV's regional qualifying team in 1961–62 — Roy Brown, Paul Freeman, Bob Hitchcock and Gordon Hitchcock — honed their basketball skills at lunchtime and on many days after school in the little gymnasium Kinleyside tended to so lovingly for a quarter of a century. Freeman and Bob Hitchcock are now members of the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame.

But it wasn't just about the kids at Richmond for Kinleyside. For more than 30 years, he served as secretary of the Ashtabula County Athletic Association, which also oversaw affairs for outstanding small schools like Rowe, Spencer, Williamsfield, Pierpont and New Lyme Deming. Players and coaches like Jim Dodd of Grand Valley, Jim Dolan and Harvey Hunt of Williamsfield, Bob Fenton of Pierpont, Fred Hirsimaki, Charles Hirshey and Robert Puffer of Rowe and Richard Scribben and Frank Zeman of New Lyme Deming, ACBF Hall of Famers all, came from that background.

Kinleyside's particular passion was serving as one of the chief organizers for the county basketball tournament that was held each year at what is now Braden Junior High School. He made sure ticket sales to the tournament were handled for what most nights was a packed house. He took equal pride in keeping the scorebook and was the guardian of all the records for the tournament. Many a winter night, he would pack his wife, Beulah, and daughter Elynne, into their 1942 DeSoto or their 1949 Dodge and make the daunting trek to what was then Edgewood High School for his duties at the tournament.

To the players and coaches that came out of that background, there is no doubt Kinleyside deserves a place in the ACBF Hall of Fame as a contributor. That will happen Sunday when he is one of the 15 latest inductees into that organization. If he were still alive, he would be the oldest member of the ACBF Hall of Fame, since his 110th birthday just passed.

Kinleyside even served as a life model to two of his prize students. Hitchcock was a long-time teacher and outstanding basketball coach at PV.

"He was one person who instilled the competitive edge in me," Hitchcock said. "He taught us all how to win and lose with class.

"People always knew when he was involved, he knew how to get things done, and he knew how to get them done right. He was so important to the Bakers, the Browns, the Freemans, the Halls and the Hitchcocks."

Freeman even followed Kinleyside's lead a step farther, coaching with ACBF Hall of Famers Andy Garcia and Harry Fails at Conneaut, then becoming head coach at Conneaut before moving into administration in both school systems.

"Mr. Kinleyside certainly implanted the love of the game and good sportsmanship in me," he said. "There was never any doubt about any of that. You would never do anything that was considered out of line. None of the Richmond boys, as we were known, ever did anything out of line.

"He was a very prideful man. He taught me to love history and math. He taught me a lot."

Joe Shantz, who coached those great early PV teams and will join Kinleyside in this year's Hall of Fame class, arrived in Andover too late to get to know him. Still, he acknowledges his debt to Kinleyside's work with his key players.

"I never got to meet him, but I certainly owe him a lot for allowing those kids to develop their abilities the way they did," he said. "He certainly helped mold quality kids, ones that were willing to trust a green coach like me."

Starting out

Elwyn John Kinleyside was born Feb. 24, 1898 in Wayne Township and grew up on the farm that still remains in his family, a tall, spindly lad in his youth.

There is little evidence that he participated in sports. The only indication is a faded photograph Elynne Slater owns of him dressed in what appears to be a makeshift basketball uniform. Somehow, it seems he developed a real passion for all things athletic, particularly basketball and baseball.

When he graduated from Wayne High School in 1916, he went off to Mount Union College for training. In those days, teachers didn't have to earn a license, but taught "under certificate," which meant that an individual could teach at almost any age as long as they showed an aptitude for instruction. He spent 1917–18 at Mount Union, but gained employment almost immediately at Cherry Valley.

"My father taught school when he was 18," Slater said. "His oldest pupil was 16."

Eventually, he wound up at Lenox Centralized School, returning periodically for college training to Mount Union in 1921–22 and eventually engaging in studies from 1927–33 at Kent State University, which was then called Kent State Normal College. His career at Lenox ran from 1923–38.

While at Lenox, he became acquainted with Beulah Fobes, who was also a teacher. "My father courted my mother for 13 years," Elynne Slater said. "She also went to Kent Normal College. That was back in the days when it wasn't considered proper for a married woman to be a teacher, and she wanted to teach badly, so they waited all that time. They finally were married in 1934."

Kinleyside was already very much into athletic organization. Slater has pictures from 1936 with her father in team pictures with the boys and girls basketball teams.

"My father was very much into equal opportunities for women," she said. "He'd have been pleased to see Title IX enacted."

The Kinleysides had hoped to have a large family, "at least four children," Elynne said. But her birth in 1935 was so difficult for her mother that she became the only child.

"My father wanted a child with his initials, so he sat out in the car at the Ashtabula hospital trying to decide what name would be suitable," she said. "He finally decided to use his first initial, E, and combined it with the last name of the doctor who delivered me, Dr. Harry K. Lynne of Jefferson. I'm Elynne Jane to my father's Elwyn John."

Charging to Richmond

Finally, when his daughter was 3, Kinleyside got his first chance at administration in 1938 at Richmond. The Kinleysides moved to a home just a short distance from the school up Route 7 in Richmond Center.

Not only did Kinleyside have duties as school principal, where he was the only male member of the staff, but he also taught the seventh and eighth graders. One of the things he always did was make sure the students had access to the gym when the weather was bad or to the baseball diamond in better conditions.

County tournament

In the meantime, he was keeping busy with his tournament work. Slater has old schedules that show him as tournament manager dating back to 1935.

"He got the trophies and distributed the tickets and programs," she said. "He took all the scores and statistics and filled in the tournament brackets. My mother was the ticket taker. I sold programs and got to see the games free."

Later, Kinleyside received numerous awards for his efforts. In 1956, he was presented with a special plaque for his efforts in organizing the tournament. The following year, the Ashtabula County Coaches Association gave him a special service award. In 1963, the ACAA named him an honorary member. He also received a life membership to the Ashtabula County Teachers Association and was named to the Retired Teachers Hall of Fame.

Another side

But Kinleyside wasn't just about basketball. Slater remembers him as an extremely devoted parent and a man of deep faith.

"He read the Bible every night," she said. "He'd help me with homework in every subject but French. He didn't know French. He was always home."

Kinleyside died on March 14, 1966. He was only 68 years old.

Thinking of others

Slater remembers her father as a man who always looked to the needs of others first.

"He really believed every child should have the opportunity to play," she said. "He would have believed that the basketball foundation was a wonderful thing, recognizing people for what they did."