Love and basketball
Geneva native Jim Osborne considers himself ‘blessed' in so many ways

By KARL PEARSON
Staff Writer

First of a series...

There is one thing that Jim Osborne has held sacrosanct in his basketball career as a player and a coach. The game has never been about him.

Plenty of evidence exists from his playing and coaching days that Osborne would have a legitimate reason to boast about what he has accomplished in basketball from both standpoints. He had a big part in making sure the Geneva boys teams coached by the late Al Bailey in the first two years of the consolidation of old Spencer High School and Geneva into one unit ran smoothly.

He did his job so well that he led the Eagles to special heights in his junior and senior seasons. That included leading Bailey's teams to an 18-2 record in the 1961-62 season, then spearheading the Eagles' drive to a surge from an ordinary regular season to a 13-9 record and a berth in the Class AA district finals in his senior year. For his performance in his senior season of 1962-63, Osborne was chosen the Star Beacon Ashtabula County Player of the Year.

From Geneva, where he was even more recognized for his abilities as a left-handed pitcher for the Eagles of Bill Koval and as a member of Ashtabula Rubber Company's 1963 American Legion state champions, Osborne went on to Wittenberg University.

Some early struggles that almost led to his dropping out of basketball early in his career were overcome through sheer perseverance. He became the guy who ran the Tigers of future Ohio State coach Eldon Miller to success on a national scale in NCAA Division II before his graduation in 1967.

Osborne's life, particularly in basketball, has always been connected to coaching greatness. But he has credentials that might even make luminaries like Bailey and Koval, who are members of the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame, envious.

At 23 years old, he left Wittenberg and had the good fortune to receive the head coaching position at Gallipolis High School, having never set foot in the community until he interviewed for the job. Forty-one years later, and now in a sparkling new 1,800-seat gym at the school now known as Gallia Academy, Osborne has racked up 529 career victories with the Blue Devils. That is more than 100 more than any Ashtabula County coach, male or female, has ever earned.

JIM OSBORNE works the sidelines during a recent game at Gallia Academy. The Geneva graduate will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame on March 28.

He entered the 2009-10 season ranked 30th all-time among Ohio's boys basketball coaches and has already moved up to 25th this year. Over the years, Osborne's teams have posted 29 winning seasons and one that ended at .500. He holds a .600 winning percentage overall (529-352) and a .619 percentage in SEOAL play (312-192).

His teams have won 11 Southeastern Ohio Athletic League championships and has been second twice. The Blue Devils have won 14 sectional championships, have been to the regional semifinals twice, district runners-up four times and district semifinalists 21 times. He has been SEOAL and district coach of the year 12 times.

Over the years, he has become known to most people in southern Ohio as Coach Oz. He's also known as the Wizard, with no offense meant to legendary UCLA coach John Wooden.

It's clear he has earned the respect of his coaching colleagues on a statewide basis. At the 2009 boys state basketball tournament, the 64-year-old Osborne was honored by the Ohio High School Basketball Coaches Association as the recipient of the Paul Walker Award.

The award is named for the late longtime coach at Middletown High School, who at the time of his retirement held the state record of career boys basketball victories with 695 and coached Ohio State and NBA great Jerry Lucas. The award is presented by the OHSBCA to an active coaching member of the association who has made significant contributions to high school basketball.

If anybody has a right to take himself pretty seriously, Osborne probably qualifies. But, if he ever did, he's long since past that stage.

"The success we've had is not about me," he said from his home in the community of 5,000, located on the Ohio River across the border from West Virginia. "I'm just the director.

"Nobody gets where they are by themselves. We never talk about winning. It's ultimately about a team being responsible for each other."

Osborne is already a member of the halls of fame at Geneva, Wittenberg and Gallia Academy, in addition to his recognition at the state level. But he is humbled to be joining his old coaches Bailey and Koval in the latest distinction as a newly minted member of the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame. His induction will take place March 28 at the ACBF's annual banquet at the Conneaut Human Resources Center.

"It's a tremendous honor," Osborne said. "They were such great coaches. It was a privilege to play for them. I learned so much from both of them."

As to his own credentials, Osborne isn't nearly so impressed.

"I'm just a simple old guy," he said. "I'm not that special."

There are those in Geneva and in his adopted community who would argue with that.

"Jim was just super," Koval, who coached Osborne in freshman basketball and had him on his varsity baseball squad for four years, said. "He was super disciplined. He was one of those rare individuals who was like having a coach on the court or on the field. He was always such a team-oriented player."

Hobart Wilson, a retired sports writer for the Gallipolis Daily Tribune, was among the first people to meet Osborne when he came to the community in 1969. He has come to a deep respect for Osborne and his commitment to the sport in the 41 years since.

"I was sitting with Wayne Niday, who, at the time, was board clerk of the Gallipolis City Schools District," Wilson said. "(Niday) said, ‘We've hired a new basketball coach and he's sitting on the other side of the room, the young man with sideburns and horn-rimmed glasses.'

"I thought to myself, ‘Wow, does this guy know what he is getting into? He's coming to a football-baseball oriented town and wants to emphasize basketball.'

In the years since that first encounter, Wilson has come to learn what a stroke of genius the hiring of Osborne was to Gallia Academy, and not just for basketball.

"He's very dedicated," Wilson said. "I've always said my kids and grandkids were fortunate to have been through this program.

"You'll never find anyone who puts in the time he does. He does summer camps and he always has open gyms going. It seems like he's doing it 15 or 16 hours a day. You'd never get young people to do that."

Roots

Throughout his life, Osborne has been associated with greatness. It all started in Geneva for the son of the late Doyle "Doc" and Edna Osborne. His father, who died in 1995, was an optometrist in the community for 49 years.

His mother died in 1970, not long after he became the coach in Gallipolis. Osborne also has two sisters — Sue Cone, who lives in Dallas, and Eileen Kadis, a Buffalo resident.

Osborne recalls first playing basketball at the old Geneva City Hall in the fourth grade. His father was a big part of that experience.

"My dad was a great influence," he said. "He drove us everywhere to games."

Koval developed a deep appreciation for the entire Osborne family.

"Jim's one of those people that just seems to have been born with a special temperament," he said. "I can only believe you're born with it, and then the upbringing he had just added to that. I came to rely on families like the Osbornes and the Kreilachs (from which ACBF Hall of Famer Gary Kreilach originates) over the years."

During his formative years, on into junior high, Osborne counted players like Larry Hill, Joel Novak and Gary Urcheck among his teammates.

At Geneva High School, Osborne spent the beginning of his freshman season with Koval.

"Bill played very structured basketball," Osborne said. "He got us into the fundamentals of playing."

Before the season was over, Osborne's skills had made such an impression that the late Jim Ayers, Geneva varsity coach at the time, brought him up to the varsity level. His arrival at that level didn't prevent a 6-11 season for the varsity Eagles.

Actually, the highlight of Osborne's freshman year came at that level.

"I remember playing in the Conneaut freshman tournament against (the Spartans' ACBF Hall of Famer) Tom Ritari," he said. "We won. That was a great experience."

By the time his sophomore year rolled around, Osborne was playing varsity ball fulltime for Ayers. His sophomore year didn't go much better, though, as the Eagles went 7-11.

By his own admission, Osborne still had a lot to learn about the game, even though his status as a varsity player in that era made him a rarity.

"I was wild," Osborne said. "I wasn't a very good shooter."

‘Bail'-ed out

The arrival of the consolidation of Geneva schools turned out to be just what Osborne needed. Bailey took over the reins of the newly formed program and immediately transformed it into one with which to be reckoned.

Bailey's tutelage gave Osborne the direction he needed in his game.

"Mr. Bailey saved my life," he said. "I could dribble behind my back and between my legs, but I just was out there running around.

"He took a wild hare and gave him some structure. I had a great home life, but we all wanted to be like him. He gave me the discipline to be a varsity player."

Bailey gave Osborne and the players with Geneva backgrounds the direction they needed. The Spencer guys, fine players like Bill Coy, Sam Hands, Bob Legg, Jim Prill and David Tirabasso, who were thrown into the mix, pushed their Geneva counterparts on the court and gave them the competition they needed. When preparations for the 1961-62 season were completed, Osborne was the only player with Geneva ties who kept a starting job.

"Practice was a war every night," Osborne said. "It wasn't friendly. As we got to know each other better, it got better, but it was tough for quite a while.

"Mr Bailey handled the practices. He made sure it didn't get too bad."

Diamond Jim

Actually, Osborne was perhaps even better known for what he did for Koval's baseball squads. A feared left-hander, he led the Eagles to the district finals his senior year.

"Jim was a special player," Koval said. "I remember that we went to the district up at Edgewater Park and Elyria was there watching us. We had guys like (football hall of famer) Bob Herpy on that team, but I remember them talking about not wanting to face Osborne.

"We used to play a lot back then. I think we played 44 games one year, including 10 over Easter break. Jim pitched a lot. He was a special player."

He was also a part of the Ashtabula Rubber Company baseball team that claimed the American Legion state championship in 1963. Among his teammates were Dennis DeGennaro, Harvey Wells and Lou Wisnyai.

"We just had a team reunion (in the summer of 2008)," Osborne said. "What a great time that was!"

He also got to play in the state all-star game at old Clipper Stadium in Columbus. Off his exploits at the American Legion state tournament, Osborne's talents caught the eye of fabled Ohio University coach Bob Wren, who offered the youngster a scholarship with the Bobcats. He had also been drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Eye of the Tiger

But Osborne had already committed to attend Wittenberg. It is a decision he did not regret.

"I was looking at several bigger schools, but my dad suggested I take a look at Wittenberg and I loved it," Osborne said.

His first real impact there was in baseball.

"I finished up 14-2 for three varsity baseball seasons," Osborne said. "I enjoyed every bit of my time at Wittenberg. I was very fortunate to watch great coaches like (basketball coach) Eldon Miller (later the coach at Ohio State), (baseball coach) Howard Maurer and (football coach) Dave Maurer and so many other great coaches there.

"I've been so fortunate to be around great people and great coaches in high school and college."

It took longer for Osborne to make an impact on Wittenberg basketball team, which had already earned a huge reputation under Ray Mears, the future coach at the University of Tennessee. Miller would continue that tradition. He didn't make the varsity squad with the Tigers until his junior year, where he earned team MVP honors. He also started in his senior year for Miller.

Osborne found out later his basketball playing career at Wittenberg might never have happened at all.

"After I graduated, Eldon told me he was going to cut me before my junior year, but another player left and they kept me on," he said. "My claim to fame was that I was the only left-handed point guard Wittenberg ever had."

Even though it was an NCAA Division III school, Wittenberg didn't duck anybody.

"I got to play against Vanderbilt when Clyde Lee was there," Osborne said. "We played Bowling Green with Walt Piatkowski (who also played in the ABA)."

Actually, he found Miller to be a kindred spirit.

"Eldon was only three years older than me," Osborne said. "He always emphasized that we were such a team.

"He said we always had to fight a different sort of pressure because we were everyone's target (having won their first national championship in 1961). We had to live up to that heritage.

"You knew you were associated with great people. You wanted to be a great player, but even more, you wanted to be a great person.

"I try to make sure my players understand that," Osborne said. "I want them to understand they're more than just a player."

Osborne certainly did his part for the Tigers in both sports. In his senior season of 1967, he was the team captain, earned team MVP honors and was chosen first-team All-Ohio Athletic Conference and All-Midwest Region. He helped pitch the Tigers to the Midwest Region title.

"That's where it ended," Osborne said. "There was no national tournament then."

Coaching begins

Armed with his degree from Wittenberg, where he is also a member of the athletic hall of fame, Osborne was looking for a teaching and coaching job.

"When I graduated I had a chance to go to Kent State or Ohio State as a graduate assistant, but my (military) draft number came up," he said. "Eldon got me a teaching job at Northwestern High School (in Springfield). I was his JV coach for one year and a varsity assistant the second year."

Then his opportunity came in Gallipolis. He interviewed for the job of a program that had enjoyed only two winning seasons in the decade before he arrived. He knew nothing else about the community.

"When I lived in Geneva and then at Wittenberg, I had no idea where Gallipolis was," Osborne said. "Now, some people have told me I don't know when to get out of town."

It didn't take long for Osborne to turn around the fortunes of the Blue Devils. They had 10 straight winning seasons after his arrival, including a trip to the Class AA regional tournament in 1973 and their first conference championship in the 1974-75 season while facing other basketball powers like Logan (home of OSU and WNBA star Katie Smith), Chillicothe, Portsmouth, Ironton, Wheelersburg, Athens and Zanesville.

He reached his 100th victory during the 1976-77 season, his 200th win during the 1985-86 season, his 300th win during the 1991-92 season, his 400th win during 1999-2000 and his 500th victory in 2006-07 against Rock Hill.

Loyalty is a big part of Osborne's makeup

"He had the opportunity to go to Chillicothe and Canton McKinley, but he stayed," Wilson said.

Wilson has watched Osborne's maturation over the years. Early in his career, he probably had some of Bailey's characteristics.

"He started out as a screamer when he first came here," Wilson said. "I think he started to mellow about 10 or 15 years ago."

But there are certain standards Osborne has adhered to all along.

"He's always been a stickler for fundamentals," Wilson said. "From the time he gets a player until they're finished, he emphasizes fundamentals."

Osborne is also a great believer in continuity. All of his coaching staff from the varsity level down to elementary school has either been one of his former players or is very familiar with his expectations.

"My varsity assistant graduated in 1975," he said. "The JV coach didn't play for me, but knows our system, the freshman coach was a two-year starter for me in the 1980s, my eighth-grade coach is a 1975 grad, my seventh-grade coach played against us for Portsmouth and the fourth-sixth grade coach played for three years in the 1980s. They all understand our system.

"I'm fortunate to have good people. And most of the kids I have now, I had their parents before."

He has served as president of the District 13 Basketball Coaches Association since 1988. He has shared his wisdom with other coaches, too.

"Norm Persin, who led Oak Hill to the (Division IV) state championship last weekend, used to be my JV coach," Osborne said with a hint of pride.

It is quite obvious Osborne is respected on a statewide basis. In 2003, he received the Ohio High School Athletic Association's Sportsmanship, Ethics and Integrity Award.

"It's pretty amazing," he said. "Both times I've been honored, LeBron James has been on the court, too. In 2003, of course, he was still a high school player. It was really something to see him again as an NBA superstar (when Osborne received the Walker Award)."

Coaching wizardry beyond basketball

Osborne's coaching wizardry has extended beyond the basketball court. He has spent 23 years as the tennis coach at Gallia Academy, notching more than 200 victories.

He coached baseball for 11 years, racking up more than 100 wins.

"But I got fired from that job," he said with a laugh.

He also spent time as an assistant track coach. He even had a run of a few weeks with the school's golf team, taking over when the head coach was unavailable because of illness and guiding the golfers to a fifth-place finish in the state tournament.

"That situation with the golf team was pretty ironic," Osborne said. "The coach had Crohn's Disease, so the athletic director asked me if I'd take the team to the state tournament and the boys finished fifth.

"Those guys were super golfers. They hardly ever practiced. After that experience, I said, ‘If I had known practice was so overrated, I wouldn't have practiced that much in basketball.' But I also realized basketball takes a lot more practice."

He taught for 36 years at Gallia Academy in physical education, health, general science and driver's education and retired for a few months. Then he returned to the school and is in his seventh year of his second tenure at the Division II school, which has 268 boys.

"I teach six phys ed classes a day," Osborne said.

Osborne has been married for 29 years to Jennifer, who is the vice president of the Ohio Valley Bank, and still resides in Gallipolis.

"She's not a sports nut, so we kind of get to do our own thing," Osborne said.

They have two grown children, Tige Osborne and Tia Vasquez. They have two grandchildren, Caden, 4, and Keely Vasquez, 21⁄2.

"Tige is named after the actor that was Captain Greer on the Mod Squad television show, Tige Andrews, who was one of my favorite characters," Osborne said. "Tige lives in Los Angeles and is a pilot of a charter airline that has flown teams like the Knicks and Yankees."

Life lessons

Obviously, basketball is a vital part of Osborne's life, perhaps even more than he can adequately express. He knows he owes it much, but has also given back much.

"Basketball has been a vehicle to help me meet so many other great people," he said. "It's been a vehicle for me to teach that life is a team thing."

He intends to give back to basketball as long as he can.

"As long as I'm healthy, I'm in it," Osborne said. "As long as other people want me, I'm in it."

Patience paid off

Conneaut wouldn't let Heidi Litwiler play varsity ball until her sophomore season, but she and her classmates made up for lost time in a big way

By KARL PEARSON
Staff Writer

Second of a series...

In everyone's life, there come times when they are too young to be permitted to do some things. Later on, they find they are too old to do other things. It all boils down to being born too soon or too late.

Heidi Litwiler certainly knows what the first aspect is all about. When she was growing up, she found herself in an era when students in the Conneaut Area City Schools were not allowed to play varsity-level athletics until their sophomore year of high school because Conneaut High School was only for athletes in grades 10-12.

Unlike today, when freshmen are an integral part of the athletic scene for the Spartans, because Litwiler was a student at Rowe Middle School when she was in ninth grade, she had to sit and watch older girls carry the load, even though there is a strong suspicion she would have been at least an important contributor to the Conneaut teams of the early 1980s.

Litwiler also had the misfortune of playing high school basketball before a 3-point line was instituted and when girls basketball was played with the same-sized basketball as boys did. It wasn't until two years after she graduated in 1985 that the 3-pointer existed in high school and a smaller ball was used in the girls game.

Heidi Litwiler of Conneaut soars to the basket between helpless Poland defenders Nancy Barnes (left) and Kelly Milliken during a Class AAA sectional championship game at Hubbard on Feb. 20, 1985. Litwiler will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame on March 28.

"I was only allowed to play my sophomore through senior years because Conneaut was only a 10th-12th school back then," the daughter of Doris and the later Roger Litwiler Sr. said.

But there's also one thing eminently clear about Heidi Litwiler. She never let obstacles stand in her way. She never got mired down in what could be, although she wonders sometimes now what might have been achieved had circumstances been different. She just attacked the situation that was available to her with a special drive and passion.

Because she took that approach to her situation, sports at Conneaut and at Lakeland Community College were the better for her efforts. The basketball and softball teams at both schools enjoyed some of their greatest moments fueled by the fire that burned within Litwiler. In fact, the Spartans enjoyed their first great era in girls basketball during her career.

The Conneaut basketball teams of which she was a part in her junior and senior seasons were particularly special. The 1983-84 Spartans of coach Paul Ruland finished 18-4 and earned a share of its first Northeastern Conference championship with the Harbor Mariners of Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame coach Frank Roskovics which featured two other ABCF Hall of Famers, Roberta Cevera (Blakeslee) and Chris Fitting.

Her senior year was even better. The Spartans went through a perfect 20-0 regular season in which it was only really tested in one game to an undisputed NEC title. Eventually, they advanced to the Class AAA district semifinals at Hubbard High School before losing to the host Eagles, 50-47.

It would be another 13 years before the Conneaut girls qualified for the district tournament and another 15 seasons before the Spartans would claim an undisputed NEC title, both under the tutelage of ACBF Hall of Famer Tom Ritari.

Litwiler could do it all for her Spartans. Even though she stood only 5-foot-7, she could drive to the basket, shoot from outside, rebound with the tall timber, play the bandit with her quick hands or make her teammates look good with razor-sharp passing.

"My passion was actually passing the ball," the 42-year-old Litwiler said. "I always led the team in scoring, but if I thought you were open, you'd better be ready for the pass because it was coming to you.

"It was emphasized to me to be a well-rounded player. I could post up, drive inside, shoot from outside and break the press. I usually played at power forward."

There is one factor that has always driven Litwiler.

"I always strive to be the best," she said.

The 1984-85 Conneaut Spartans, who put together a perfect regular season and finished 22-1, enjoy one of the special moments of that season. They are (from left) Laura Horwood, Candy Clough, Heidi Litwiler, head coach Paul Ruland, statistician Amy Laituri, manager Paula Carney, Stacey Maleckar, Cathy Horwood, Stacey Cover and assistant coach Mike Clancy (partially obscured).

Now, Litwiler can say she is definitely among the best. On March 28, she will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame.

"It's an honor," she said. "It's great that female players are recognized, too. This shows I can be among the best."

She's pleased to be joining old rivals like Fitting and Cevera and Pymatuning Valley product Melody Holt (Nowakowski), whom she never played in high school, but teamed with at Lakeland. She also had the distinction of playing against Ashtabula's Diane Davis, the county's all-time leading scorer for players of either gender.

"That means a lot," Litwiler said. "Those were great players. I played against Diane when she was a senior and I was a sophomore. She's the best female player I ever saw."

Ruland left Conneaut after that special 1984-85 season and has gone on to great distinction at Troy Christian in southwestern Ohio. He certainly felt blessed to have a player of Litwiler's skills, even if it was only for three seasons.

"Back then, AAU basketball wasn't the big thing it is today," he said. "Kids today get to play against top competition all year long. It's a little hard to compare eras, but if Heidi had had that, and she'd been allowed to play, I think she could have helped us as a freshman. And I had pretty good teams back then.

"If they had the 3-pointer back then, I think Heidi would have set a record for 3-pointers because she could hit from 20-22 feet."

The early years

Litwiler came to basketball as one of her athletic endeavors relatively late. Her connection to the sport came about almost by accident.

"I had been playing softball since I was 5 years old," she said. "In the sixth grade (at Southeast Elementary School), we were outside on the playground and my teacher, (the late) Jack Lyons, showed us the game rround the world (shooting from different spots on the court). I stuck with him and he said I should try out for the seventh-grade team (at Rowe)."

Intrigued by that possibility, the youngest of the Litwiler's four children coaxed her father into putting up a basketball hoop on the garage at 407 Main St.

"We lived across the street from the old Kroger's store (now the site of the Rite Aid Pharmacy)," she said. "My dad put the hoop on the garage and I'd go out and shoot by myself. Later on, my dad would come out and shoot with me after dinner."

That was possible because Heidi was pretty much an only child by that time since her older siblings Debbie (now deceased), Roger Jr. and Jeff were grown and out of the home while she was still in elementary school.

"I was the mistake," she said with a laugh. "There's 10 years between me and Jeff. It was like being an only child."

Actually, that status had its own perks.

"My mom (who now lives near her in Erie) and dad (who died in 1993) were there for every game every year when I played," Litwiler said. "They were the best support anyone could ask for. They drove me and my friends all over. They did all they could for me."

Eventually, a couple of her future Spartan teammates, Stacey Cover and Laura Horwood, got hoops at their homes, too, so they took turns hosting shooting sessions in their driveways.

It was not without some trepidation that Litwiler took Lyons' advice and tried out for the seventh-grade team at Rowe. It's there that she first encountered Mike Clancy, who is still in the coaching realm in the county.

"Mike Clancy and Sandra White were my first coaches for my first organized basketball experience," Litwiler said. "I was really nervous about it, but it went fine.

"I had girls like Candy Clough and Stacey Maleckar on my team. And Mike kept moving up with us all the way until I was playing JV ball (in her sophomore season)."

Clancy had an impact on molding Litwiler into a complete player.

"He really emphasized being a well-rounded player," Litwiler said. "I'm naturally left-handed, but he taught me to use my right hand. He made it so you wouldn't have known which was my best hand unless you saw me shoot the ball."

Since there were few other female players to look up to at the time, Litwiler focused on some NBA stars.

"Once I figured out I was good, I started to follow players like Dr. J (Julius Erving) and Magic Johnson," she said. "I tried to compare myself to them. I think I figured out early I had a knack for the game."

It was a gradual growth process for that group of girls at Rowe, but eventually they laid the groundwork for a powerhouse.

"We were .500 or above in seventh and eighth grade," Litwiler said. "In my freshman year, we only lost one."

Litwiler inquired why she and some of the better freshmen weren't utilized with the high school team. The Conneaut varsity was 5-14 in that 1981-82 season.

"I asked several times about playing JV and was told we weren't allowed," she said.

Spartan existence

When they did get to Conneaut High School, Litwiler and other sophomores like Stacey Cover found they had to spend a bit of an apprenticeship at the JV level.

"When we were sophomores, Stacey and I were a little frustrated because we felt we could help the (varsity) team (which finished 7-11)," Litwiler said. "We worked our way up to being full-time varsity players by midseason of my sophomore year."

Ruland knew he had the elements of a special team.

"We had a pretty good nucleus," he said. "We had good players like Barb Gamble, Heidi and (Cover)."

As her varsity career blossomed, and in the years since, Litwiler has developed an ever-increasing appreciation for the skills Ruland brought to the table.

"Coach Ruland was the best coach I ever had," she said. "He told us to be patient.

"He was so calm, and he knew the game inside and out. He loved to teach us new plays, and they worked. He'd get right out there and play with us. And he had us in shape, too. It was like church with him."

There was also Clancy on the scene.

"He helped out with everything," Litwiler said.

The big time

By the 1983-84 season, the Spartans were ready to roll. Even the players had a sense of it, and they were taking others along for the ride.

"In my junior year, we had a lot of confidence," Litwiler said. "Even the papers could see it all coming together."

To prepare herself for that season, Litwiler did something most girls of that era didn't, heading off to summer camp with Gamble at Kenyon College. It helped make their play that much stronger and built the Spartans, who also included Cover, Horwood, Clough, Maleckar and Jill Marshall, into a formidable group.

Ruland appreciated Litwiler for her intelligence as a player.

"I've had four players in my career who were extremely smart, and Heidi was the first of them," he said. "All four of them were not super quick or super fast, but they were always up there among the leaders in steals. They all had quick hands and really understood the game."

The NEC race that year became a two-horse chase, which eventually saw Conneaut and Harbor tie for the championship.

"We beat Harbor up there and they beat us (at Garcia Gymnasium)," Litwiler said.

"Those Harbor games are the ones I remember," Ruland said.

Litwiler went on to earn first-team Star Beacon All-Ashtabula County and Coaches' All-NEC honors in her junior season.

But, despite that accomplishment, there was a sense in the Spartan camp that the 1983-84 season could have been even better. It only made them that much more determined to top that year the next season.

"We figured we should be undefeated going into our senior year," Litwiler said. "We'd shot for it as juniors. We really felt we could have had an even better junior year, so we were really focused on going undefeated our senior year."

Litwiler became even more goal-oriented for her senior year after her softball season.

"We made it to regionals in softball my junior year," she said.

That special season

Remembering what that trip to summer camp had meant before her junior year, Litwiler and her old buddy, Horwood, made a trip to camp at Bowling Green State University before their senior season.

"We also played a lot of open gyms," she said. "We didn't play a lot of one-on-one. We did a lot of shooting and practiced things like alley-oops (passes)."

All the work paid off handsomely. The Spartans simply blew away the competition in the NEC. In fact, they throttled virtually all the competition, outscoring teams by a 55.8-36.0 average for the season.

"The only close game we played during the regular season was over at Geneva," Litwiler said. "They had Lori Belconis on that team (coached by Jeff Pizon). We only won, 33-30."

"That game was really tough," Ruland said. "They really slowed it down. It was a tough game, but the girls remained calm and Heidi had a couple steals at the end that really helped."

It was the only time that season that Litwiler, who averaged 16.1 points, was held below double figures, scoring just seven. Maleckar scored 14 to lead the Spartans. Belconis, who joined Litwiler on the first-team on the all-county and all-conference squads and went on to earn county Player of the Year honors the next season, had 18 that night.

When they had completed their perfect regular season, Litwiler said the Spartans had to do some serious goal readjustment.

"We really didn't know much about the (sectional) tournament," she said. "I think we had placed more of our expectations on going 20-0 than on the tournament."

Ruland had been trying to think ahead, knowing that the competition in the NEC and Ashtabula County at the time probably wasn't helping the Spartans much.

"I was the (athletic director) at the time, and I tried all season long to schedule a game with teams like Mentor, North or Lake Catholic, which were the power teams up there, but I couldn't get a game with them," he said.

So Ruland was the one most concerned about what the Spartans would face in the Class AAA sectional-district at Hubbard High School. They handled the sectional part well, beating Poland, 61-33, and Youngstown Wilson, 69-36, to set up a matchup with the home team.

The Spartans met their end in the district semifinals, falling behind by 17 points in the third quarter. Despite a furious rally and 18 points from Litwiler, Hubbard hung on for a 50-47 victory. The Eagles were led by Cara Hendrix, who went on to third-team All-Ohio honors, with 25 points.

"I knew Hubbard was a good, quality team, and we hadn't been up against that kind of team before," Ruland said in his phone conversation from Troy. "But the girls kept fighting."

"We were disappointed, but we'd had a great season," Litwiler said.

Litwiler reaped the benefits of her play after the season. She was named NEC Player of the Year and was also first-team all-county in a year when Holt, who averaged 25 points a game, was named Star Beacon Ashtabula County Player of the Year.

"Mel and I still debate that one," Litwiler said with a laugh. "I told her, ‘At least I passed the ball.'"

There was one other significant honor for Litwiler — selection as a special-mention All-Ohioan.

"It was great when I heard about being All-Ohio," she said. "They announced it at school. I think being an all-around player made it easy. I was glad people recognize that."

Ruland is proud of another fact about members of his last two Conneaut teams.

"Heidi, Stacey (Cover) and Barb Gamble all went on to play college basketball," he said.

A note Ruland gave Litwiler that she still has in her scrapbook shows the esteem in which he held her.

"Lots of people know how to be successful, but very few people know how to handle success," it read. "Congratulations, because you are a winner."

Litwiler and Cover were also key factors after the season in leading an Ashtabula County all-star team coached by Roskovics and Edgewood's Bob Callahan to an 86-85 victory over a squad of Medina County all-stars in a game at Lakeland in the Ohio Female Athletic Foundation Senior All-Star Classic. Litwiler scored 18 points in that game and grabbed nine rebounds.

The next step

With an excellent academic resume to go with her athletic accomplishments, the world seemed to be Litwiler's oyster.

"I had a full ride from (the United States Military Academy at) West Point," she said. "I was all set to play basketball there, but I looked at four years of college and five years in the military and decided I didn't like the commitment."

She also had opportunities to play both basketball and softball at Youngstown State University and Defiance College. But Lakeland, which was riding high at the time, offered that through the guidance of the late Terry Hietanen, a charismatic figure in both sports, and its proximity to her home, won the day.

"Lakeland was close to home and they had just won nationals two years in a row," Litwiler said. "Terry got me, (Cover) and Holt there. Mel and I roomed together for two years."

But the whole situation blew up almost immediately.

"They fired (Hietanen) and we got a new coach," Litwiler said.

But they all stayed the course with the Lakers. It worked out especially well for Litwiler, who was twice named Laker Athlete of the Year for her exploits in basketball and softball.

"We made it to nationals again in softball," she said. "I had a blast."

Her excellence at Lakeland gave her a shot at Cleveland State University to play both sports, but she only stayed there one semester before she got married.

After college

Litwiler came back to Conneaut and worked in the tax business with her parents until her father died in 1993.

"I went back to school at Gannon and got my degree in radiological sciences," she said. "I've been doing that ever since. I'm employed by St. Vincent Hospital and I teach Gannon students. They come to me."

But she didn't walk away from her own athletic pursuits.

"I played for the A-1 Geneva (women's softball) team that went to nationals until three years ago," she said. "Then I retired from everything."

That's not entirely true. Now she is involved in helping her 15-year-old son Zak, a sophomore at Erie's Collegiate Academy, a school for gifted and talented students, make the most he can of a budding hockey career, following the example of her parents.

"I take Zak everywhere," Litwiler said. "He plays for the (Erie) Junior Otters. It seems like every weekend, we're going to Pittsburgh, Buffalo or Cleveland. You have to do that for your kids."

She still finds herself falling back on the values basketball and softball taught her. Sometimes, that's even while she's fighting her own nature.

HEIDI LITWILER and her son, Zak, are all smiles, as they will be when she enters the ACBF Hall of Fame on March 28.

"Basketball gave me discipline," Litwiler said. "It made me a perfectionist, but I'm always striving to be patient and work on that other kind of patience.

"I've always been one to go full out. Discipline has made me slow down. I give Zak, my patients and my students all my time now."

Fred Scruggs

2010

Fab Fred Scruggs had a ball filling pretty much every role in a 4-year career at Harbor

By KARL PEARSON
Staff Writer

Third of a series...

All-out effort. Unselfishness. Teamwork. Loyalty. A desire to give in return for what has been received.

In today's society, those are qualities to which an increasingly diminishing number of persons hold true. In a culture where so much emphasis is placed on the individual, it is becoming a rare thing to find those who are dedicated to those propositions.

Fred Scruggs of Harbor drives baseline against archrival Ashtabula during a game at Ball Gymnasium. Scruggs will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame on March 28.

Those are the principles to which Fred Scruggs has clung throughout his life. The lessons that his parents, Willie and Fannie Scruggs, taught him when he was growing up in Ashtabula still carry him. The tenets coach Andrew Isco taught him for four seasons as a standout basketball player at Harbor High School still ring true. They are what motivate him even today in his work at Ashtabula's juvenile justice facilities located at the Donahoe Center in Ashtabula Township.

"I was always taught to play with 150-percent effort," Scruggs said. "I was taught to leave it all out on the court.

"I was taught to do whatever the coach said. I just wanted to do whatever I could to help us win games."

He made the Harbor teams of his freshman and sophomore seasons forces to be reckoned with. But, when circumstances changed for his junior and senior seasons and he had the opportunity to go to Ashtabula High School and hook up with Panther players who had been his teammates when he was younger and become part of a championship team there, he didn't abandon the Mariner ship.

"It was frustrating, and there was the temptation to go to Ashtabula," Scruggs said. "But I chose to go to Harbor instead. I discussed it with my parents. My dad told me you have to accept the good with the bad."

Now, long removed from the basketball court, Scruggs is committed to using his degree in criminal justice to try and guide troubled youths back onto the kind of path his family set him upon years ago.

"It's something I feel I have a knack for," he said. "A lot of kids are misguided. A lot of them come from single-parent homes or are raised by their grandparents.

"It helps that they know there is someone who cares. It's like being a big brother for them. It's something I can do to help the community."

One other measure of his commitment to the community is that he still resides in the home on West 24th Street in which his family lived when he was born.

There is some awareness among the youngsters he works with that Scruggs was a special player when he roamed the court, although they probably are not aware of the depth to which that runs. Even 20 years after he last played on Ashtabula County courts, the 1,248 points he scored at Harbor rank eighth in county history among boys players. At the time, it ranked fourth. It was the most any Mariner boy ever scored, a record that will not be broken since Harbor's consolidation with Ashtabula into Lakeside High school.

Fred Scruggs (right) of Harbor and John Bowler (center) of St. John received their 1989 Star Beacon Ashtabula County Player of the Year and Coach of the Year awards from the Star Beacon's Karl E. Pearson at the Star Beacon Senior Classic at Ball Gymnasium.

Now, he should gain even more credibility with his charges. For, on March 28, the 39-year-old Scruggs will enter the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility, becoming one of its youngest members.

"It's a big honor," he said. "It's an honor to be among a lot of great players. It's excellent to be a part of being with a lot of other players I always used to hear about. It's excellent to be going in in my first year of being eligible, too."

It's a nice reward for what Scruggs interprets as just doing the job to which he was assigned.

"I just loved to play the game," he said. "I always played to win."

He is also pleased to be joining Isco in the Hall of Fame.

"That man always brought out the best in me," Scruggs said emphatically.

The admiration cuts both ways. Isco considered himself fortunate to have a player with such gifts who was also open to direction.

"Fred was a good kid," Isco said. "We had to get him out of the habit of saying ‘yes, sir,' all the time.

"He was a very upright person. He was very coachable. You never had to tell him something twice."

Isco always admired Scruggs' work ethic.

"Fred was a lunchpail kind of player," he said. "He always knew his role and accepted it. He never missed a practice.

"He was brought up the old-fashioned way. He was an old-school kind of player. He was brought up the old-school kind of way and he did everything the old-school way."

Mostly, Scruggs led by example.

"He wasn't a rah-rah type of guy," Isco said. "He was close with everybody on the team.

"Sometimes Fred would amaze me. Believe me, there are very few players who amaze me."

Isco knew he had a special player. He made that perfectly clear to his son, Bill, who was one of Scruggs' teammates.

"I always told Bill, ‘Set a screen for Fred and get him open,' " he said.

Apparently, Scruggs' level of play and commitment to excellence made quite an impression even on opposing coaches. Despite the Mariners' record, he was chosen Star Beacon Ashtabula County and Coaches' NEC Player of the Year. He also earned All-Ohio recognition.

Scruggs certainly interpreted it as a sign of respect. Still, it was a little of a hollow accomplishment because his play didn't translate into team success.

"I was shocked to win Player of the Year," he said. "I just thought that showed I fit well into Coach Isco's system.

"Individual awards are fine, but it's always been about team for me. I just gave it my all."

Both Scruggs and Isco can hone in on a play that typified that.

"In my senior year, we played at Edgewood and Scott Vacca was having an excellent game," Scruggs said. "He was really in the offensive flow.

"I was having a good game, too, with something like 27 points. Anyway, I stole the ball once and was going in and realized that Scott was trailing me on the play, so I made a behind-the-back pass to him and he made the layup. I remember looking over at the bench and Coach Isco was standing there clapping. That meant a lot."

Isco, not usually one to focus on individual accomplishments or to readily hand out praise, remembers it, too.

"That was a great play," the coach nodded. "It was amazing, but that was Fred."

The next level

His achievements on the court gained the attention of college scouts, but poor grades limited Scruggs' options.

"I had offers from Division II schools like West Liberty (in West Virginia) and Notre Dame (in South Euclid)," he said. "I ended up going to New Mexico Military Institute. I was able to play right away out there."

Things went well enough in his first year.

"It was tough being that far away from home, but they had a couple guys from Columbus out there, too, so it was pretty good," he said. "I ended up starting by my sixth or seventh game."

But then fate intervened.

"I tore my (medial collateral ligament) early in the season," Scruggs said. "I completely tore it and had three surgeries on it.

"I guess I was born too soon. They didn't have the medical technology back then to deal with it. I tried to play again, but I couldn't move from side to side the way I used to. I wish I had a do-over on that. I did finish school out there and got my associate's degree."

Isco feels Scruggs could have made even more of his basketball talents if his grades and his health hadn't intervened.

"I think he could have been a fine Division I player," the coach said. "On a bigger team in college, they would have used him on the outside. He'd have needed to adjust, but I think Fred could have done it."

"I would have liked to play at a four-year school," Scruggs said. "I tell the kids I wish I would have work as hard in the classroom as I did on the court. If I had better grades, I could have gone for to a four-year school."

He came back to Ashtabula County and went to work in industry, first at Presrite in Jefferson, then at Perfection in Madison. But he also felt the desire to make his education work for him and started worked part-time with the youth detention center even while he was still in industry.

"I had cousins and a sister who looked up to me as a role model," Scruggs said. "I felt I wanted to do something to help the community, too."

With the help of Renee Powell and Steve Sargent, he gradually became more involved in the work at the youth detention center.

"They took a chance on me," Scruggs said.

He has been at the Donahoe Center full-time for eight years.

"We're working with kids as young as 9 up to 17," Scruggs said. "I probably work with six to 22 kids.

"I do the whole package. We do gym activities, schoolwork and have meals with them. I'm glad I have the chance to work with them."

Support and structure

Scruggs has always leaned on family, friends and teammates support. He tries to make sure he gives it back.

"My sister works in a psychiatric hospital in Columbus," he said. "I also receive a lot of support from my friend, Anthony Ross. He just retired from the Air Force after 27 years and lives in Fayetteville, N.C. He's liked a brother to me. Our families grew up like brothers and sisters."

His Hall of Fame induction will be the first event in what figures to be a special week for Scruggs. On April 2, he will be married to Karen Hester, mother of former Lakeside standout Mark Hester, who is now at John Carroll University, Lakeside sophomore Brendan Hester and Charles Hester, a freshman at Lakeside.

Fred Scruggs, present day.

He also has a 10-year-old son, Frederick Jr., who is in the fourth grade at Lakeside Intermediate.

"We call him Juicy because he never liked milk from the day he was born," Scruggs said with a laugh.

The discipline that Scruggs learned in basketball still rings true in his personal and professional life.

"Basketball gave me structure," he said. "It's allowed me to do something I love to do. I tell everybody to find something they can enjoy doing.

"We have a team (at the youth detention center). It's almost like playing basketball. We have a gameplan and we have to watch out for each other."

He even sees parallels between Isco and his current bosses, Jim Howell and Dan Sheldon.

"A lot of things run through them," he said. "They trust us with a lot. They're both a lot like Coach Isco in their own way. They can be pretty nice guys or they can be pretty hard guys if they want.

"I have a lot of responsibility. I want to leave a good mark next to my name. Giving more than 100-percent effort still holds true for me."

David Benton

2010

This David was Goliath for Bula
An untimely ankle injury may have been all that separated David Benton and his Ashtabula teammates from a date with destiny

By KARL PEARSON
Staff Writer

Fourth of a series...

If anybody has an appreciation for what family is all about, it is David Benton. As one of 10 children of the late L.T. Benton and Ceola Benton, who still lives in the old family home on West 41st Street in Ashtabula, he developed a keen sense of what that concept is all about.

It has been developed to an even greater extent in raising three children of his own.

But along the way, Benton was part of one of Ashtabula County's most revered sports families, the 1977-78 Ashtabula High School basketball team. That team is arguably the greatest team to ever take the court in Ashtabula County. In the popular and acclaimed Hoop Dreams Tournament, a computer-generated tournament created by the Star Beacon and including 48 of the greatest teams submitted by readers, those Panthers came out on top.

David Benton shows off the shooting form that played a part in him becoming one of the top players on one of the best teams in Ashtabula County basketball history — coach Bob Walters' 1977-78 Ashtabula Panthers.

At the head of that family was coach Bob Walters, a great player in his own right who attained hall-of-fame stature. The team included some of the finest athletes ever to grace the basketball courts of the county, players like Tom Hill, another player of hall-of-fame standing, along with Deora Marsh, who still plays professional basketball in Europe, and Harrison "Scooby" Brown.

Other key players were Jewel Hanna, Tony Powell, Robin Thomas and Roger Ball. It also included players even more renowned for their exploits for Walters' outstanding tennis teams of the era — Perry Stofan, Lou Murphy, Hank Barchanowicz and Stanley Ball.

That family went toe-to-toe with some of the greatest teams in Ohio of that year. The pinnacle of that was its Class AAA district championship game at North High School against the St. Joseph Vikings featuring future Ohio State standout and eventual NBA player Clark Kellogg.

The 6-foot-4 Benton was right in the thick of that battle, outplaying Kellogg in the first half. But a severe ankle sprain early in the third quarter sent Benton to the bench for the rest of the game and allowed St. Joseph to claim an 84-80 victory. Many observers, at least from an Ashtabula County perspective, felt Ashtabula would have won that game had Benton stayed in the game.

Despite the bitter disappointment of that sudden ending, Benton still considers his basketball experiences at Ashtabula, and particularly with that team, one of the highlights of his life. One might say that 1977-78 Panther squad was a unique family, almost a band of brothers, even 32 years after that special season.

The years tend to melt away whenever the players encounter each other, even though the circumstances of life have scattered them.

"Coach Walters is a friend of mine," Benton said. "It's not just an old-coach, old-player relationship.

"Nothing is more important to me than family. Whenever we see each other, we end up talking for at least 15 minutes about what's going on in our lives. Many times, the conversation gets around to that season."

David Benton of Ashtabula follows through on a dunk as Ed Warner of Edgewood looks on during a Class AAA tournament game at North in the 1977-78 season.

Certainly, Benton's contributions to that team are without question. According to information supplied by Walters, Benton averaged 18.5 points per game in his senior year and was in double figures in all but two of the 20 games he played in helping the Panthers to an 18-3 record.

But his contributions were manifest even in the two seasons before that. In his sophomore season of 1975-76, a 10-10 year for the Panthers, he averaged 11.4 points per game and scored in double figures in 10 of the 19 games in which he played, even though he didn't start in all of them. In his junior season of 1976-77, when Ashtabula was 13-7, he averaged 14.1 points per game, including hitting double figures in 18 of the 20 games.

"David was consistent all the way," Walters said. "He was a huge guy and a very hard worker. He was a load.

"If we needed him to get a rebound, David got it. He had some skills. He was left-handed, too. The first game he played for us as a sophomore, he scored nine points and he just grew on me from there."

The mutual admiration of coach and player has only intensified over the years from the coach's perspective, too.

"Every time I see David, we don't just shake hands," Walters said. "He comes over and gives me a big hug. I'm blessed to have a great relationship with David."

Hill talked about the impact Benton's injury had on the Panthers in his own hall of fame story in 2007.

"When David went down, it took the wind out of our sails," he said. "I remember all of us looking over at the bench to see if he was coming back in. I know he would have if he could have, and what an emotional lift it would have been, so he was really hurt."

The Panthers tried to come back, but Kellogg, with the lighter Marsh on him, exploded for 24 second-half points and St. Joseph emerged with an 84-80 victory.

"The kids did regroup," Walters said. "They did put a last push on, but we couldn't quite do it."

Benton was perhaps the most devastated of all. The pain lingers even now.

"Talk about disappointment!" he said. "It was probably the most disappointing thing that's ever happened in my life. I knew we had that game.

Even now, I sit back and think about what might have been. I'll always wonder. But I couldn't let it ruin my life. If I left the earth today, there would still be a lot more good than bad. I'm not disappointed with my life at all."

Walters still cherishes the memory of that team and not just for its successes.

"One of the most rewarding aspects of that team for me was getting to work with them every day in practices or games," he said. "They worked so hard. And they always demonstrated the values of sportsmanship. They were great representatives of our school. David would be at the forefront of that."

After Ashtabula

For a while after they graduated from Ashtabula, it looked like Benton, Hill and Marsh would be a package deal at Chattahoochee Valley Community College in Phoenix City, Ala. Indeed, the latter two went there and eventually ended up at four-year schools, Marsh at Southern Mississippi and Hill at Austin Peay.

But Benton wasn't comfortable there. He opted instead for the sunshine and sand at West Palm Beach Junior College in Florida.

"I stayed there for a year, then came back," he said. "Then I looked a little bit at Lakeland, but instead I went out to Colorado when I was 19 or 20. College just wasn't for me. Maybe I should have tried just being a student."

A road trip with friend Ken Williams on a visit to see his brother Al in Colorado cemented his next move.

"We stopped in Wisconsin, then Cheyenne, Wyo., then visited Al in Denver and then went to Tacoma, Wash.," Benton said. "I went out to Colorado in 1979-80. It's a great state and Denver's a great city. If you'd seen it, you'd understand."

David Benton is shown at his boyhood home on West 41st Street in Ashtabula with his daughter, Ashley Benson (left) and his great niece, Asia Patterson. The Ashtabula High School graduate will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame on March 28.

He spent 14 years in Colorado working in the wire and chemical industries before the pull of family brought him home to Ashtabula in 1993. He took up work very similar to his father's.

"I rehab homes and have a couple of maintenance contracts," Benton said.

As time has worn on, Benton has learned the value to a good education. That's why he has strongly encouraged his children, David and Ashley Benton and Cameron Bobb, to get their college educations. David and Cameron completed theirs at Kent State University, while Ashley is a freshman at Bowling Green. David and Cameron both played basketball at Lakeside High School. He also has a granddaughter, 6-year-old Destiny.

"I'm very big on getting your education," Benton said.

Recently, he has moved to Columbus, where he does similar work to what he had been doing in Ashtabula. With his mother and several of his siblings still here, he usually spends two or three days a week back in Ashtabula.

"It was time for me to leave Ashtabula," Benton said. "In Columbus, it's my time to live. I like Columbus, and my family is still pretty close."

Benton, now 50, remained active in basketball well into his 30s.

"I played basketball from my teenage years until I was 30-plus," he said. "I also did some coaching at McKinsey and Thurgood Marshall (elementary schools)."

The truths of the game still apply to Benton.

"The discipline it gives will always be a part of my life," he said. "It teaches you to stand on your own two feet, to make decisions and live with it. It teaches you how to get through it and live with it. Basketball helped me to learn to listen.

"I feel like I've given my kids a good, solid foundation. I hope they have it as good or better than I have, and mine's been pretty good.

Basketball has been the catalyst of direction in my life," Benton said.

Finally getting his Phil

The game of life almost prevented Phil Miller from putting together a stellar career at Jefferson

By KARL PEARSON
Staff Writer

Fifth of a series...

One of the many things sports can provide is an emotional outlet. It can be a source of great joy, but it can also be an avenue to find release in times of great sorrow.

If anybody is equipped to relate how important the emotional side of basketball can be, it's Phil Miller. Certainly it provided plenty of joyful moments to him when he was a young man.

Phil Miller (front row, No. 33) as a senior on the 1945-46 Jefferson Falcons. The team included (seated, from left) Francis Fasula, Don Reuschling, Ed White, Dan Share, George Lukianchuk, Miller and Roger Brenneman, (middle, from left) coach R.L. Shoaf, Cecil Hammum, Raymond Shore, Richard Elderkin, Martin Brenkus, Raymond Fasula and Donald Tietz and (back, from left) Paul Bowers, Richard Dugan and Duane Martin.

Perhaps even more important, though, was that Miller was able to use basketball to get him through some of the toughest times that anyone can imagine. Especially when he was a teenager growing up in Jefferson, the sport helped him deal with issues no one should ever have to deal, but too many youngsters and families of his generation were forced to. It helped him fight through the sorrow that struck his family when his older brother, Gus Jr., was killed in a barracks fire in Japan just a few months after World War II ended in 1945.

Basketball gave him the strength to carry on through the balance of his senior season of 1945-46 with the Falcons. It turned out to be the best of his career as he averaged 14.1 points per game, according to information submitted by the late Bill Brainard, his old teammate, and led Jefferson to a 15-5 record and a runner-up finish in the county Class B tournament. His scoring represented roughly 40 percent of the Falcons' offensive output for the season.

It also gave him the structure needed to help with family matters in a time of tragedy near the close of World War II, equipped him with the determination to serve his country when he was called upon, then return and build a fine family, all the while continuing to contribute to the daily life of his community.

For a number of years after he returned from military service at the end of 1947, Miller continued to play the game with excellence for one of the finest independent adult teams to grace the area, the Clinton Drugs team sponsored by Jefferson pharmacist Joe Clinton. The skills of Miller and his Clinton Drugs teammates, which included Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Famer Brainard, were also important to helping provide for the underprivileged of Ashtabula County through their participation in the Milk Fund charity games.

Although he has been away from the court for more than 50 years, basketball still brings Miller lots of joy, mainly as a Cleveland Cavaliers fan.

"I love watching them play," he said with a big smile. "I hope they go all the way this year."

It's probably not totally by chance, either, that his daughter, Linda, is married to a basketball coach, former Geneva, Jefferson and St. John boys coach Al Graper.

Nor is it surprising that the four children of he and his wife of 60 years, Louise, are all involved in serving others. Eldest son Philip is the priest of Ashtabula's St. Joseph parish. Second son Jerry followed his father into work with the U.S. Postal Service. Linda Graper is a teacher at Jefferson High School, while youngest daughter Susan Miller lives in Euclid and teaches in North Ridgeville. Jerry has presented the Millers with a granddaughter and grandson, while the Grapers have given them a granddaughter.

Despite all he did with the game and has done as a citizen, Miller expressed surprise with the news that he had been selected as a member of the Class of 2010 of the ACBF Hall of Fame.

"I was really surprised," he said. "I knew I was a good player, but I didn't think I was that good. There are so many great players in the Hall of Fame. I'm very happy to be one of those guys because I think they were better players than I was."

Miller felt his greatest asset was his shooting ability.

"I could shoot," he said. "I still shoot around with the kids around here, and I think they're surprised.

"I wish they'd had the 3-pointer when I played. If I had my life to live over, I would drive more and try to get fouled because I was a good foul shooter."

The passage of time is breaking up the old basketball gang with which Miller hung around. But there is still at least one of his teammates who can vouch for his skills.

Don Reuschling believes Miller has the proper credentials for the ACBF Hall of Fame.

"Phil was a great team player," he said. "At that time, he did a lot of scoring because things were a lot more defensive back then. He's definitely worthy of going into the Hall of Fame.

"His teamwork and his shooting were what made him special. He was really fast, too. We were all seniors together and we really knew how to work with each other."

Miller's high school coach would probably also qualify as someone who could speak to his skills with authority.

"(The late) Robert Shoaf was our coach," Miller said. "He told me in my senior year that I was the best shot in the county. Mr. Shoaf didn't give out many compliments, and he'd had championship teams back in the 1930s."

The early years

Even as a little boy, Miller and his family went through some incredibly tough times.

"My father (Gus Miller Sr.) died in 1934 when I was only 6," he said. "He had been the manager of an estate in Mentor next to Lawnfield (the home of President James A. Garfield)."

That left his mother, Zita, as a single mother during the darkest days of the Great Depression trying to care for two boys who were barely in elementary school. Fortunately, their father had purchased a farm at the corner of Chapel Road and Clay Street, and the family moved there.

"Those were hard times," Miller said. "The farm was 37 acres. My mother had an office job in Ashtabula. We raised things like strawberries and rhubarb and we also grew hay. The neighbors would do the haying. My mother sold the farm when I was in junior high."

The family moved into Jefferson, briefly to a home at the corner of Pine Street and Route 46 near the present-day office of dentist Dr. Elliott Rice. Eventually, Zita Miller, who died in 1974, bought a house at 35 East Ashtabula Street.

"That's where I got to know Bill Brainard," Miller said. "He lived on West Ashtabula Street."

That's also where the Miller brothers got into basketball.

"My brother and I put a hoop up on the barn," he said. "A lot of the kids from the neighborhood came over to play. Eventually, our mother even let us put a light up out there and we'd play out there until 11 o'clock at night."

But most of the time, the games were pretty intimate.

"A lot of the games were one-on-one with my brother. I was only 5-5, which is why I had to learn to shoot. He was 5-10 and much better than me. He could dribble the ball from end to end of the court.

"There wasn't much dribbling out there, though. It was more about passing and shooting. I think that really helped me. I think dribbling should be a last resort."

Building his game

Miller's love for basketball really spiked when he was in the eighth grade.

Always an inspirational force for Phil Miller was his older brother, Gus Jr., who is shown during World War II in Luzon, Philippines during a relaxing moment. Gus Miller survived fighting in the Pacific theater only to perish in a barracks fire in November, 1946 in Japan.

"We won the Ashtabula County Junior High Tournament that year," he said. "We beat Saybrook in a game played at Windermere School in 1942."

But as the country descended deeper into World War II, less opportunities for younger players existed.

"There really wasn't anything formal when I was a freshman," Miller said.

But that didn't stop him from continuing to work hard on his skills. He had a goal in mind for his sophomore year in 1943-44.

"I really wanted to play with my brother," Miller said. "The whole team that year was seniors, so I had to work real hard."

His work ethic must have made an impression on Shoaf, too, who had been forced to return to the bench because so many young teachers and potential coaches had gone off to war. Miller was able to crack the starting lineup.

All that work turned out to be worth it as the Miller brothers were an effective 1-2 punch for Jefferson. Brainard was also a part of that team. Together, they produced a truly memorable moment in a solid 9-7 season.

"Probably the biggest game of my sophomore year was when we playing Orwell," Miller said. "I think it was my brother's biggest game, too.

"Orwell was undefeated when we played them. Late in the game, it was tied at 48-all. Somebody took a wild shot, my brother got the rebound and he passed it ahead to me for a layup that gave us the lead.

"They took another shot and my brother got the rebound again," Miller said. "He passed it to me and I got it to (Brainard) down in the corner. His shot didn't even hit the rim. They got a basket in the last few seconds, but we won, 52-50."

The Millers had such an impact that they were both recognized on the all-tournament team of the Class B county tournament, held annually at Edgewood, or what is now known as Braden Junior High. Gus Miller was chosen to the second team as a guard, while Phil Miller was an honorable-mention choice. Another ACBF Hall of Famer, Rowe's Robert Puffer, was named to the first team that year.

It wasn't long after he graduated that Gus Miller received his draft notice. When he traveled to Cleveland for his physical examination, it was discovered that he had a heart murmur, which earned him 4-F status and would have exempted him from the service.

But he was not to be denied his opportunity to serve, so he returned and begged officials to let him into the Army. Perhaps his determination was born of his own experiences as the product of a single-parent home.

"(The draft board) let him go," Phil Miller said. "Gus said he would feel terrible if he'd let a guy who had a family go off to war, get killed and leave those kids behind."

Gus Miller wound up going to the Pacific Theater, eventually serving with the 32nd Red Arrow Division of the Army in hotly contested campaigns in the Leyte Gulf and Luzon in the Philippine Islands.

Meanwhile, Phil Miller was definitely the main man for the Falcons in his junior year. They finished 7-8 in his junior year.

"I was generally the high-point man," he said.

There are many persons in positions of responsibility who subscribe to the theory that if they surround themselves with good people, they have a very good chance of being successful at whatever they try.

Probably one of the strong advocates of Shoaf came to depend upon him even more. The coach wasn't very vocal, but he had definite ideas of how he wanted the game played.

"He would work with us before the season a lot with things like medicine balls (to get the players' hands stronger)," Miller said. "He was kind of quiet. He never bawled us out at halftime. He might make some adjustments. The biggest thing he'd say was to slow it down and work the ball inside."

That was because Shoaf was really the product of another era when scores were even lower, center jumps had been held after each basket scored and the pace of play was much slower.

"He had to change his philosophy from the center-jump days," Miller said. "He said he would never tell a guy to shoot the ball. Because I was comfortable shooting the ball, he let me. I would also steal the ball a lot and score. I think Mr. Shoaf trusted me."

Actually, Miller and his teammates found out that Shoaf even had a softer side away from basketball.

"He owned a hot dog stand at Conneaut Lake Park (Pa.)," Miller said. "The whole team would go over there. They were good hot dogs. He never charged us. I think he enjoyed having us over there."

The young Falcons struggled early in the 1944-45 season, but one of the highlights was another big victory over Orwell, this time on the opponent's home court. It served as a launching pad for his senior season.

That fateful season

There was a much more experienced group of seniors to share the load with Miller in his senior year. They included classmates Roger Brenneman, Fran Fasula, George Lukianchuk and Dan Sharpe, who are all deceased, and Reuschling. Ed White, a junior that season, is also still alive.

"We were excited about the season," Miller said. "We thought we'd have a good team."

But, a few weeks before the 1945-46 season was to begin, Miller and his mother were devastated by the news that Gus had perished in a barracks fire at his base in Japan, where many U.S. soldiers were sent after the war ended in early August to oversee the occupation.

"He was killed on Nov. 17, 1945," Miller said as his eyes misted and his voice cracked a bit. "When they had the fire, he got out at first, but he realized one of his comrades was still in the barracks, so he went back in and they both died in the fire."

Jefferson was preparing for its opening game against Kingsville. A memorial service was conducted by the local parish priest just a few days before that game was to be played.

Miller said he wrestled the whole time in the days leading up to the game about whether to even play. His mother settled the issue.

"My mother said Gus would have wanted me to play," he said.

But their mother, who had been an avid fan, especially when her sons had played together, never saw another of Phil's games. She did have a way of following his exploits, though, and always supported him in his passion.

"My mother never saw me play again after my brother was killed," he said. "She just couldn't bear to be at the games. She'd always put a call into the schools where we were playing just to see how we were doing, though."

Phil Miller continued to wrestle with the decision to play right up until the Falcons took the court on Dec. 7, 1945.

"When I took the floor, I was very emotional," he said. "It was hard for me not to cry before we went out on the court."

But he fought his way through the game, scoring 18 points in Jefferson's 33-22 victory over Kingsville. He wasn't that impressed with his play, but others certainly were.

"I had a hard time during the game," Miller said. "The principal, Charles Watson, came into the locker room and told me what a great game I had played. I told him I had missed a lot of shots."

"We tried to be as supportive of him as we could," Reuschling, who often was the team's secondary scorer, said. "(Miller's grief) certainly didn't affect his playing."

Actually, his ability to channel his emotions, fueled by a desire to represent his brother well, seems to have made Miller an even better player.

"After that game, I didn't have the feeling of wanting to cry," he said. "I dedicated the season to my brother."

There were other highlights. One of the biggest came in the third game of the Class B tournament. Kingsville was again the victim.

"We beat them, 44-35," Miller said. "I had 28 points, the most I ever scored in a game."

That victory also put the Falcons in the championship game against a Rowe team coached by ACBF Hall of Famer Charles Hirshey that was on its way to a 24-2 season and a trip to the district tournament.

Bitter disappointment

The Falcons had lost a tough 33-30 decision to the Vikings in late January at Rowe, so Jefferson was primed for the rematch. The Falcons held a 22-16 halftime lead and still clung to a 32-31 lead with one minute remaining. Then some bizarre things happened.

Jerry Puffer, one of the stars for Rowe, was fouled and calmly sank a free throw to tie the game. As Miller describes it, a rule that had just been instituted that season kicked in.

"They passed a rule that if you fouled someone in the last two minutes of the game, that they got to shoot the foul shot and also got to take possession of the ball," he said. "They scored off of (the possession)."

Rowe made the most of its opportunities. The Vikings inbounded and Rich Wheeler, Puffer's cousin, was fouled. He made the free throw to give Rowe the lead. Blessed with another possession, Puffer secured a 35-32 victory for Rowe with a basket in the last 15 seconds despite several desperation shots by the Falcons. It extended a Rowe winning streak to 21 games to that point.

Miller scored 14 points to finish as Jefferson's only double-digit scorer. It didn't reduce the pain then. He has become philosophical about it in the years since.

"We did well, but I was still disappointed that we didn't win the championship," he said. "I hated to lose, but it taught me that you don't always get what you want."

There was one final moment of high school glory. He was selected to play in an all-star benefit game on a team that was, ironically, coached by Hirshey and also included Rowe standouts Puffer, Wheeler and Clarence Kennedy.

Miller was the star of the game, which was won by Hirshey's team over a squad coached by Kingsville's Robert McNutt. He scored 20 points.

"That was a lot of fun," he said with a smile.

The next steps

Miller followed his brother's example in entering the Army, actually ending up in the Pacific like Gus.

"I went into the service right after graduation on June 5, 1946," he said. "I ended up going to the Philippines and doing some basic stuff there. I was there on July 4, 1946 when they were declared an independent nation. Downtown Manila was quite a sight."

He stayed in the Philippines until July of 1947. He had a brief stay in the Palau Islands, then gradually moved back to the U.S., first to Hawaii, then San Francisco, where he received his discharge papers in December of 1947.

He charted a course back to Jefferson. He found Brainard waiting there with an offer to join up with the newly forming Clinton Drugs team, which was located in what is now the Sonshine Corner Christian bookstore on Chestnut Street.

That team clicked immediately.

"We won the first 10 games we played in 1947-48," Miller said. "In 1948-49, we won the first 19. After a few seasons, we started a Clintons' B team so more men could play. Mr. Clinton was a wonderful sponsor."

The team was blessed with fine coaching, too.

"One of our first coaches was Bud Woodbury, an attorney from Jefferson who was also a good athlete," Miller said. "He got a writeup in the Plain Dealer.

"We played a lot of good teams from Warren, Youngstown and Sharon, Pa. One year, we played in the Cortland Lions Club Tournament. Out of 60 teams, we lost in the final game to Greenville, Pa., 64-62."

Miller also remembers Clinton Drugs' involvement in the Milk Fund games, which helped raise money to buy milk for the underprivileged in the county.

"I played in two championship Milk Fund games," he said. "The first one was against Martin Brothers Realty with (ACBF Hall of Famer) Ray Peet and other Ashtabula stars. We won, 47-41, and Bill Brainard and I scored 10 points each.

"The second Milk Fund game was played at the new Harbor gym (Fawcett Gymnasium). Ray Peet and I were co-captains of the all-star team that played the Pruden Chicks (from Geneva). Ray played the first three quarters and I played the second and fourth. We won in overtime, although I can't remember the score."

Miller played for several season with Clinton Drugs.

"I played with Clinton Drugs for about seven years, until we had our four children," he said.

On the home front

Miller made other important connections almost immediately when he got back to Jefferson in 1947. They both turned out to be early Christmas presents that year.

One was meeting Louise, who had moved to Jefferson in her junior year of high school from Perrysburg. The Millers celebrated their 60th anniversary on Feb. 26.

"Our kids took us to Presque Isle to celebrate," he said with another big smile.

He also made his connection with the postal service almost immediately upon his return to Jefferson. In a way, Miller had Gus to thank for that.

"My brother had worked at the post office when he was in high school," he said. "After I got home, the postmaster asked me if I could help out with the Christmas rush.

"After that, I took the civil service exam and passed it. I worked at the post office for 40 years until I retired in November of 1988."

But that doesn't mean Miller has let any grass grow under his feet. He and his family members have had a group activity for nearly 30 years.

"We started working with concession trailers in 1981," he said. "Now we have three. We sell corn dogs, Swiss cheese and fudge.

"We've worked all the local fairs. My wife and I pretty much count the money now."

The Millers also find time to travel and work hard on their own garden.

Through it all, the principles of basketball still ring true for Miller.

"It's still a part of my life," he said. "I always try to be honest, to be a good sport and a team player.

"Losing that last (high-school) game taught me you don't always win everything."

Super at St. John

John Wheelock could do it all on some very good Herald squads

By KARL PEARSON
Staff Writer

Sixth of a series...

When he was developing as a basketball player, John Wheelock was fortunate to have plenty of people who were willing to share their time, knowledge and even their courts with him.

He didn't have access to summer camps, open gyms or traveling teams that are prevalent now and even serve as the lifeblood of programs.

What he did have was coaches and players, and not just from his school, St. John, that were willing to give him every opportunity to play and even took him into their homes to give him a means to try and find some way to quench his seemingly boundless thirst for the game.

To be sure, Wheelock is the first to admit the relationships he had at St. John with a coach like Don Cannell and players like Denny Berrier and Billy Johnson were key factors in his life when he was coming up through the ranks with the Heralds from the 1966-67 through the 1968-69 seasons.

"Players like Billy and Denny were my role models when I was at St. Joseph (Elementary)," Wheelock said. "Coach Cannell was my coach for four years. We were always undermanned, and I think we always did the best we could."

But Wheelock's basketball education went well beyond those key figures. In one of the golden eras for the sport, he was fortunate to receive the inspiration and the encouragement of many towering figures from other schools.

"The guy who really got me playing was (Ashtabula's) Bob Walters," he said. "He sort of took me under his wing.

"I used to go over to Geneva and played a lot with guys like Gary Kreilach and Steve McHugh, who became a real good friend, and Larry Cumpston. I'd go to play over at Geneva in the summer and Al Bailey would pick me to play on his teams. He was one of my mentors."

It didn't stop whenever young Wheelock went west. He got some pretty good schooling when his path took him east as well.

"They had a league on Sundays over in Conneaut," he said. "We'd started playing at 3 or 4 and were still playing at 7 or 8. I played against guys like Ron Richards, Scott Humphrey, Jeff Puffer, John Colson and Al Razem and I got to know (Spartan coaches) Harry Fails and Andy Garcia pretty well. I got to know Fails really well. He used to take me to his house, feed me lunch and show me all the books he had on basketball."

Then again, it wasn't like he had to stray from Ashtabula to find good competition.

"I played a lot of ball against (Ashtabula's) Jim Hood, Bill Kaydo and a lot of other guys around town," he said. "I got a lot of encouragement from (Ashtabula coach) Gene Gephart."

That meant a lot to someone who was of the rare breed who concentrated on playing one sport in that era.

"I dedicated my whole life to basketball," Wheelock said. "I gained so much knowledge from other people.

"I wish I could have played in a different era. I would have loved the chance to go to camps and open gyms, but you weren't allowed back then, so whatever you did in basketball you had to pretty much do on your own. I played a lot of pickup ball."

Wheelock's basketball education didn't stop in high school. He had the good fortune to play college ball for two more luminaries at Lakeland Community College and Kent State University-Ashtabula Campus.

"I played for (future Cleveland Cavaliers coach) Don Delaney at Lakeland," he said. "He was very demanding, but I probably learned more basketball from him than anyone else in my life. When I got to play for him it was like, ‘Wow!' I played for him for two years.

"I came back to Ashtabula to finish my education and I got to play for Ed Armstrong at Kent. He was a great guy. I had so much fun playing for him. He was a great coach."

The list of Wheelock's contacts reads like a Who's Who of area basketball. So many of those he mentioned are already members of the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame, or figure to be in the coming years.

It is with great excitement and even surprise, then, that he finds himself joining the ranks of so many of his old coaches, teammates and opponents. That will occur March 28 at the eighth annual ACBF banquet.

"It's kind of a shock," Wheelock said from his home in Columbus. "Those are a lot of great players I played with and against.

"It's kind of amazing because so many of them were my role models. I idolized so many of those guys."

Ask any of those Wheelock cited and they agree he is taking his rightful place among them.

"John was one of the best shooters we ever had at St. John, and we had a lot of them," Cannell, who coached Wheelock for all four years of his high school career, said. "He was a very good all-around player. He came to play all the time.

"When he was a senior, we depended on John to be a leader, and he was vocally and by example. He was one of the most coachable kids I ever had."

Billy Johnson and Wheelock teamed up for two years on the St. John varsity and terrorized area teams from the perimeter. Later, they were a sharpshooting duo for Armstrong's KSUAC team that won the Kent State Regional Campus Championships in their senior year.

"John was a very good teammate," Johnson, now the Ashtabula County Sheriff, said. "A lot of people said with the talent we had at St. John, there weren't enough basketballs to go around, but John was a very unselfish player and we all got our share of points. We always believed there was someone we could count on to get us the ball.

"When I played, we saw an awful lot of double teams and box-and-ones. John and I really had to play off each other.

There is no doubt in Johnson's mind of Wheelock's worthiness to join him in the ACBF Hall of Fame.

"John is very deserving," he said emphatically.

The early years

Even though he may not have realized it at the time, Wheelock got a bit of a taste for basketball even when he was in the early years of his schooling. Clyde and Anna Mae Wheelock started raising daughters Carolyne and Barbara and John, their youngest child, on Woodlawn Street in Geneva, where Bailey also happened to live.

"That's when I first got to know Al Bailey," he said.

Wheelock remembers first being intrigued by the game when watching the Geneva teams Bailey coached that included Jim Osborne, who will join him in the Class of 2010 into the ACBF Hall of Fame.

"My sister, Carolyne, was best friends with Jim's sister, Sue, and I used to go to the game with them, so I got to see Jim play a lot," he said. "(Doyle) Doc Osborne (Jim and Sue's father) was my (optometrist) when we lived in Geneva."

But Wheelock's own involvement with the sport really didn't take root until the family moved to Ashtabula when he was in the third grade and settled in a home on Lake Avenue across the street from St. Joseph Church. He attended St. Joseph Elementary School.

At the time, a group was formed to make sure all the elementary school boys in Ashtabula had an opportunity to play against each other. He started playing in the fifth grade.

"It was called the Rodeo Midget Club," Wheelock said. "All the schools — St. Joseph, Mount Carmel, Bunker Hill, State Road, Station and West — had teams in it and would play each other."

It was in that setting that he met the first coaches who would truly form his love of basketball — Lou and Mike Wisnyai.

"They taught us the fundamentals," Wheelock said. "They worked with me on learning to dribble lefthanded and shoot lefthanded layups and how to go up off the correct foot on layups."

He also credits his father, now deceased, with being a huge influence on him throughout his formative years on into high school.

"My dad used to take me over to St. Joseph School and rebound and pass the ball to me while I was shooting," he said. "He always used to drive me anywhere I wanted to go to play basketball, too."

Even more importantly, Clyde Wheelock communicated a very important credo to his son, which proved valuable because the youngster was frequently in situations where he was around older players and coaches.

"My dad always taught me to be respectful of my elders," Wheelock said. "I always made sure I behaved that way."

It was all good preparation for junior high basketball for St. Joseph, where he encountered another coach with impressive athletic credentials — Dennis DeGennaro.

"We had a really good parochial school league in the county then," Wheelock said. "He taught us a lot of defense and playing team ball. I remember playing a lot of games against (Berrier) and (Johnson), who played for Mount Carmel. Those were great games."

Wheelock probably got a little extra coaching from both sources.

"Lou and Dennis lived right near me, so I saw them a lot," he said. "I really appreciated all the time and energy they put in to teach me."

So Wheelock felt he was equipped with a solid base of knowledge when he got to St. John. As it turned out, he and Cannell were beginning a four-year connection as the latter was serving as the Heralds' freshman coach under Roland "Smokey" Cinciarelli when Wheelock arrived.

"Freshman ball was different," he said. "I liked playing for Coach Cannell because he always emphasized playing hard and playing well with your teammates.

"I thought I already knew a lot about the game. He was very good at getting you ready for games. I always felt we went into games knowing what to do and were very prepared."

When Wheelock's sophomore season rolled around, Cinciarelli had been called into military service, so Cannell moved up to the varsity job. That was a move Wheelock actually appreciated.

"I think Coach Cannell knew a lot about offense and defense, probably more than Coach Cinciarelli had," he said. "(Cannell) really knew his X's and O's. He was very good at letting you do what you did best."

It just happened that Wheelock's sophomore year coincided with the best team St. John put on the court during the Cannell era, so it was difficult for the youngster to break into the varsity lineup. The Heralds were 12-7 and Cannell was chosen Star Beacon Ashtabula County Coach of the Year in a loaded Northeastern Conference.

"My sophomore year, we started Denny Berrier, (Johnson) and (future Perry coach) Lou DiDonato," he said.

Wheelock spent the early portion of his sophomore year splitting time between the junior-varsity team, coached by E.G. Colin, another Lake Avenue neighbor, and the varsity. He chafed against that a bit.

"I told (Cannell) I'd rather play four quarters of JV than ride the bench for the varsity," he said.

Gradually, Wheelock got more varsity playing time. He had his moments.

"I remember playing against Conneaut when Ron Richards was playing," he said. "We were behind at halftime and I came in for the second half and scored eight points and we came back to beat them."

His impact was really felt in postseason play in the old Class A sectional tournament played at Fairport High School, when teams had to win at least three games to advance to the next level.

"I had worked real hard in practice and they gave me a shot," Wheelock said. "I think I really flourished in the tournament. I had 18 points in one game and 19 points in another. Then we ran into Kirtland that had Jeff Mills and was coached by Don Delaney and that was it."

"John played very well for us in the tournament," Cannell said.

Catching on

By his junior year, Wheelock was set for a much more significant role as the person the Heralds went to for scoring punch when the opposition tried to shut down Johnson. But St. John had no size unlike the previous year with Berrier and had to rely on the outside shooting capabilities, particularly of Johnson and Wheelock, to get the job done. The team, which also included Wheelock's classmate, Joe Petronio and Jim Bodnar, finished 9-10.

"We could score," Wheelock said. "If we'd had the 3-pointer, we would have won a lot more games. I've never seen a better pure shooter than Billy Johnson."

"We would have done a lot better if there had been a 3-point line," Johnson said. "We were so small, we had to do most of our shooting from out in the area where they shoot 3-pointers now."

Johnson also remembers Wheelock as a cool customer, maybe even cooler than he was.

"When I played, I always liked the gyms to be about 97 degrees because it helped me get good and loose to play," he said. "I really liked to sweat. But, you know, I would look over at John and he never even broke a sweat. I'd be soaking wet and he'd be cool as a cucumber."

Wheelock was good enough to earn first-team Coaches' All-Northeastern Conference honors his junior year. All of that happened in a season when Gephart's Ashtabula squad went 20-2, winning the NEC and a sectional title in the process. It was also the first season of ACBF Hall of Famer Bill Koval's run as varsity coach at Geneva, with the Eagles featuring Hall of Famer Kreilach going 16-7 and also winning a sectional title.

There was one huge moment in Wheelock's junior year. This time, the Heralds got the best of Delaney and Mills, who was on his way to earning Ohio's Class A Player of the Year award.

"I hit a shot at the buzzer to beat them up at Kirtland," he said.

Even with Johnson gone after that season, there were high hopes for the Heralds in Wheelock's senior year. Petronio was back with him to go along with classmate Joe Dragon at guard, talented sophomore Mike Mudd making his presence known and fellow senior Tony "Dungy" Presciano providing depth off the bench.

"My senior year, we were picked to win the NEC," Wheelock said.

But, the need at St. John to have so many of its athletes play multiple sports came back to haunt the Heralds even before the 1968-69 season began.

"Joe Petronio played football, too, and he hurt his shoulder in football," Wheelock said. "I think he tore his rotator cuff and missed a lot of time and could barely raise his arm when he did play. We didn't have anybody else who could score.

"The first five or six games, I scored a lot. Then I started to see a lot of box-and-ones and zones. We lost a lot of tough games."

So the Heralds ended up going 9-11 to finish behind Fails' Conneaut team featuring Humphrey, Puffer, Razem and John Colson that went 17-6 to take the NEC title and earn a sectional championship the year before its march to the regional tournament. Ashtabula was 14-7 for Gephart that season.

The Ashtabula and Geneva teams of that era were too much for Wheelock's Heralds to overcome throughout his career in a truly high-water mark for Ashtabula County basketball.

"We beat Harbor and Conneaut twice that year, but we never seemed to be able to beat Ashtabula or Geneva," Wheelock said. "Ashtabula had players like Alvin Benton (older brother of Wheelock's fellow Class of 2010 inductee David Benton) and Bill Kaydo and Geneva had guys like Gary Kreilach."

But there were still highlight moments for Wheelock in his senior year, enough to earn first-team Star Beacon All-Ashtabula County and Coaches' All-NEC honors. One game provided a brush of fame and a moment of tragedy for Wheelock.

"At the time, E.G. Colin had St. John's single-game scoring record with 32 points," he said. "We played Harbor, and I had 22 points at halftime. We went out for the jump ball to start the second half and the ball got tapped out and into a big pileup and I broke my finger in the scramble for the ball and had to sit out the second half."

That incident had much farther-reaching implications for the Heralds, according to Cannell.

"We didn't have John for the tournament," the coach recalled.

There were other memorable moments in Wheelock's senior year, with varying results.

"I remember playing against PV, too," he said. "They had a real good team that year and we were scheduled to play them down there. There were some big writeups in the paper before the game. I remember we drove up to their school and there were people standing outside waiting to get in when we got off the bus. PV had Lenny Lattimer (brother of Hall of Famer Larry Lattimer). They blew our doors off and Lattimer ate us alive."

Two other games from his senior year still pain Wheelock.

"We were up by seven points against Ashtabula with only 17 seconds left and we lost the game," he said. "It was real hard to recover from that. Then we played Geneva and lost by one point in overtime."

But there were memorable victories, too.

"One of the highlights of my senior year was beat Conneaut over there when they were 12-0 and had Humphrey, Puffer and Razem," Wheelock said. "We had lost to them at our place and Fails had used a box-and-one against me. For some reason, when we played again, he took it off and I had a real good game. He told me later that was one of the biggest coaching mistakes he ever made.

"We beat Kirtland at our place when they were 15-0. I scored 33 points in that game."

In addition to the honors he received locally, Wheelock earned recognition on a much wider basis.

"I was honorable-mention All-Ohio and honorable-mention All-American," he said proudly.

But the lack of team success in his last year still rankles Wheelock a bit.

"My senior year was a pretty big disappointment," he said.

College basketball

Wheelock must have made quite an impression on Delaney from the encounters with Kirtland, because the coach recruited him to Lakeland when he took over the job with the Lakers.

He still appreciates the time he spent with Delaney, even though those Lakers never reached the heights that might have been anticipated.

"He was a very good coach," Wheelock said. "I learned so much from him. One of the things it taught me was how to read picks. I never knew anything about that until then."

It paid off for at least one big moment with the Lakers.

"We played in a tournament in Indiana and we had a game against Notre Dame's JVs in the days before Digger Phelps was the coach," Wheelock said. "I scored 38 points and their coach talked to me and asked if I wanted to go out there, but I didn't have the grades."

He hadn't finished his degree at Lakeland yet when the move toward starting a family drew him back to Ashtabula. But it didn't pull him away from the court because he saw the team Armstrong was assembling with his old Herald teammate Johnson and former opponents like Ashtabula's Kaydo, Conneaut's Colson and PV's Ned Roach.

"That was a great team with a great group of guys," he said.

Certainly, being a key part of the 1971-72 Viking squad that captured the regional campus championship was a big thing, but Johnson recalls another game that elicits a laugh even now.

"We played down at New Castle (Pa.) and we were up against a team that was real fast and real tall and liked to dunk a lot," he said. "They played a zone that was real strong on one side and kind of weak on the other.

"John was on (the weaker) side and had a lot of open shots, but he was cold. Finally, we called a timeout and I suggested to John that we switch sides, so we did. I was real hot. As the game went on, he kept saying he was all right now, but I wouldn't let him go back over to that side. I ended up scoring 38 points and we won, 74-73."

Life after college

After that season, Wheelock got his associates degree in business. He was married in 1973 and has two children from that marriage who still live in Ashtabula. Son John Joseph, 33, is married to Maria and has presented Wheelock with two grandchildren, 10-year-old Tristan and 5-year-old Madelyn. Daughter Wendy is married to John Hogan and also has given Wheelock two grandchildren, 6-year-old Ashton and 2-year-old Ana. Both children are Harbor High School graduates.

He went to work with Johnson at the Union Dock for several years, then worked at the Rockwell Brake plant for several years.

He didn't retire as a basketball player, though. In fact, he hooked up with several of his old buddies from the playing and coaching community.

"I played with Bob Walters, Steve McHugh and Gary Kreilach for the Jerry Sinkler Ford team," Wheelock said. "We used to travel all over and played against a lot of great teams."

Eventually, he went through a divorce and moved to Columbus in 1983. He and his second wife, Debbie, have been married since 1985. He has worked for 25 years as a horticultural route manager for Tru Green Lawncare.

He and Debbie have two children, Tony, 25, and Megan, 18. Tony graduated from Columbus Westland and manages a Columbus-area Kroger's store. They moved to Grove City so Megan, who had her own fine career, could live out her basketball dreams at Central Crossing High School, a conference rival of the girls basketball machine at Pickerington Central High School. Megan is a freshman at Columbus State University.

Megan's basketball cravings gave Wheelock a chance to explore another side of the sport — coaching.

"I got Megan involved in basketball," he said. "I started coaching her when she was in the fifth grade. We got her into AAU ball until she was in the eighth grade, so I worked with her for about four or five years. I wish there had been AAU ball and basketball camps when I played.

"I love coaching. It's different coaching girls. They don't give you a bunch of lip. I like teaching kids. And Megan got to play against some great players. She played against (Pickerington Central's) Emilee Harmon (a freshman for Ohio State's Big Ten champions). Megan had a real nice high school career."

Wheelock appreciates all that basketball gave him.

"I've met so many great people through basketball who have been an influence on my life in so many facets," he said. "I wouldn't have traded the chance to meet people like Don Cannell, Harry Fails, Al Bailey or any of the guys I played with or against for anything. I had so much fun.

"It taught me how to manage people and to deal with homeowners. It taught me to be disciplined and to control my temper.

"Basketball made me the person I am."

Love... And basketball

Russell Bethel and his wife, Grace, shared a passion for sports and for one another

By KARL PEARSON
Staff Writer

Seventh of a series...

One of the best things an educational administrator can have on their resume is that they have had a wide range of experience in various aspects of the business. It's never a bad thing that they have a background in sports.

By those standards, Russell Bethel was well equipped for the roles he took on during a career that spanned nearly 40 years in a variety of school systems. As a teenager, he was a fine all-around athlete at Kingsville High School, particularly in basketball, before his graduation in 1936.

He went on to Kent State University and graduated in 1940 fully intending to begin his teaching career, but instead ended up in a job in retail job until World War II intervened. It was not until he returned from service in what was then known as the Army Air Corps in 1946 that Bethel was really able to begin his teaching career.

Along with immersing himself in teaching, Bethel's abiding love of sports quickly led him into the coaching realm to New Lyme Deming School. In that setting, he was the coach, working not only with the basketball squad, but the baseball and track teams.

In each instance, he made his school into the scourge of the old Buckeye League that involved the small high schools in the county like Rock Creek, Dorset, Williamsfield, Rowe, Orwell and Spencer. He was part of a run of seven Buckeye League basketball championships in eight seasons, with his part starting in 1947.

With the small size of the high school classes at New Lyme Deming, Bethel quickly rose through the ranks to not only shoulder teaching duties, but serve as the school's superintendent. After several seasons as the coach of those sports, the weight of his duties became so demanding that he had to set coaching aside, stopping as the basketball coach after the 1951 season.

It was a profoundly sorrowful occasion when Bethel had to walk away from coaching, according to his youngest child, Sally Bethel Murphy, who still lives in the Akron area.

"My dad won awards in all the sports," she said. "He really enjoyed coaching. He always said that was one of the really happy times of his life."

But he got one last shot at the coaching ring, at least for basketball, quite by accident. It turned out to be a bolt from the blue for Bethel and the Rangers, who literally blazed a path through small-school basketball in the area in the 1953-54 season, paced in particular by two players, Richard Scribben and Frank Zeman, whose legends almost disappeared into history before it was brought to light by some of their old teammates and the investigative work of Star Beacon Sports Editor Don McCormack. Bethel's knowledge and his flexibility in adapting to the fast-paced style of play Zeman dubbed, "fire-engine basketball," helped that team produce perhaps its greatest season.

Most of that team only knew Bethel as a teacher and authority figure. They appreciated that he didn't try to reinvent the wheel when he took over as their coach. They actually found a somewhat lighter side to him.

"I know he liked coaching," Scribben, now 74, said. "He was an honest person and well-liked. He was a very fair-minded person."

"I only knew Bethel for one year," Zeman, who transferred to Deming from Jefferson for his sophomore season and only played for Bethel as a senior, said. "He was an easy-going guy. We were all like a family and were all pretty close. He tried to do the same things with us that the coach before him (Ray Rathbun) tried to do with us."

Alex Olah was another key player for that team, and several other Deming teams during his high school years and probably had a much closer relationship with Bethel than most of his teammates, for a variety of reasons.

"I had Mr. Bethel all my years in school," he said. "He was like a father to us. He wasn't rough on us, but you didn't have to push us.

"He was a well-liked man all over Ashtabula County. He was easy to get along with. You couldn't have met a better man."

As much as Bethel's skill as a player and a coach might have been admired, those who observed him probably appreciated him for his work as a humanitarian, especially for the underprivileged families in his school district, even more.

"I know the Olah boys and my sister had free lunches at school when Mr. Bethel was there," Alex Olah said. "He was a good Christian man."

"Times were hard back then," Scribben said. "Mr. Bethel was a church-going person and he would often get donations from different people to help other families. A lot of people don't realize how he helped the less fortunate with things like heat or food."

Basketball was the sport that truly resonated with Bethel, despite his love for the others.

"The only sport he ever really talked about was basketball," Sally Murphy said.

As it turned out, the 1953-54 season was Bethel's last season in coaching. That, along with a gradual move into higher levels of administration that took him away from students and into situations with adults that he found far less satisfying, was something that ate at him in nagging little ways for years afterward until he retired in 1979 from his position as the superintendent of the Canal Fulton Northwest school system.

"The farther my father got away from working with kids, the less he liked education," Murphy said.

Just because he was away from coaching, though, didn't detract from the interest Bethel and his wife of 60 years, Grace Day Bethel, maintained in sports, particularly in basketball. In fact, when she played at Kingsville High School, Grace Day was as much admired for her basketball skills as her future husband in the days before the Ohio High School Athletic Association suspended girls atheltics.

"I think the day they put sports on television was one of the happiest days of their lives," Sally Murphy said. "Every Sunday after dinner was a sports day."

When Russell Bethel died just one day after Memorial Day, 2001 at age 83, LeBron James was still a high school player at Akron St. Vincent-St. Mary High School, but living in that area, Bethel was aware of the young man's skills. Grace Bethel lived until 2007 and got to see James become the star he is for the Cleveland Cavaliers.

"My dad would have loved LeBron," Sally Murphy said firmly. "I know my mom loved to watch LeBron."

Were he to have the time to check out Bethel's accomplishments, and being the basketball historian he is, James might well have appreciated what Bethel gave to the game and his community. His achievements were enough to earn Bethel admission into the Class of 2010 of the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame on March 28.

"I think Mr. Bethel definitely deserves it," Olah said. "He was a great coach and a great man."

Being the low-key person he was, his daughter believes her father would have enjoyed his recognition, but wouldn't have made a big display of it. He would have enjoyed the chance to get together with his old players and rivals, especially the latter, because he enjoyed the collegiality of the coaching profession so much.

"(Coaching) was just a real fun time in his life," Sally said. "He would have been happy to just be a coach his whole life, but he knew he wouldn't have been able to support his family that way."

Growing up

Russell Bethel was born Dec. 3, 1917, just months after the United States entered World War I, in Greenville, now a community of a little more than 13,000 residents located about 35 miles north of Dayton. It is the county seat of Darke County and is the site of the Treaty of Greeneville in 1795, which opened up settlement of the Northwest Territory, from which Ohio came.

The Bethel family moved to Kingsville in 1929. Bethel's father was the Baptist minister in Kingsville.

"My grandfather and great-grandfather were ordained ministers in Kingsville," Sally Murphy said. "My great-grandfather, my mother's grandfather, James Gray, was a circuit rider in Ashtabula County."

Bethel grew up just a short way down the street from Kingsville High School. Just a little farther up the street lived Grace Day. She lived with her grandparents, James and Susan Gray.

"When my dad moved into the parsonage, he used to run out of the house and go and pull her hair when she'd walk by on her way to school," Sally Murphy said with a laugh. "My mother took piano lessons from my father's sister. She called (Bethel) a real pest."

Grace Day was no pushover, so she must have enjoyed the attentions of her future husband, even when she was younger. She would go on to become equally adept as a player as Russell Bethel in the days when the OHSAA still allowed girls to play interscholastic sports. In fact, she earned second-team Star Beacon All-Ashtabula County honors in her senior season of 1935, three years before the OHSAA shut down girls sports and was not to permit them again until 1975. In the same season, Bethel earned first-team all-county honors.

"My mother would say, ‘We played our games before the boys, and we drew as many as they did,'" Sally Murphy said.

Her mother never lost her competitive fire, although the avenues for female athletes closed shortly after she left high school and eventually her attention turned to becoming a wife, mother and teacher. Grace Bethel was a far more outspoken person than her husband, according to her daughter.

"She was very competitive," Sally Murphy said. "My dad didn't talk much about his playing and coaching. Mom was much more verbal. Dad would say that he always came to see her play."

Russell Bethel was no slouch as a player. Among the many items his wife saved from their exploits was a picture of him with Kingsville's league champions in 1933, his freshman year. That squad went 12-6 and won the Ashtabula County league and county tournament titles for coach Charles Fish Jr. Bethel scored 102 points that year to rank third on the team behind Gordon Brocklehurst and captain Raymond Pickens.

"Mom used to keep all of their playing stuff and Dad's coaching memorabilia in her cedar chest," Sally said.

After Kingsville

When his career at Kingsville ended, Bethel followed Grace to Kent State University. Little more than six months apart in age, her birthday had fallen within the parameters that put her in the Class of 1935, while his put him in the Class of 1936.

Grace got a two-year degree at Kent, which was all that was required to teach elementary school in that era. Russell went the full four years at KSU, earning a degree in education.

With her degree, Grace actually began her teaching career in the Warrensville Heights school system. It was Russell's intent to follow suit once he finished in 1940, but he ended up working at a Woolworth's store until they were married on April 15, 1941, then taught at Deming for a brief time that year. When the U.S. entered World War II on Dec. 8, Russell went soon after into what was then known as the Army Air Corps before it became the Air Force, actually joining up in 1942.

Eventually, Russell headed off to the Pacific theater, while Grace moved back to Kingsville with their relatives. Bethel ended up in the Philippines in 1943, using the training he had received at Kent State in physical education to work in the physical training of the troops there. He achieved the rank of staff sergeant and was even awarded a Bronze Star for meritorious service.

Bethel did come back to the U.S. while the war was still raging and eventually to Kingsville for brief periods. Their first child, Susan, who now lives in Washington, D.C., was born in 1943.

He was released from the service and came back to Kingsville in January 1946. Soon, the Bethels set up a home in Cherry Valley, where their second daughter, Julie, who now resides in Durham, N.C., was born.

With the Rangers

Russell Bethel went back to work in the Deming system when he returned, teaching science. He got into coaching almost immediately and had the Rangers operating at a tremendous clip in all sports despite working with teams that included not much more than 10 players at any point. Years later, most of the students there became part of the Pymatuning Valley school district in the early 1960s.

The Bethels lived in Cherry Valley for a while, then moved to New Lyme to a home near the school and what was then the Presbyterian church, of which they were members, near the intersection of Route 46 and Dodgeville Road. In fact, Russell Bethel taught Sunday school there, with boys like Olah among his students, while his family lived in the community.

The Bethel family continued to grow. In 1951, a son, Russell Jr. arrived, but he died in infancy. Sally was born in 1952, followed by Robert. Tragically, Robert was killed in a car crash when he was only 9.

It didn't take long for those in the know to recognize Bethel's skills not only as a teacher and a coach, but also his organizational gifts, and he quickly rose to the position of principal and superintendent of the little school. It became apparent that something was going to have to give, and coaching was the matter that was set aside after the 1951 season, with the Rangers still operating at a locomotive's pace.

Somehow, despite all his duties, Bethel found time to return to Kent State to earn his master's degree, which he finished in 1949. He did so when he was advised that he need the degree to move forward in educational administration.

Susan Learmonth followed her parents in their love of education. She works as a special educator for infants and toddlers. She presented her parents with two grandsons and a granddaughter.

She remembers accompanying her father to some games, particularly those played on the weekends, although at her relatively tender age, she recalls little of watching Russell Bethel working with his teams.

"I remember going to some of the games with him and a little about the gyms we were in," she said. "I used to sit across from him with my friends.

"I just know he was very close to his kids. In fact, he used to have the kids over to our house. My dad was very fond of the boys."

She actually recalls some adventures after games with her father.

"I remember going with him to take the money they collected at the gate to the bank that night," Learmonth said. "Many times, he'd pick up hitchhikers along the way. Looking back on it, that was probably pretty dangerous. You probably wouldn't do that now."

The coaching reins were handed off to Rathbun, who came to the area from Rhode Island. Bethel's Rangers had played basketball at quite a rapid pace, but Rathbun cranked them up to a racehorse style.

The new coach presented quite a different approach to the Rangers.

"Rathbun brought the kind of basketball they played on the East Coast, which meant really pushing the ball and playing fast," Scribben said. "He was the kind of guy who liked to rant and rave a lot, too."

That definitely resonated with the Rangers. They picked up with Rathbun where Bethel had stopped. But the new coach's run only lasted for the 1951-52 and 1952-53 seasons before he encountered some off-the-court issues that forced him to resign. Sally was born in 1952 while Bethel was out of coaching.

That special season

It had to be like manna from heaven for Bethel, though, who stepped up and took the job for the 1953-54 season. It turned out to be his best as the Rangers recorded 22 wins, including 18 straight at one point, built around the scoring punch of Scribben and Zeman. That squad also included brothers Bill and Glenn Fisher, Chuck Schultz, Olah, Larry Carr, Clark Sherman and John Lobdell.

Bethel didn't try to rein in the Rangers much. Because he didn't the Rangers often topped the 100-point mark, ringing up scores like 115-52 against Rock Creek and 111-78 against Williamsfield.

With games played at that pace, Zeman and Scribben, who are now members of the ACBF, also became the first Grand Players, or 1,000-point career scorers in Ashtabula County. To this day, Zeman still ranks fifth of all boys scorers in the county with 1,338 points and stands 12th of any player of either gender. Scribben's 1,208 points still has him 12th off all male players and 27th overall.

Actually, Bethel approached the frenetic pace with a sense of humor.

"I remember he asked Frank and Richie one time if they were ever going to run a play," Olah said with a laugh.

He may have let the Rangers run, but he refused to run up the score. That still doesn't necessarily sit particularly well with at least his two stars.

"We averaged 88 points a game that year," Zeman said. "We tried to do the same things we had with Coach Rathbun, but Mr. Bethel never let us play the whole game. We'd get up by 20 or 30 points and he'd take us out of the game. That was the only thing I didn't like about him. But I think he wanted to let the other kids play, too."

"Mr. Bethel didn't like to run up the score on anybody," Scribben said. "He didn't think that was really fair. He didn't want to humiliate the other team or show them up. He was a fair-minded person.

"He really believed in fair play. He didn't want you to be a showoff."

The players found Bethel's calmer approach a pleasure.

"He was a lot quieter than Coach Rathbun," Scribben said. "Occasionally, he'd get a little hot under the collar and his face would get red, but that was about it."

The luck of Bethel's special team ran out in the county Class B championship when it dropped an 85-71 decision, ironically enough, to his alma mater, Kingsville, at what was then known as Edgewood High School and is now Braden Junior High. The Kings were coached by Ed Batanian, another ACBF Hall of Famer, who was in just his third season as a coach and led them to a 22-5 season behind Ron Hanson, the Kingsville Hawk, who is also in the ACBF Hall of Fame. As a true sportsman, Bethel is shown in a Star Beacon photo smiling and shaking hands with Batanian despite the loss.

Scribben went on to earn third-team Class B All-Ohio honors from United Press International, while Hanson was an honorable-mention selection.

On to other matters

That special season turned out to be Bethel's coaching valedictory. By the time the 1954-55 season came, the Bethels had moved out of the community after he took the job as superintendent of Beach City schools, which is now part of the Navarre school system and calls Fairless its high school.

The family home was in Jackson Township, near Massillon. Susan and Julie are Jackson High School graduates. Julie, now Julie Purcell, went to Duke University and still lives in Durham, N.C. and presented the Bethels with two grandsons. She also followed the path of her parents, actually in two aspects. She is an ordained Methodist minister, specializing in family therapy and pastoral counseling.

Bethel became a hot property in the world of educational administration. After several years at Beach City, he was tapped as the first supervisor of instruction for all of Stark County's schools, a position he held until 1968. From there, he changed his focus back to managing just one school system, taking over as the superintendent of Canal Fulton schools, with its high school of Northwest, until he retired in 1979.

Sally Murphy is a graduate of Northwest. She, too, followed the educational path, serving now as a teacher at Woodridge Intermediate School in Peninsula. Sally and her husband, Mike, are the parents of a son, Ryan. There are also two step-children among their brood.

Actually, Grace Bethel got back into education once her children were old enough to function without her at home and retired after her husband in 1986. She taught kindergarten until she was 69.

"She used to say when she walked into the school building, it was like home," Sally said.

One of Grace's students, Joe Concheck, was of particular interest when he became a member of Eldon Miller's basketball team at Ohio State. She must have made a distinct impression on Concheck.

"They had a special recognition one night at Ohio State and he brought my mother down on the court and introduced her to everybody as his kindergarten teacher," Sally said. "That was really special. My mom and dad were always huge Ohio State fans."

Russell never lost his love of competition. Early in his administrative career, he was advised by a colleague that to be effective in his field, he needed to take up golf. He did so with fervor, learning the game on his own and eventually recording a hole-in-one in his later years that Mike Murphy witnessed.

"He didn't see it go in, but I did and I told him it had," Murphy said. "I don't think he believed me until we walked up on the green. He looked around for it and finally found it in the hole."

Golf became a passion for Bethel and his grandson.

"He used to love to play golf with Ryan," Sally said. "He would have loved to have a son to play with. I think in a way my son became his son. He and my mother were so happy when Ryan told them he was going to Ohio State."

Along with the Buckeyes, the Bethels loved all the Cleveland teams. It never wavered for Grace after Russell died in 2001.

"My parents used to go to League Park (long-time home for the Indians) on dates," Sally said. "Mom used to watch sports all the time even after Dad died. Once Oprah (Winfrey) was over, it was sports, 24-7.

"Mom loved (Indians center fielder) Grady Sizemore because she thought he looked like Ryan. She always followed Russell Branyan because of his first name."

The difference in the Bethels' personalities shone through even while watching sports on TV.

"Dad never got upset about anything," Sally said. "I never saw him lose his temper. Mom would yell at the TV all the time."

The Bethels maintained their love of Ashtabula County, too, and made it their final resting place. They are buried in the cemetery at Lulu Falls off Route 193 in Kingsville.

"I used to drive them up to their class reunions in Kingsville when they couldn't anymore," Sally said. "Mom came up with me even after Dad died. And they and Alex Olah kept in touch."

There is a part of Sally Murphy that wishes her parents could actually be on hand for her father's induction. But she has the sense Russell and Grace will be smiling from their lofty perch, each from a different perspective.

"My mother would be the one who was really happy about it," she said. "Dad would have been happy to see other people, his old players and coaching friends.

"But he was very low-key about those things. He just loved basketball and coaching."

Gregg was next for Falcons

Someone had to take challenge of following Shellie Crandall on the long list of great players at Jefferson & Donna Gregg did just that

By KARL PEARSON
Staff Writer

Eighth of a series...

It's one thing to be part of a dynamic duo. It's quite another to have to go it on your own.

So you think that's a reference to Batman and Robin, who made quite a crime fighting pair. But when Batman eventually went out on his own, the productivity didn't drop off.

In the early years of girls basketball, Jefferson coach Larry Meloro had just such a terrific one-two combo in Shellie Crandall doing her magic from the outside and Donna Gregg working on the inside. They were good enough to lead the Falcons (15-6) to a Grand River Conference championship during the 1981-82 season.

When the 1982-83 season rolled around, though, Crandall had graduated and Gregg was on her own. Jefferson didn't enjoy the same level of success as a team (9-11) in Meloro's last season as the coach before he made the transition to administration, but Gregg certainly flourished individually. She set standards for the Falcons that even Crandall hadn't registered, at least for a single season, to that point.

She scored 400 points, averaging 20.0 per game, grabbed the most rebounds (290) and had the highest rebounding average (14.5), made the most field goals (162), had the most free-throw attempts (126) and the most made free throws (76). That big season made Gregg, at the time, Jefferson's second-leading career scorer with 852 points for a 14.2 average rung up in 60 games over three varsity seasons, numbers second only to Crandall.

She was the career rebounding leader with 711, an average of 12.0. She was second only to Crandall at that time in career field goals made (346), field goals attempted (801), free throws made (155), free throws attempted (255), steals (240) and steals per game (4.0). In her junior and senior seasons, she was a first-team Star Beacon All-Ashtabula County and Coaches' All-GRC selection.

Meloro admired Gregg for her adaptability, finding ways to blend well with her teammates when she had capable people to help carry the load, yet having the willingness to shoulder it herself when circumstances called for it.

Most of all, he appreciated the 5-foot-10 Gregg for her unstinting desire to succeed.

"I remember Donna's tenacity," Meloro, now the principal at Rock Creek Elementary, said. "She wanted to win so badly.

"She was a great team player. She was one of the best in terms of the total package. She was a great defensive player. We usually had her guard the other team's best player. Donna was a pleasure to coach."

Gregg functioned well as a complement to Crandall and in her role as the team's go-to player in her senior season.

"Donna and Shellie were good friends," Meloro said. "I wish they'd had the 3-point line back then. Shellie definitely could have shot the three and I think Donna could have, too, if she'd worked at it and I'd have let her shoot it. And in her senior year, we kind of developed the whole offense around Donna."

Crandall came to a deep appreciation of Gregg's gifts almost from the beginning when they first crossed paths in Crandall's sophomore year and Gregg's freshman season.

"Donna always played with a sense of joy," Crandall said from her home in Texas. "She was always a great team player. She did whatever it took to make our team better.

"She was a fun person to be around. She always had a smile on her face. I think we had a bond because we both had a passion for the sport and we played off of each other."

Gregg and Crandall certainly made life miserable for opposing coaches when they played together. It didn't get much better when Gregg was going it alone.

"You put those two together and Jefferson had a good outside-inside game with Shellie and Donna," retired Edgewood coach Bob Callahan said. "It gave them a 1-2 punch that was hard to stop. If you tried to stop Shellie, Donna hurt you inside, and we had nobody that could stop her inside.

"In her senior year, she was their go-to person. She handled that pretty well, too. She was very smooth. I think she was as agile as (Geneva's Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Famer Anita) Tersigni (a playing contemporary)."

"I embarrassed him once in a while," Gregg said. "I remember we were playing once against Harbor and I mistook an official for one of my teammates and threw the ball out of bounds. He left the floor and went up and sat in the stands for a while.

"I think we frustrated him sometimes, but then I think he realized he was working with a bunch of girls. I think his wife kept him in tow. He treated us all as equals. I just loved to play ball and win."

The Falcons did just that, going 11-8 in the 1980-81 season.

Gregg continued to work hard on her game. She was ready to be a big contributor for her junior year.

"Shellie was the point guard," she said. "I was the forward-center. The big thing I was told to do was hit the boards."

That definition of roles worked in style as the Falcons fought their way to the GRC title.

"I always remember wanting to beat Southington," she said. "I always loved to play against PV, too."

Crandall and Gregg worked a lot on making their respective skills mesh and click.

"I remember we specifically worked on passing," Crandall said. "We worked on trying to anticipate where the pass was coming from or where it was going to."

The focus turned to Gregg for her senior year. She, in turn, served as a mentor to another player, much as Crandall had done with her.

"In my senior year, Diana Grose took Shellie's spot at point guard," Gregg said. "I actually had to convince her to play and she finally did. I think if she'd had confidence, she'd really have been good."

Gregg did all she could to prepare herself for her new leadership role, actually going to summer camp in an era when that wasn't all that common for area players.

"I went to the Ohio State basketball camp that summer," she said. "I also went to camps at Geneva and Grand Valley."

She also tried to test herself against other competition.

"I used to love to practice with the boys," Gregg said. "I always kept playing with the guys."

Crandall wasn't surprised at all at how well Gregg assimilated her new responsibilities.

"You could see Donna blossoming and maturing as a leader as she went along," she said. "I knew she would do a great job."

Other key players for the Falcons in the 1982-83 season were Darlene Covell and Annie Lehnert. But Gregg was the undisputed leader.

"I was very confident," she said. "I loved to shoot outside and I loved to steal the ball. Coach Meloro always used to tell me to watch their eyes to try and steal the ball, so I did and I think I did have a lot of steals."

Unlike a lot of her contemporaries who complain about the limitations of their game, operating with no three-point shot and being forced to play with the larger boys ball, Gregg didn't seem to mind those restrictions.

"I don't like the girls ball they play with today," she said. "I didn't mind the boys ball at all. I don't think I'd have shot many 3-pointers."

Callahan not only admired Gregg for her competitive spirit, but her friendly attitude off the court.

"Donna was always such a nice girl," he said. "I remember she used to work at the Dairy Queen in Jefferson and they used to have a certain flavor of ice cream they served at the time. After a while, they stopped serving it, but I stopped one day and asked for that flavor of ice cream.

"Donna came outside and put a piece of tape over that flavor on the board, so I didn't get the ice cream I was looking for, but it gave me quite a laugh. She was just a delightful person."

She always knew she had a faithful band of fans to support her athletic pursuits. Apparently, she was an inspirational figure to at least some of that contingent.

"My mom and dad were always so supportive," she said. "My mom never missed a basketball game. They always brought (her niece) Laurie (who became a key player for Rod Holmes' fine Jefferson teams of the mid-1990s) and her sister, Amber, along to the games."

Gregg's basketball career ended with her high school days, although some opportunities were available. Her performance did get some attention from smaller schools closer to home, but she had her mind pretty well set on other goals.

"I had offers from schools like Slippery Rock, but I visited Bowling Green and I fell in love with it when I saw it," she said. "I tried to walk on with the basketball team out there, but they had a female coach and I didn't care for her style.

"Plus, the first day I was out there, I saw all the other talent and I just went, ‘Whoa!' "

Bowling Green isn't the biggest city in the world, but Gregg admitted it was a lot bigger atmosphere than that to which she was accustomed.

"It was a bit of a culture shock going from a small community like Jefferson to a school that size," she said. "I have to admit, I enjoyed being coddled back in Jefferson. I just decided to concentrate on my studies."

So she threw herself into a feverish academic pace at Bowling Green and, by attending summer school, blazed her way to her degree in sports administration in just three years.

"My idea was to work for a pro team in some way," she said.

After basketball

At least initially, that's the career path she took. She started with an internship for the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics.

"They had me write stories for the magazine they put out," Gregg said. "I liked it because I was still around sports."

That gave her connections to the next step in sports, working as the assistant sports information director at Cleveland State University for the late Merle Levin. She started there in 1987 and worked there for two years.

"I got to travel with a lot of the women's teams and I'd get to practice with them a bit," Gregg said. "I think I held my own. I really liked it, but I needed to make more money."

In 1989, she started working with Total Events Services, a company that was charged with the operations of a number of big events at big venues in Cleveland.

"I actually got to run things like the National Rib Cookoff because we did all the operations for it," she said. "I also helped set up a lot of the big concerts at the old Cleveland Stadium. I did that until 1991."

While involved in that enterprise, she made her first connection with Jeff Jacobs. It started with work on a lot of the concerts conducted on the Nautica stage and gradually evolved into managing the properties of the Jacobs family in the Flats and other areas throughout downtown Cleveland. She worked for him ever since.

"My office is down in the Flats," she said. "It's about a 20-mile drive right off of Interstate 90 for me."

Working for Jacobs turned out to have another side benefit for Gregg. It's how she met Todd Votaw.

"I started shopping at his hardware store (Sutton Hardware, located in downtown Cleveland)," she said. "It's like a mini-Home Depot, only it's more personalized.

"He used to cut all my keys. He told me later that he'd miscut my keys all the time so I'd have to keep coming back."

They have been married for 14 years. Westlake is the home of many Cleveland professional athletes, although Donna said she hasn't had much contact with them.

"I did see (Cavaliers coach) Mike Brown in the store one time," she said.

Votaw isn't around sports much anymore, something she misses. She's hoping at least one of her daughters is bitten by the bug, although it isn't looking like it will be basketball.

"Both of my daughters are dancers," she said. "(Bailey) seems to like volleyball."

She does admit her daughters have been duly impressed by their mother's new distinction.

"They're learning about my athletic career," Votaw said. "They're very excited and proud."

The skills she learned on the court have served Votaw well in the business world.

"Basketball was very good for me because of the discipline and the focus I learned," she said. "It taught me to get the job done right the first time.

"Certainly, the teamwork was important. I probably oversee 25 people. You have to treat them all differently to get the most out of them."

The same truths hold true with her family.

"I try to do the same thing with my family," she said.

He flew like an Eagle
Pasqualone relished every minute of growing into a star player at Geneva

By KARL PEARSON
Staff Writer

11th of a series...

There is much to be said for tradition. Ernie Pasqualone can attest to that.

When he was a boy growing up in Geneva, Pasqualone was immersed into all the things that made the Eagle boys basketball program the powerhouse it was. Those lessons and that legacy drove him to strive to be the best player he could possibly be.

Pasqualone not only wore that tradition on his sleeve, he wore it on his chest. Throughout his career at Geneva, Pasqualone wore No. 22. He had his reasons.

"I chose it because Steve McHugh (an Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame member) wore it in high school," he said. "He was my idol."

Ernie Pasqualone of Geneva was joined on the 1972-73 Star Beacon All-Ashtabula County boys basketball first team by Tim Humphrey (31) of Conneaut, Carl McIlwain (41) of Pymatuning Valley, Marvin Jones (32) of Ashtabula and Bill Brosky of St. John. Pasqualone will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame on Sunday at the Conneaut Human Resource Center.

As it turned out, Pasqualone developed into a great player in his own right for Bill Koval's Geneva teams of the early 1970s. In fact, he was one of the major factors in carrying the Eagles to the Class AAA regional semifinals in his junior year of 1971-72, the farthest they had been since the 1950 Eagles who went to the Final Four of the Class B state tournament. No Geneva boys team has been to that level since.

When his senior year rolled around, Pasqualone was the main man for Koval's 1972-73 Eagles. He responded as best he could in that role, increasing his scoring average from 17.7 points in his junior year to 20.7 points.

The lessons he learned at Geneva served him well as he went on to further his basketball education at Lakeland Community College. He was one of the key elements of the 1974-75 Laker team that was coached by future Cleveland Cavaliers coach Don Delaney. That team made it to the championship game of the National Junior College Athletic Association before falling to a Vincennes (Ind.) team that included future Michigan standout and NBA player Ricky Green, as well as Maryland-bound Lawrence Boston, who also had a brief run in the NBA.

Pasqualone became a valuable commodity in his next basketball stop at Hiram College, too. In fact, he was such an impact player for the Terriers of Bill Hollinger that he led them to the President's Athletic Conference championship in his junior year and was chosen conference MVP. He played even better in his senior year for a lesser Hiram team, still earning first-team All-PAC recognition.

Basketball remained a key part of Pasqualone's life even after he left Hiram. In fact, he took the knowledge he had received from Koval, Delaney and Hollinger and applied it to his own coaching job at Ledgemont High School. Although the Redskins didn't quite attain the level he had hoped for during his four years with them, he left the program far better than when he took over. Nick Terakedis took the eighth-grade group Pasqualone had been grooming and made them into Ledgemont's first winning team in 13 years.

Ernie Pasqualone of Geneva soars to the bucket between a myriad of Harvey defenders during a Class AAA district semifinal in the 1970-71 season. Pasqualone will be inducted into the ACBF Hall of Fame on Sunday at the Conneaut Human Resource Center.

Even the loss of his teaching job worked out well for Pasqualone. It gave him the opportunity to work again with Delaney, this time as a part of the marketing staff with the Cavaliers of the Ted Stepien era. Only the desire to have a more stable existence than the eccentric Stepien had to offer moved him out of that job.

Basketball was still a part of Pasqualone's life even after he got into his current profession as a sales and national account manager for the Roche Diagnostics Co., which is involved in diabetes technology. Pasqualone managed to keep his hand in basketball by coaching the three children of he and his wife of 31 years, Sarah, son Nick and daughters Kilby and daughter Katie, all graduates of Notre Dame-Cathedral Latin.

Now, Pasqualone joins another list that reflects the traditions of the Geneva program with his induction into the ACBF Hall of Fame on Sunday. There he will join McHugh, Koval and other former Eagle luminaries with whom he rubbed elbows like Randy Knowles, Gary Kreilach and the late Al Bailey.

"I'm thrilled, very proud and very humbled," Pasqualone said. "There are a lot of great players to choose from and I'm thrilled to be associated with them.

"Growing up in Geneva, there was the camaraderie of playing together with guys like Randy, Gary and Steve on the outdoor courts at the school. I even had the chance to work with (Knowles) with some of the things he was involved in over in Europe.

"And there were the occasions of going to Ashtabula to play at West (Junior High's outdoor courts) or Conneaut to play with and against guys like (Ashtabula Hall of Famer) Jim Hood or (retired Riverside coach and standout Madison player) Rob Winton or (Conneaut's) Tim Richards that were so important."

He's also pleased to be connected again to Koval, who made sure Pasqualone and generations of players after him had a clear understanding of what basketball, and particularly Geneva basketball, were all about.

"Coach Koval was unrelenting in the task of having us play together as a disciplined team," the 54-year-old Pasqualone said. "He always emphasized appreciating each other, having a respect for the game, the importance of being an Eagle and the privilege of representing the community. I think I appreciate that more now than I did back then."

Pasqualone's contributions to the Geneva tradition still resonate with Koval.

"Ernie was one guy who was always willing to work hard," he said from his winter home in Florida. "He really worked at the game. He became a great team player. He was a pleasure to coach.

"Ernie wasn't as gifted as some people, but he just worked his tail off to become a very good player. I remember he used to play all the time on those outdoor courts with the older guys. He was a good assist man and a real fine shooter. He fit the mold of the kind of player I was looking for."

Koval said one of the things that made such players great was the family background from which they came. He said Pasqualone's parents, the late Ernie Sr. and Dorothy, who still lives in the home on Elm Street in Geneva in which Ernie Jr., the youngest of four children, and his siblings Bob, Julie and Tom were raised, made huge contributions to the Geneva teams he coached through their unstinting support.

"His parents were very important to Ernie's development," Koval said. "I never heard anything negative from his dad. It was always so important for the coaches to have the support of parents like the Pasqualones."

Getting started

Another of the Geneva traditions that Pasqualone became a part of even when he was barely big enough to handle a basketball was games at the Geneva Recreation Center in the old Geneva City Hall on the corner of North Forest Street and Route 20.

"I started playing in the Geneva Midget Rec League when I was 6 or 7, actually a year earlier than I would normally have been eligible, because I went with my brother, Tom, who was two years older," he said. "I played for the Royals with Tom. My first coach was Earl Carraher. We used to play games throughout the week there.

"I also remember going up there on Saturday mornings and saw guys like Steve McHugh playing there after they'd played on Friday night. I did that for quite a while until I went to Assumption School (Geneva's Catholic elementary school). I played a lot there, too."

When he got to junior high, he played for Phil Belden. In eighth grade, Tom Connors was the coach, while Pasqualone's freshman year was spent again with Belden.

"I learned a lot about the organization of the offense and more schemes," Pasqualone said. "I remember Coach Koval used to come down and talked to us about what it meant to be an Eagle.

"Mr. Belden was pretty easy-going. Seventh-grade basketball was pretty tough. I remember we had 65 boys trying out for probably 15 spots on the team."

He enjoyed some of the confrontations with rival schools that made up the junior high portion of the Northeastern Conference.

"We had some really good battles in junior high basketball. We played against really good teams at West (the Ashtabula feeder), Columbus (Harbor High School's feeder) and Rowe (Conneaut's junior high at the time). I remember playing up on the stage at Braden (Edgewood's junior high). All those games were a bit intimidating. It was great competition."

First impressions

In his sophomore year, Pasqualone split time between the JV squad, coached by Al Graper, and Koval's varsity squad. Graper, whose father-in-law, Jefferson's Phil Miller, is joining Pasqualone in the ACBF Hall of Fame Class of 2010, was going through preparation for his own head coaching career at Jefferson and St. John.

"I'd play three quarters of JV and one quarter varsity," Pasqualone said.

Pasqualone developed a real bond with Graper.

"Coach Graper was pretty intense," he said. "He'd really get fired up. He was passionate and truly believed in us. He was an avid runner, and he always made sure we were in shape.

"I was a real gym rat. He used to come and open up the gym and play with me. He was the coach that really emphasized foul shooting, too. He used to have us shoot 50 a day and he expected you to make at least 80 percent."

It was in that 1970-71 season that Pasqualone developed his first extensive contact with Koval, who was in his fourth season as Geneva's head coach.

"Coach Koval was a real disciplinarian," Pasqualone said. "He stressed the fundamentals of team play. Nothing was more important than team play.

"We ran a deliberate offense, a 2-2-1 press and played good, solid defense. I always had personal goals, but I always tried to not let them conflict with team goals."

Pasqualone and classmate Don Craine, an Ashtabula County Football Hall of Fame member, made enough of an impression on Koval for him to make them integral parts of Geneva's drive into the tournament after the Eagles finished second in the NEC to ACBF Hall of Famer Gene Gephart's last Ashtabula team. That Eagle squad, which also included football hall of fame member Mike Blauman and Norm Urcheck, caught fire in tournament play.

Pasqualone and Craine came up aces in the Class AAA sectional championship game against Cleveland Heights, helping the Eagles to a 44-41 upset victory over the Tigers and a berth in the district tournament. It was one of the highlights of Geneva's 13-8 season.

"Ernie and Don Craine were both up with us as sophomores," Koval said. "Cleveland Heights was big and quick. I told Ernie and Don that as soon as we took a shot, they were to sprint back to halfcourt to stop their fast break. They intercepted a whole bunch of passes that way."

Truly an Eagle

By his junior year, Pasqualone was truly one of the key facets of a Geneva team that featured plenty of skill and, equally important, size.

"We had a lot of guys who could average 10-12 points per game," Pasqualone said. "We were able to score at a much higher rate than we had the year before.

"We also had a lot of size with guys like (seniors) Denny Coy, who was 6-6, Greg Hunt, who was 6-5, and Al Landphair, who was 6-3, plus Jeff Starkey, who was another guard and was 6-1. I thought we were going to be a good solid team in the NEC. And we had beat a team like St. Joseph in the varsity and JV games as sophomores, along with Cleveland Heights."

The Eagles were solid, finishing 17-3 in the regular season. They beat Pymatuning Valley, 68-61, to clinch the NEC title.

"I remember we had two losses to Harbor (which made the Class AA district tournament)," Pasqualone said. "They had guys like (Ohio State football offensive coordinator) Jim Bollman, Dave Peet, (future Detroit Tiger) Mark Wagner and (ACBF Hall of Famer) John Coleman."

But Pasqualone said his eyes really lit up when he saw Geneva's draw for the sectional-district tournament at Mentor High School.

"I saw the draw and felt we had as good a chance as anyone," he said.

The Eagles made the most of it, catching fire in the tournament. They defeated South, 59-52, in the district semifinals behind 19 points from Hunt and 12 from Pasqualone. Then they topped Chardon, 54-51, for the district championship as Pasqualone led with 17 points to earn a trip to Canton Memorial Fieldhouse for a return engagement from the previous year with Cleveland Heights.

"(That trip) was huge," he said. "There was a lot of pride in the community. It was two or three weeks after everyone else had started preparing for spring sports and we were still practicing for basketball. I remember having (the late) Dale Arkenburg (a member of the 1950 state team and an ACBF Hall of Famer) walk up and congratulating some of us.

"They had a huge pep rally at the end of the school day (March 16, 1972). It was awesome going to Canton. We went to the (Pro Football) Hall of Fame before the game, too."

Because Geneva was playing Cleveland Heights, the game was also televised by Cleveland's public access channel, WVIZ.

"I remember the fieldhouse was jammed," Pasqualone said. "Coach Koval talked about hustling back on defense. I think we went in pretty confident."

Geneva started well, opening up a 14-7 lead after the first quarter, but Heights tied the game at 25 by halftime. Then the Tigers broke out to 35-25 lead in the first three minutes of the third quarter, held a 44-36 advantage after three quarters and held on for a 58-51 victory to end Geneva's season at 19-4.

The scoring stars for both teams struggled. Pasqualone had a cold shooting night and finished with seven points, while Heights' Dennis Greenwald, who entered the game averaging nearly 30, scored only eight. But Leicester Stovell had a monster night with 23 points and 17 rebounds for the Tigers (21-1 to that point), enough to offset Hunt's 14 points and 13 rebounds for the Eagles.

Pasqualone looks back on that now with a bit of wit.

"It probably was good we got beat by Heights because we would have had to play East Tech in the finals, and they won the state championship that year," he said with a smile.

But he received plenty of individual honors. He was the leading votegetter on the Star Beacon All-Ashtabula County team and was also first-team All-NEC.

In his senior year, with most of the regional team lost to graduation, Pasqualone became the main man for the Eagles. The Eagles were 10-9 in a year when ACBF Hall of Famer Bob Walters' Ashtabula squad won the NEC title.

"I was the only returning starter," he said. "We had Don Craine, (football hall of famer) Ed Pizzuto, my best friend, Louie DeJesus, went into the season with a lot of expectations, but about 10 games into the season, I realized it probably wasn't going to happen. The Geneva teachers went on strike that year and Coach Koval didn't coach for a while. In probably at least half of the games, I was seeing a lot of box-and-ones."

In fact, the strike forced Geneva to conclude its regular season after it fell out of the tournament. The Eagles never did play their second NEC game against Ashtabula.

Still, Pasqualone did well individually, averaging 20.7 points to finish the season third in county scoring behind PV's Carl McIlwain and Grand Valley's Randy Chronister. He tied for the most votes on the all-county team with Conneaut's Tim Humphrey, was first-team All-NEC and was also honorable-mention All-Ohio.

But, individual highlights didn't translate into team success.

"I had 39 points against Ashtabula that year, but we still lost (66-57)," Pasqualone said.

Like many players of his era, Pasqualone regrets the absence of the 3-pointer in his high school career.

"I wish they'd had the 3-pointer," he said. "It would have opened up the court for things inside."

College Hoops

Despite playing at only 5-11, Pasqualone had his fair share of college offers.

"I had a bunch of letters, mostly from Division III schools," he said. "I was accepted at Edinboro, but I wanted to major in physical education and they didn't have a degree available in phys ed there, so I went to Lakeland."

That turned out to be a good thing. Pasqualone was part of a team of talented scorers that included standouts like Joe Vitez from Maple Heights, Larry Forte and Greg Pritchett from Wickliffe and Jeff Aultz from Euclid. That kind of talent allowed Pasqualone to play to his strengths, distributing and scoring inside and out.

Pasqualone was the kind of player that tended to gravitate to Delaney, one that was adept in all facets of the game.

"Coach Delaney was fun to play for," he said. "He was a really intense guy and a great offensive coach. He taught me things like how to create space for myself and the other players. And he stressed defense more than I thought he would."

A gathering of the Pasqualone family finds (from left) Ernie, wife Sarah and children Kilby, Katie and Nick. Ernie Pasqualone will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame on Sunday.

The drive to the NJCCA finals was a highlight and the opportunity to compete against players like Boston and Green with such a high pedigree was a treat. Even though Lakeland lost to Vincennes, Pasqualone performed well, earning all-tournament team honors.

Better still, he left Lakeland with his associate’s degree and a ticket to Hiram to play basketball and earn his bachelor's degree.

"I got to Hiram with the help of David Evans, who was a Geneva grad and the trainer down there," Pasqualone said. "Coach Hollinger called. I liked what he had to say and it was close to home. They had a great academic program and they had a spot for a two-guard open.

"Coach Hollinger let us play a lot more freelance. It was always fast break first and then drop back and set up in an offense if they stopped the break. He was a disciplinarian in his own way with what he wanted to accomplish, but he trusted you to make your own judgments on the court and he was open to asking for your input on timeouts and at halftime."

In his junior year, Hiram won the PAC title as he averaged 18 points per game and was chosen conference Player of the Year honors. The Terriers also earned a bid to the NCAA Division III national tournament, but lost in the first round.

Much like the situation in his last year at Geneva, Pasqualone ran into similar circumstances at Hiram for his last year. He elevated his game for the Terriers, though, averaging 20 points per game and earning first-team All-PAC honors.

"I remember sitting in the basketball office after my senior year waiting for a call from the NCAA to say we got an at-large bid into the tournament, but the call never came," he said. "That's when I realized my career was over."

But he left Hiram with his bachelor's degree in secondary education. In the years after that, he also earned a master's degree in sports administration from Kent State and a master's of business administration from Lake Erie College.

There was even a move by his old friend, Knowles, to get him involved in professional basketball in Italy before his senior year at Hiram since Pasqualone was of Italian descent. But, Pasqualone's father intervened, suggesting he get his degree at Hiram before investigating Europe.

"My dad wanted me to finish my education first, then check out Italy once I was done," Pasqualone said.

By the time he finished with the Terriers in 1977, the window of opportunity in Italy had closed.

Another good catch at Hiram was meeting Sarah, who was from Washington, D.C. She is a doctor of obstetrics and gynecology, maintains a practice in Willoughby with five other female doctors and is affiliated with LakeWest Hospital.

Getting Started

When he finished at Hiram, Pasqualone worked as an assistant coach at Lakeland for a year, then started his tenure as the head coach at Ledgemont. He tried to install a system similar to Hollinger's with the Redskins.

"He liked to play a more uptempo game," Pasqualone said. "I tried to speed it up a little at Ledgemont.

"It was a bit of a struggle. I took a group of eighth graders and tried to help develop them. They still struggled while I coached them, but by the time they were seniors, they got up to .500 for the next coach."

After four seasons, Pasqualone resigned and concentrated on finishing his sports administration master’s. He also lost his teaching job in financially strapped Ledgemont school system through Reduction in Force, but the timing actually was good as it gave him the opportunity to hook up with the Cavaliers.

"I thought when I landed with the Cavs that it might be my career for the rest of my life," he said. "But that was in the days when Bill Laimbeer was with the team and Ted Stepien was the owner. I was looking for a more stable environment (by 1983)."

Louie DeJesus came to the rescue.

"Louie was in sales and he got me interested in sales, too," Pasqualone said. "Sales in the medical industry was growing at that time and I told him I was interested in sales and pharmaceuticals. That's when I started working with Roche, and I've been doing that ever since."

The Pasqualones maintained a home in Geneva even while their family was growing and stayed there until 1997 while Sarah was completing her medical studies at Case Western Reserve University. Once she had done all her medical training and was beginning her medical practice, they decided it was time to cut down on driving and moved to their current home in Kirtland. Ernie is fortunate to do much of his work with Roche from an office in their home, although he spends a fair amount of time traveling, too.

Nick, 25, graduated from NDCL, then went to Ohio University to earn a degree in engineering, which he utilizes at CRT Component Repair Technology in Mentor. Kilby, 22, attended Denison University in Granville after NDCL and is following her father's path, having just started a job with the Eli Lilly Co. as a pharmaceutical sales rep in the company's neuroscience division. Like her father as well, she also has an office out of their Kirtland home. Katie, 18, is finishing her senior year at NDCL and plans to attend Mercyhurst College.

Nick played basketball for two years at NDCL. Kilby played for four varsity seasons for the Lions, one for Joe Spicuzza and three for former Madison head coach Kevin Snyder. Katie played volleyball for the Lions.

Lessons of the Game

Basketball has given Pasqualone much of the approach he has taken into the business world.

"When I'm hiring someone, I look at their knowledge, their skills and their attributes," he said. "I tell them I can teach them the first two, but I can't teach them attributes like honesty, trust and sincerity."

The itch to get back into basketball in a more active manner still exists.

"I'd like to get back into coaching," Pasqualone said. "I miss coaching and working with kids. I always took pride watching the development of the players. I really enjoyed coaching my three kids, too."

Not a day goes by that Pasqualone doesn't reflect on the impact of basketball in his life.

"The disciplines of basketball are what shaped me into the person I am," he said.

Mighty Mo!

Maurice McDonald took a while to get acclimated at PV, but once he did, he became a true dominating force

By KARL PEARSON
Staff Writer

Tenth of a series...

It's actually rather ironic. Maurice McDonald isn't all that comfortable flying, yet virtually everything he has done since he was a teenager has been about soaring above the competition and easily clearing whatever obstacles may have been put in his path.

Thanks to the decision made by his parents, Billy and Ruth McDonald, when he was just getting established in high school, Maurice and his younger brother, Alan, were removed from a potentially dangerous environment on Cleveland's east side to the tranquil rural setting of Andover. It turned out to be a decision that had long-term impacts on their lives. It turned out to be a monumental development for basketball-hungry Pymatuning Valley High School, too.

Maurice McDonald of Pymatuning Valley (35) sets for a jump ball to begin the second half as referee Phil Garcia sets to toss the ball during a Grand River Conference game played Dec. 16, 1980 in the old Falcon Gym. At far left behind Garcia is Jefferson's Rick Berrier, while at the immediate left is Star Beacon Sports Editor Don McCormack and at right is PV's Eric Van Court. McDonald will be inducted into the ACBF Hall of Fame on Sunday.

The arrival of the McDonalds coincided with a very productive era in boys basketball for the Lakers. In Maurice McDonald's junior year of 1980-81, he helped lead Denny Smith's team to a 14-7 record and the first of a string of four straight Grand River Conference championships.

In McDonald's senior season of 1981-82, Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Famer Bob Hitchcock, a great player in the early 1960s for the Lakers, returned for his second coaching stint at PV. He helped elevate McDonald's game even more, with the result a season averaging 19 points, 16.5 rebounds and six blocked shots per game while shooting 54 percent from the field and 63 percent from the foul line. That PV team went 17-5 and won the GRC again.

McDonald's ability to develop an all-around game helped him not only to a stellar career at PV, but gave him the opportunity to soar at the Air Force Academy. Soar he did, too, enjoying a very productive four-year career with the Falcons and coming up against several future NBA players, including Naismith Hall of Famer David Robinson of the Naval Academy and the San Antonio Spurs.

McDonald made the most, too, of the military commitment any graduate of a service academy takes when they sign on. For a number of years, after his graduation, he continued to participate in basketball for various Air Force teams, as well as teams that brought together players from all branches of the U.S. military to compete against similar squads from other countries.

Meanwhile, he rose up through the ranks of leadership in the Air Force. In a 21-year career, he eventually attained the rank of lieutenant colonel and had the opportunity to command a unit of 450 troops involved in logistics, supply and transportation in Alaska and Iraq.

Retired from the Air Force since 2008, with his last post at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, McDonald now works for the URS Corporation office in Dayton. URS, which employs 60,000 people nationwide, manages several government contracts and is also involved in business recruitment. He supervises about 40 people at the Dayton office.

McDonald's path has not removed him from basketball by any means. He has been able to find the time to do some coaching with his sons William, 11, and Michael, 10. He and his wife, Sylvia, have been married for 15 years. He has also spent the past two years getting his feet wet in high school basketball officiating.

Certainly, basketball has been an elevating aspect of McDonald's life. Now, he is reaching a new pinnacle with his selection to the ACBF Hall of Fame on Sunday. Unfortunately, prior commitments will keep him from attending the banquet at the Conneaut Human Resources Center.

"I'm very honored because I know only a select few people make the Hall of Fame," he said. "I'm very honored to have the opportunity to be inducted."

He's also excited to be linked again to fine opposing players and especially with Hitchcock.

"That's fantastic," the 46-year-old McDonald said. "I learned quite a bit from Coach Hitchcock. He came to the dinner when I made lieutenant colonel. I've always appreciated Coach Hitchcock."

Rocky Mountain High

The Jefferson games of McDonald's senior year actually had even greater significance in deciding his college destination.

"The Air Force Academy had a recruiter in the Andover area and he had sent an article from the Star Beacon about me out there," he said. "They sent one of their assistant coaches out to one of the Jefferson games and to visit me and my family.

"They flew me out there to visit. I had never flown by myself before, and I actually missed the connecting flight from Denver to Colorado Springs. I've flown a lot on commercial airlines since, but I really don't like to fly. I like to be closer to the ground."

Before that, he had entertained going to several Ohio and Pennsylvania schools.

"I had looked at Hiram because Alan Miller was there and at Rio Grande because John Lipani was there," McDonald said. "I visited Ohio University and Westminster wanted me after going to camp there."

But the visit to the Air Force Academy did the trick.

"I really liked it out there and I had the test scores and the grades to get in," he said. "I wanted to go play ball, and I thought I looked cool in a uniform.

"I had no idea about the military life. I knew I had a five-year commitment, but I figured five years was no big deal. I didn't see the regimentation of it, either."

Once he arrived on campus for school, he found out about that in a hurry as he was immediately introduced to the hazing process inflicted on all first-year recruits, known as doolies at the Air Force Academy.

"I got in a fight my first day out there with a senior who was about 5-2," McDonald said. "He yelled at me and then he grabbed me. After that, my name was mud for a few months."

But, basketball again bailed him out.

"I made the varsity and played as the sixth man," McDonald said. "I got to travel, and that helped me get away from a lot of things."

His first coach at Air Force is someone to whom Cleveland Cavaliers fans can relate.

"My first coach out there was Hank Egan, who is one of Mike Brown's assistants with the Cavs now," McDonald said. "I got a chance to talk with him for a few minutes last year when they played down in Dayton."

Egan was quite a change for McDonald.

"He was tougher than Coach Smith or Coach Hitchcock," McDonald said. "He had grown up military. He said it and you did it. His mentor had been Bobby Knight. He ran a no-frills system. You didn't do anything fancy."

There were other adjustments.

"I wasn't used to the altitude in Colorado Springs, so it took me a while to get in shape to play college basketball," McDonald said. "There was a lot of physical training, too."

But gradually he fit in with the Falcons, who were part of a very competitive Western Athletic Conference that included Brigham Young, Utah, New Mexico and the University of Texas-El Paso with famed coach Don Haskins.

"I always loved play in The Pit at New Mexico," McDonald said. "I always seemed to play well there. And we beat Utah at home my freshman year."

By his sophomore year, he was Egan's main man, and the coach worked him hard to expand his game.

"I hadn't known it, but during my sophomore year, Dan Kraft, the assistant coach, told me I had been their No. 1 recruit as a freshman," McDonald said. "My sophomore year, I learned to play one-on-one more. I worked hard on the 3-pointer. I learned to operate as a solid triple-threat player and how to create my own shot."

He did it well, earning team MVP honors for the 1983-84 season. His highlight night of that season, and probably of his career, came on Feb. 20, 1984, appropriately enough against New Mexico, when he hit all 10 of his field-goal attempts.

McDonald shrugs off the MVP award from that season, though.

"In my sophomore year, the WAC really didn't know about me," he said. "They did when I was a junior."

By then, he was playing for a new coach, Reggie Minton.

"I think he's in administration with the NCAA now," McDonald said. "Egan had taken the job at San Diego State.

"Coach Minton was a lot like Denny Smith. He reminded me a lot of Bill Cosby. He wanted to run and gun no matter what. I loved it because all I was asked to do was rebound and fill the lane for layups."

There were memorable moments in that 1984-85 season.

"We played BYU in the WAC Tournament at their place and we upset them," he said. "I had 27 points in that game, which was the conference tournament scoring record at that time. Then we played at Utah and lost on a shot at the buzzer.

"Later in my junior year, I got to play in a tournament in Japan against David Robinson from Navy. He was the MVP and I got the Fighting Spirit Award from the tournament organizers. He was one of the nicest guys I've ever met, and I got to play with his younger brother later on in the Air Force."

In his senior season, McDonald was able to elevate himself back to status as the Falcons' MVP.

"We slowed things down a bit that year," he said. "I had a good solid year. We played two games in the WAC Tournament. We beat Hawaii, then lost to Wyoming on a halfcourt shot. I didn't think about it right away, but later on I realized that was the last game of my college career.

"Fennis Dembo, who played for the Detroit Pistons Bad Boys when they were NBA champs, played for that Wyoming team. I also played that year against Michael Cage from San Diego State, who later played for the Cavaliers."

For his career, McDonald scored 1,121 points while shooting 48 percent from the field and more than 80 percent from the foul line.

After the Academy

Basketball remained a big part of McDonald's life for another eight years after he stopped playing for the Air Force Academy.

"My college career was a great experience because I'd never been out of Ohio until I went to the Academy," he said. "After that, I got to see 40 of the 50 states and all kinds of countries overseas. I had a fantastic career playing service ball for another eight years or so, too, playing for Air Force teams and even Armed Services teams."

His military postings took McDonald all over the world, too.

"I lived in places like England, Turkey and even Iraq," McDonald said. "We've been in Florida, Georgia, Alaska and Hawaii. I was more involved in the maintenance of aircraft instead of flying."

His 21-year career in the Air Force allowed McDonald to achieve some other personal goals.

"I've been able to do pretty much all I've ever wanted," he said. "One of my goals was to command a big unit, and I got to do that from 2004-06 in Alaska and Iraq."

He met Sylvia, who is from Mississippi, on one of his postings in Florida.

McDonald has enjoyed doing various basketball projects since he retired.

"I did some coaching with my sons," he said. "It's a lot of fun working with kids at their age. I tried to teach them some fundamentals and let them have some fun."

His venture into officiating has taught McDonald some new lessons about basketball.

"I've been experiencing things from the other side, especially dealing with coaches and fans," he said with a laugh. "I have all the respect in the world for refs now.

"Being a referee is almost as regimented as being in the military. You have to take a regimented approach to the game. You have to practice the moves and positioning and how to make the calls. It's a tough job."

Over the years, McDonald's appreciation for what basketball has given him has grown immensely.

"I wouldn't be where I am today without basketball," he said. "It helped me get into into college, and if it wasn't for basketball, I wouldn't have gone to the Academy, get to travel or to meet my wife.

"Basketball has kept me pretty grounded. It's taught me to deal with a lot of situations. It taught me leadership, from the time I was captain of my teams in high school and at the Academy through my military career.

"It's helped me continue to learn and to continue trying to improve."