Red’ left many foes blue

Austinburg’s Al Schubert to enter ACBF Hall of Fame

By Chris Larick
For the Star Beacon

For a short time in 1953, Austinburg’s Al “Red” Schubert felt he had established what was believed to be an Ashtabula County record for scoring when he put in 51 points in one basketball game.

Shortly thereafter, he discovered that Williamsfield’s Harvey Hunt had notched 52 points several years earlier.

Schubert, who will join Hunt as he is inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Hall of Fame on April 7, can’t remember the opponent or some of the other details of that contest, but he does recall a few details about it.

“(The opponent) had three men out front, with one guy in the center and the other two way over. Those two would throw the ball back and forth so fast they didn’t even look (at the defense),” Schubert remembers. “I thought, ‘Why don’t I intercept that?’ I’d cut in front, grab the ball, take five or six steps and I’d be at the basket."

Despite the fact that Schubert was scoring basket after basket, the opponent never changed its style of play. Eventually, the score became so lopsided that the Pioneers’ coach, the late Hiram Safford (who will be inducted into the ACBF Hall of Fame posthumously this year), took Schubert out after the third quarter.

“I was one point short of the record but didn’t know it,” he said. “But (Safford) said, ‘You don’t have to play anymore.’”

AL "RED" SCHUBERT, shown driving to the hoop during his days as an Austinburg Pioneer, will enter the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame on April 7.

The 1953-54 Austinburg Pioneers were (kneeling, from left) Dick Wharram, Gerry Clemmer, Al Schubert, Ralph Hanneman and William Rightnour and (standing, from left) coach Hiram Safford, Fred Walter, Dean Orth, Jim Wetzig, Alex Orvos and William Ingramm. Schubert will join Safford and former teammate Dutch Cotton, a 1953 Austinburg graduate, in the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame on April 7.

Schubert and Dutch Cotton, who was inducted into the ACBF Hall of Fame last year, were the standouts (Cotton at one forward, Schubert at center-forward) on an Austinburg team that won the Ashtabula County championship in 1953 and took the Big Seven crown both his junior and senior seasons. Others on the Pioneers team included Larry Brail (who died on Jan. 7 this year), Norm and Joe Kikel, Harry Foster, Jerry Clemmer and Arnold Burton.

“I scored about 25 points a game and Dutch was close to that, maybe 23 or 24,” Schubert said. “Dutch and I shared the scoring. If they’d put two guys on me, Dutch would score a lot. If they put two guys on Dutch, I would be the main scorer.

“We had a graduating class of 25, 12 boys and 13 girls. For that small a school, it was something to go as far as we did. We were all in one classroom, just moved from one room to another when we changed subjects.

“Jerry (Clemmer) and I were the only juniors (on the 1952 team). Most of the time we scored in the 60s; a couple of times, we got into the 100s (points). Two years we went undefeated in the Big Seven, in 1952 and 1953. After that, the team fell apart. Then (Austinburg) consolidated into Geneva (in 1961-62).”

According to Schubert, Safford had a big role in the Pioneers’ success.

“He was one of the greatest coaches I’ve ever seen,” Schubert said. “I never saw him raise his voice or throw a temper tantrum. If he wanted you to do something, he’d show you, then expect you to do it. I saw him mad, but he never took it out on anyone else.”

With Safford coaching and Schubert and Cotton leading the way on the floor, Austinburg won four straight games in the 1953 tournament, beating Rock Creek, Rowe, Edgewood and Kingsville before running into Fairport and falling, 66-44 to exit the tourney.

“Fairport and Mentor were always the top-notch teams,” Schubert remembers. “We were a Class B school. They were Class A. I couldn’t understand why we played them.”

Schubert also played baseball and ran track at Austinburg. He was a pitcher, caught or played third base in baseball and ran the sprints and hurdles in track.

“The other sports cost too much (for the school),” he said. “And we didn’t have enough guys to put on the football field.”

College proved to be no option for Schubert despite his talents.

“I thought about it and would have liked to do it,” he said. “But my grades weren’t the best.”

He became an apprentice bricklayer after his graduation in 1954, but that was interrupted when the U.S. Army drafted him in 1956.

After basic training, he was sent to Fort George Meade in Maryland, then on to San Antonio, to Fort Sam Houston.

“I was a floater,” he said. “I worked a week here, a week there. I did all kinds of things. It was very easy duty. I was a clerk in the mess hall for a while. They even gave me two more stripes to show my authority.

“I was attached to the medical outfit for a day, did some teaching of the new guys.”

In the army, Schubert had the opportunity to play sports, mainly basketball.

“We played against guys like Elgin Baylor,” he said. “I was on the fast break once, thought I was all alone, and when I got near the basket, a big hand came out and hit the ball away. My coach said that was from dragging ass. ‘If you’d hustled, that wouldn’t have happened,’” he said.

“I was on the baseball team, too, but at the end of the bench. There was a guy who was farther down. He was there every day. Eventually, I shook hands with him.

“I said, ‘I’m light duty, a floater.’ He said, ‘I’m the general of the post, General Shambroa. I come out here to get away from things for a while.’

“When those baseball players came out, they’d get five pitches. Every one of those guys hit the ball so high, it looked like the size of a pea. Every ball went over the fence. I asked the general about it and he said, ‘This is a softball field. You have to be darn good to make the team.’”

Schubert was released on Mother’s Day. He went to work as a bricklayer, then was hired at the Cabot Corporation, which made titanium dioxide, which was used to replace lead in paint.

“It won’t fade out like lead does,” he said.

The company went through seven different changes of ownership and as many different names, but Schubert stayed on, for 33 1/2 years. When he left, the company was SCM Chemicals, but it is now called Global.

“When you get new buyers, you always get name changes,” he said. “That way, they don’t get stuck with somebody else’s debts.”

Schubert married Joanne Crandall from North Kingsville. The couple had three daughters: Debbie, Diane and Denise, but Al and Joanne later divorced, amicably.

He remarried, to Mary Tovolia.

“Her dad was a cop,” Schubert said. “We were married for 10 years before she died of mad cow disease. She and her first husband were hunters and she contracted the disease from wild animals.”

Schubert now lives alone. He said in the interview that he keeps himself busy collecting wooden nickels.

The reporter thought he was joking, but Schubert explained that he is president of a club that meets to talk about the wooden nickels that were made from 1931-1934 and that they now collect. The wooden coins were of many denominations, up to $100, and could only be used in the community which issued them.

A person could have his own personal wooden nickels, reflecting his occupation.

“It was like a business card,” Schubert said. “I used mine as a business card when I was working.”

As president, Schubert has a large role in keeping the club running.

“I write a newsletter every month,” he said. “It’s tough when you don’t have anything to write about.

“The president of the club died, but there were four or five of us who missed the camaraderie. We restarted it and said we’d split up (the presidency). But I’m still president after 10 years.”

King of the Hill

Sharpshooter was a true mighty mite on hardwood for Rowe Vikings

By Chris Larick
For the Star Beacon

At 5-foot-8, Rowe High School’s Dick Hill was usually the smallest player on the basketball court. But Hill more than made up for it, scoring nearly 1,000 points in a four-year career between 1951-1955.

As a result, Hill has been selected for the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame and will be inducted on April 7.

Hill led Ashtabula County scoring in his senior year, 1954-1955, with 389 points in 21 games, an 18.1 average, and led the Vikings in assists as well.

DICK HILL, a former star at Rowe High School, will enter the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame on April 7.

He was an honorable mention selection for the Big Seven all-star team as a sophomore, scoring 249 points. In his junior season, he was a first-team all-tournament pick and was the top vote-getter in the Big Seven poll as a senior, getting 115 of a possible 120 points.

He was also named to the Star Beacon All-Ashtabula County first team, finishing second in the voting to Geneva’s Dave Love. After his senior year, he was named as an honorable mention selection to the Associated Press’s Ohio Class B team. Unfortunately, some of Hill’s statistics were lost while he was going through the process of a divorce, or the list of accolades (as well as his final point total) would be more complete.

“His best shot is a right-handed set shot,” the Star Beacon reported in 1955. “He can fake and drive, having speed, too.”

“He works at basketball or any sport for that matter,” his coach in both basketball and baseball, Stan Humphrey, said at the time. “Very cooperative with me and his teammates. He is also very popular in school.”

A co-captain of the Rowe team (with Bob Williams), Hill was also a fine baseball player and ran track (the 880-yard relay, pole vault and long jump).

“I’ll take five small ones like him any time,” Humphrey said.

“I made up for (my small size) on defense and good scoring,” Hill said recently. “I had a jump shot (rare in that age) from around the key and was good out front. It’s too bad we didn’t have the three-pointer then; I’d have a lot more points.

“I drove the ball well and was fast on defense, stole the ball a lot.”

“We played a 1-2-2 (zone),” he said. “I was out front. Me and another guy used to switch, and I’d chase. We also play a 1-3-1, with me in the center. I handled the ball. Mostly, we played a man-to-man defense.”

Rowe, which has since merged into Conneaut, played in the Big Seven at the time, a conference consisting of Rowe, Edgewood, Jefferson, Andover, Austinburg, Kingsville and Spencer. The Vikings also played games against the Buckeye Division, which included Rock Creek, Williamsfield, Dorset, Pierpont, Deming and Grand Valley. Of those schools, only a few remain, of course.

“We played a lot of bigger schools, too,” Hill said. “We played Conneaut, Geneva, Harbor and Erie Prep my senior year.”

Despite Hill’s talents, Rowe struggled during most of his high school years.

“We probably won 14 or 15 games my senior year,” Hill said.

Hill’s teammates varied over his four-year career, but included Bob Williams, Buck Smith, Bill Lynch, George Mallorie, Rich Ring, Bill Woodworth, Jack Oakes and George Hogle when he was a senior.

The Vikings were coached by John Toth Hill’s freshman year, Humphrey when he was a sophomore and senior and John Townsend as a junior. Townsend went into the service during Hill’s junior year, returned to coach for a year, then left to become a superintendent in southern Ohio.

In baseball, Hill played second base as a freshman and third base thereafter. The Vikings went to the state baseball tournament his senior year.

“I probably averaged .378, right around there,” Hill said. “I got my hits. I went to the St. Louis Browns’ camp in Barberton.”

Hill was expected to attend Ohio University to play baseball and possibly basketball, but it never happened.

“Bob Wren was interested in me,” he said. “Erwin Albert took me down there. When I didn’t hear anything by September, I tried to get into Thiel College, but it was too late.”

Instead of attending college, Hill went into the United States Air Force and spent four years, seven months and 14 days there. Like most servicemen he kept track.

“I was in a refueling outfit,” he said. “I got out of tech school in Oregon and they sent me to Columbus, Ohio, to Lockborn Air Force Base.”

In the air force he was able to play baseball and, for a while, basketball.

While playing air force baseball, he competed against the likes of Frank Howard, Hopalong Cassidy and Galen Cisco. Those last two were outstanding football players for Ohio State (Cassidy won the Heisman Trophy), but were great at baseball, too, Cassidy as a shortstop and Cisco as a pitcher.

In October that year, Hill was sent to England, to Homewood Park, eight miles from London. From there he went to Greenham Common, making the air force base team as a third baseman. He got to travel all over England with the team.

“We’d play three games a week, traveling on Friday, then playing once Saturday and a double-header on Sunday,” he said.

“At Lockborn Air Force Base, we had a game with Ohio University. We were the Skyhawks. In the seventh inning, we were getting beat 5-2 and Bob Wren (the OU baseball coach) brought in this pitcher to relieve. It was Gordon Griffey from Rowe High School, a hometown boy. I also played against Bob Horowitz from Springfield in the summer.”

He also got married in England in 1959, a marriage that would last 23 years.

By the time he got out of the service, he was 25.

“Matt Carson sent me to Lee Tressell at Baldwin-Wallace,” he recalls. But, according to Hill, he hadn’t taken plane geometry at Rowe, and B-W required that course. He did continue his athletic career, playing baseball for West Springfield.

Hill went to work for Ashtabula Bow and Socket, where he toiled for 13 years. Then he took a job with the Pittsburgh and Conneaut Dock Company. He retired at the age of 62, nearly 13 years ago.

Hill has three children by his first wife: Steven, 48, a paramedic and fireman in Jefferson and Kingsville; Paul, 46, who works for Ashtabula Molded Fiber; and Shannon, 43, who lives in Roaming Shores. One of Shannon’s children, Zach Mucci, plays tennis for Jefferson. Another, Vincent Mucci, played tennis for the Falcons and is now a serviceman who has spent stints in Iraq and Afghanistan in the special forces.

Hill has remarried, to Carol (Dixon). The couple has been married for 22 years now. Carol has five daughters, Michelle, Robin, Paula, Cindy and Tracey.

For the past 11 or 12 years, Hill has been playing golf.

“My brother got me into it,” he said. “It’s just great. I didn’t play much when I was working. Now I play every Wednesday in a morning senior league at Village Green.”

He averages about 88-90.

Tiff was tough

Tiffany Leonard of Geneva gave no quarter — and asked for none — while starring in 3 sports for 4 years

By Chris Larick
For the Star Beacon

Despite leading Ashtabula, Lake and Geauga counties in scoring during the 1992-1993 basketball season with 560 points (23.4 per game), Tiffany Leonard drew no interest from Division I colleges for basketball.

Why not? She was just 5-foot-4.

But that was all right with Leonard, who will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame on April 7. She had plenty of other offers, 42 in fact, to play her favorite sport, softball.

In fact, Leonard was good in just about any sport she played, from the time her father, Tim, introduced her to tee-ball when she was 5. She also played basketball and was a gymnast in her early years. By the time she reached high school, Leonard was a star athlete year-round, playing volleyball in the fall, basketball in the winter and softball in the spring.

TIFFANY LEONARD of Geneva was fearless during her playing days, as shown in this photo from the 1992-93 season when she takes the ball at and draws a foul from Ashtabula center Rebecca Kirkpatrick during a game in Ball Gymnasium.

In basketball, she was one of just a handful of girls to play in the Geneva Midget League, along with Shaun Novak and Katie Hobson (now Katie Carter).

Her final year at that level, she made the all-star team, the only girl to win that honor.

“My seventh-grade year, I played whatever I could,” Leonard said. “I’d play seventh-grade basketball (for Geneva) with the girls, then cheerlead for the boys.”

She and Novak started with the junior-varsity team under Bill Crawford to start their freshman season, but were moved up to the varsity team, coached by Jeff Pizon.

By the time she was a sophomore, Leonard was good enough to earn special-mention honors on the Star-Beacon All-Ashtabula County team.

She moved up to that squad’s second team as a junior, scoring 13.2 points a game, sixth in scoring in the county. She finished her senior year as the best scorer in the area with 23.1 points a game. She was eighth overall in free-throw shooting (62.7 percent) and fourth in 3-pointers while averaging six rebounds and four steals per contest. Not surprisingly, she was selected as the Star Beacon Ashtabula Player of the Year for 1992-1993.

Though she could shoot the long ball, she found other ways to score.

“I’d go in there and try to go down to the other end of the court and make a layup or get fouled,” she said. “I did everything; I played a very physical game of basketball. But not many Division I schools looked at me. I was too short. I loved softball, anyway.”

Leonard also was a standout volleyball player, with Stan Bielech as coach, at Geneva. She played middle back.

“I dug out the ball and was a good server,” she said. “We only played the best-of-three games. I set the record for scoring points then.”

Still, softball was her best sport. Playing with Bob Herpy as her coach, she started in left field as a freshman. But she became the ace pitcher for the Eagles as a sophomore. Her senior year, 1993, she led Geneva to the Northeastern Conference championship.

“I was 24-1 my senior year,” she said. “I was the leadoff hitter. When I played in the traveling league, I played third base. That was my best spot. I pitched because they needed someone to do that. My sister, Tara, took over as the pitcher when I graduated.”

Leonard posted a .360 batting average for her high school career, hitting .389 as a senior and had a .957 fielding percentage. Toward the end of her senior year she was chosen as the winner of the Paul Novak Award as the best senior athlete at Geneva, having been first-team All-Northeastern Conference and all-county in volleyball, basketball and softball.

If Division I colleges snubbed her in basketball, they beat a path to her door in softball. She had scholarship offers from Youngstown State, Akron, Toledo and Morehead State in Kentucky, along with many Division II schools. She eventually settled on Morehead State.

There, she made a quick impression. In her second or third game, the coach put her in to pinch-hit and she cleared the bases.

“I had never sat on the bench before,” she said. “It was a humbling thing. (The pinch-hit appearance) was a put-up-or-shut-up thing. I got a chance and ran with it.”

Playing softball in college isn’t a one-season sport. She wound up playing 30 games in the fall and 65 more in the spring, against tough competition like Ohio State, Tennessee Tech and many other big schools.

“It was very challenging and very rewarding,” Leonard said.

Though the softball schedule kept her busy, she thrived, improving her grades. Like many college athletes, Leonard was able to take advantage of the study tables.

“I did better in college than in high school, grade-wise,” she said. “It was hard at first, but I didn’t want to let anyone down. My area, nursing, made me more focused.”

After one year at Morehead State, she transferred to Youngstown State.

“It was a six-hour drive down there (to Morehead State),” she said. “My grandfather had a heart attack and passed away. I was much happier close to home. If I wanted to, I could come home at any time. It was a better experience.”

At Morehead, she had gotten off to a great start, hitting .410 in her first 10 games. That fell off a bit, but she still wound up hitting .306 as a freshman, batting sixth.

Youngstown State switched her to batting lead-off.

“My on-base percentage was very good,” she said. “I didn’t strike out a lot and usually got on base.”

She had decided on a career in medicine. She had been a candy-striper in hospitals and decided on nursing. When she graduated from Youngstown State, she got an internship in Texas, working in open-heart surgery.

After five years, she moved back to Ohio. Leonard had married Donny Lindberg, a 1990 Geneva graduate whom she met at 18. The couple went to college together and married in 1998. They had twins (Madison and Tyler) and another son, Darren.

When those five years were over, Leonard moved back to Ohio in 2002. She took a job at the Geauga Regional Hospital and spent two years there, working three days a week and substitute teaching in Geneva schools.

Leonard and Lindberg divorced in 2011.

“It just didn’t work out,” she said.

In 2005, Riverside High School was looking for nurses and hired Leonard. She has spent the last eight years there, most recently as the district nurse, serving nine schools and 6,400 students.

“There’s a lot more paperwork, but it’s nice to have the summers off,” she said. “It’s a better life for my kids.”

Nowadays, Leonard coaches her children in soccer, basketball, baseball, softball and football.

“I never played soccer, but they needed a coach,” she said. “This is my seventh year. I had to learn that.”

These days she is too busy coaching to play sports herself, though she has played in charity basketball and football games at Riverside.

Looking back, she remains grateful to the people who were responsible for her success in sports.

“I just want to say that I wouldn’t have had any of it without my parents,” she said. “We lived in Rock Creek, a 15- or 20-minute drive. My dad coached me. He got up at 4:30 and he and I would go to the Y. I realize now that it’s a lot of work and preparation, getting the equipment you need. I didn’t realize how much they sacrificed for us.”

Half a hundred!

50-point game in ’73 one of many highlights for soon-to-be Hall of Famer Carl McIlwain of PV

By Chris Larick
For the Star Beacon

Locked in a tie game with Perry in 1973, the Pymatuning Valley Lakers went to their ace in the hole in the second half.

Connecting on 18 of 27 field-goal attempts and 14 of 17 free-throw tries, 6-foot-4 forward Carl McIlwain notched 50 points in a 91-75 victory, one of few such performances in Ashtabula County basketball history.

It set a school record that still stands. He added 16 rebounds in that contest.

“Someone yelled at me, some football guy, that I had 26 points right after the half,” McIlwain remembers. “In the fourth quarter, the guy guarding me didn’t box me out. I’d put one up and if it fell short, I’d grab the rebound and put it back in.”

“That was one night when he was really shooting well,” his coach, Bob Hitchcock said of McIlwain, who will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame on April 7. “They left him open and our unselfish guards and Jeff Brown kept getting him the ball. I took him out with three or four minutes left or he could have had more.”

“I couldn’t have done 50 without the help of my teammates,” McIlwain said. “One guy who was put into the game was told not to shoot, just to pass it to me.”

CARL McILWAIN (40), shown with Pymatuning Valley co-captain Randy Spencer, will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame on April 7.

CARL McILWAIN, a 1973 Pymatuning Valley graduate, is shown with his wife, Donna, and son, Brett, 16.

McIlwain wasn’t always that prolific, but he was one of the best players in the county that year. He was named to the Star Beacon All-Ashtabula County and Coaches’ All-Grand River Conference first teams after the season, averaging 24 points in league games and 22.7 overall, following a junior year in which he averaged 15 points a game.

Actually, McIlwain had been the Lakers’ brightest star since late in his sophomore year. That season, he led Pymatuning Valley to an 88-75 victory over fourth-ranked in the state Newton Falls in the tournament with 16 points and 16 rebounds.

“I started him in that game and we were fortunate enough to win,” Hitchcock said. “I knew he was going to be a pretty good player.”

McIlwain’s success was a result of hard work, beginning in the fourth grade, when Ross Boggs would open the gym for area players on Saturday.

“We just did dribbling and shooting, drills and layups,” McIlwain said. “We didn’t play games.”

His future coach, Hitchcock, remembers meeting McIlwain for the first time.

“I had an appointment on West Main Street (in Andover) around 1970 and I heard this ball bouncing down the sidewalk,” Hitchcock said. “He was bouncing it left-handed; he had a cast on the other hand.”

The first time McIlwain recalls playing organized ball was in the eighth grade.

“It was a tossup between football and basketball,” McIlwain says of his priorities. “I broke my arm in my freshman year. After that, basketball looked better. I think we only had two games in the eighth grade, one against Harbor and one against Kingsville.”

By the end of his sophomore season, McIlwain’s skills had improved enough that Hitchcock started him. But McIlwain remembers it might not have been just a tribute to his talents.

“One of the varsity players missed practice and got kicked off the team,” he said. “I played about three games.”

By his senior year, PV had a tall and talented team. In addition to the 6-foot-4 McIlwain, the Lakers could also boast 6-9 Rex Burlingham and his 6-4 brother, Randy. Other teammates included Jeff Brown, Gary French, Terry Mason, Randy Spencer and Paul Hinebaugh. The Lakers played in the GRC then, competing against Ledgemont, Perry and Grand Valley.

During his senior year, the Lakers posted eight wins in a row and went 14-6 overall. Pictures of the team in the newspaper showed McIlwain and Rex Burlingham both wearing glasses.

“In my pictures, I always had athletic tape on my glasses,” McIlwain said. “I went through a lot of tape. They had hard contacts at the time, but I was never interested in contacts. I only know of one kid I played against that had contact lenses.”

McIlwain doesn’t recall too many of his games, but recalls one shot in particular.

“I can remember one shot against Grand Valley,” he said. “I got in foul trouble and stayed out in the middle of the floor. I made a left-handed hook shot from the foul line. I remember the team razzing me about that. I don’t know where it came from, but I remember Lenny Lattimer doing that in our old gym. I thought it was kind of neat.”

He remembers shooting about 85 percent from the foul line.

“Like all those other guys back in the ’70s, there wasn’t much to do,” he said. “(Shooting basketballs) was something I could do by myself. We had an outside court and I would go shoot when I was bored.”

McIlwain probably could have played basketball at a higher level, but he didn’t care to.

“I wasn’t interested in college,” he said. “I just wanted to work.”

He got a job as a truck driver at Andover Crop Service and spent 19 years there. Then he moved on to a lumberyard in Meadville, Pa. named Meadville Agway after being recommended for that job by one of its dealers.

McIlwain moved on to work for the Ashtabula County Highway Department, where he has spent the last 11 years.

“We fix potholes, pave, chip-seal,” he said. “There’s a lot of variety. My roads are out by the vo-ed school.”

McIlwain met his wife, Donna, at Greensville, while both were playing in singles volleyball at Thiel College. The couple has been married 21 years and has a son, Brett, 16, a junior at Pymatuning Valley High School who is currently attending vocational school.

McIlwain’s favorite sport is deer hunting. He usually bags one a year. He used to fish a lot, but hasn’t done that in recent years.

“There’s no fish in Pymatuning (Lake) any more,” he said.

“I had a lot of fun playing basketball,” he concludes. “Like a lot of other guys, I didn’t have much to do. We didn’t have video games. Basketball was something I could do on my own.”

Miller’s time was grand

Ashtabula great passed 1,000 in both points and rebounds in her career

By Chris Larick
For the Star Beacon

Always on the lookout for talent to stock his junior high girls basketball teams, Roby Potts spotted a tall cheerleader. What he discovered was a diamond in the rough.

“I didn’t want to play basketball until junior high school,” Angela Miller, who will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame on April 7, said. “I was a cheerleader and did volleyball. But Coach Potts said I was tall and athletic and should try out for basketball. It developed from there.”

Miller’s parents, Walter and Sandra, had always stressed to their children that they needed to stay active. That led to things like working for the church, doing a paper route and twirling a baton.

In junior high, Miller grew to about 5-foot-8 and was 5-9 in high school, tall for a girl in those days, but not so much that she dwarfed other players.

“I never got a growth spurt like some girls do,” she said. “I’m now about 5-10 or 5-10 1/2.”

Miller starred on Ashtabula junior high and high school teams that also included Lisa Whetro, Lakesha Jones and Rebecca Kirkpatrick. Potts, who had been coaching at West Junior High, moved up to take over the high school team with that group of girls.

“Coach Potts was my favorite coach, starting in junior high school,” Miller said. “He was not only a good coach but a good person and fair. He ran a great offense and a pretty good defense. My favorite thing was to go for the steal and go fullcourt for the layup. That and blocking shots.”

Though the Panthers were a good team, they found their path to a championship blocked by a stronger team.

“We did fairly well,” Miller said. “I was the center. We never won a championship, but we always had a winning season. I was the top scorer with at least 15 points a game.”

As good as Ashtabula was, Jefferson always had its number at the time.

ANGELA MILLER of Ashtabula battles Shelly Burns (13) and Jodi Springer of Jefferson for possession of a loose ball during a game in the 1993-94 season at Ball Gymnasium. In the background is Falcon Tami Mullen (31). Miller will enter the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame on April 7.

ANGELA MILLER: "I didn't want to play basketball until junior high school. I was a cheerleader and did volleyball. But Coach (Roby) Potts said I was tall and athletic and should try out for basketball. It developed from there."

“It was always Jefferson,” Miller, who finished with 1,041 points in a three-year varsity career and was one of six Panthers to grab more than 1,000 rebounds in a career, sighed.

Miller earned first-team Star Beacon All-Ashtabula County and All-NEC honors as a junior and senior. As a senior in 1993-94, she shared Star Beacon Ashtabula County Player of the Year honors with Shelly Burns of Jefferson.

She was also a standout in volleyball.

“For my size, I had good pins,” Miller said. “I could jump pretty well. I could get up and spike the ball.”

She was recruited by several Division III schools, colleges like Mount Union, Capital, Edinboro and Akron, now a Division I school. But Division II Clark Atlanta University, a 6,000-student college in Atlanta, Ga., eventually won her over.

“Mom and Dad recorded the games and sent out tapes,” Miller said. “I don’t know how we got down to Clark, but the volleyball coach saw the tapes and was interested. It was a late decision, two or three months before school started. They invited me down for a visit. It was a big city, which was a nice change, and they gave me a scholarship.”

Miller played volleyball at Clark all four years under coach Larry Nolley. A knee injury curtailed her college basketball career, but she also became interested in track and field, throwing the shot and discus.

“I got talked into that,” she said. “I had done it in high school for a while, but I never did anything about it (in college) when I was a freshman and sophomore. In my senior year, I won the conference in the discus. The shot was not as good for me, but I was OK.

“It’s completely different now. They do a lot more training. I think I threw (the discus) 120 feet or so.”

In volleyball, Clark was a good team, but was frustrated from winning a championship by another school, Alabama A&M.

“We made it to the championship game, but they always beat us,” Miller said. “We did have winning seasons in the conference.”

While at Clark, Miller majored in sports medicine, studying to be an athletic trainer. After graduation, she worked for 11 years as a trainer in Atlanta, earning her master’s degree in the process. She worked at Morehouse College there as an assistant trainer. Then, in 2005, she moved back to Ohio, taking a job as a trainer at Columbus State Community College. She then worked at a hospital for almost a year before moving back to Atlanta, where she now lives.

Improved weather was one reason, but so was the desire to become a nurse at a trauma hospital in Atlanta.

“I work with severe injuries, things like car accidents and stabbings,” she said. “I was always interested in the body and how it works. I wanted to go back and broaden what I can do. Some of it is gory stuff, but it’s never boring.”

Working at two different hospitals, she puts in 50 to 60 hours a week.

These days, she doesn’t play competitive sports, because of knee injuries she has incurred. In 1995, during the first day of basketball practice in her freshman year at Clark, she tore her ACL.

“They scoped it and I could play on it,” she said. “Then I ruptured my patella tendon in 2001 during one of the classes we had I was doing a jump test. That can’t be fixed with arthroscopic surgery; it’s a lot worse than an ACL. I was on crutches and immobilized for three months.”

Miller, now 37, is able to workout at a gym, though, working on the ellipticals and treadmills.

“I just don’t jump,” she said. “I work out. I also hang out with my friends and love to travel.

“I’ve been to St. Thomas and the Bahamas, Los Angeles and Chicago.”

Miller’s brother, LaJuan, a year-and-a-half younger played football for Ashtabula and went on to play for Grambling State. She also has an older brother, Andre, 41, who also played sports at Ashtabula.

Heavenly career

St. John’s Meola and the rest of ‘Davey’s Angels’ bedeviled their opponents

By Chris Larick
For the Star Beacon

St. John High School athletic teams had been baffled for 12 years in their quest to win more than 10 games in a season before Davey’s Angels solved the mystery.

Behind the coaching of Dave Fowler and the play of Marianne Meola, Carla Bernardo, Stephanie Laffey, Donna Richards and Cheryl Zetwick, the Heralds’ girls basketball team registered a 12-5 record in 1981 and people paid attention.

“(Star Beacon sports editor) Darrell Lowe dubbed us that,” Meola, who will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame on April 7, said of the Davey’s Angels tag given to the Heralds in Meola’s senior year. “We brought the excitement back to St. John, the first team since 1969 to win more than 10 games, boys or girls.”

MARIANNE MEOLA, shown with her basketball coach at St. John, Dave Fowler, will enter the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Famer on April 7.

Meola, who will be the first St. John girls player inducted into the ACBF Hall of Fame, began her athletic career the same way many girls of that period did — playing ball with brothers. In Meola’s case, the siblings involved were Don, Tom and Ben.

“I grew up the baby of the family, with three older brothers,” Meola said from her home in Florida. “We were a very sports-minded family. My brothers all played sports for St. John. My brother Tom played for Youngstown State in college.”

That had been true even before Meola’s generation. Her uncle, Don (Ducky) DiPietro, played professional football at one time and is a member of the Ashtabula Touchdown Club Hall of Fame.

Ducky DiPietro was also the owner of the Spot Cafe, at the time a hub of activity in the harbor. Childless, DiPietro hired his nephews and niece to work there.

“Being the youngest of the family, in order to hang out with them, I had to adapt to their interests,” Meola said. “Growing up together, we spent a lot of time at my grandparents’. “

Basketball became Marianne’s main sport, followed by softball. Her first coach at St. John, Bill Schmidt, was better known as the baseball coach who led the Heralds to a state championship in 1983. Fowler took over for Schmidt when Meola was a sophomore. Two years later, “Davey’s Angels” were born.

Meola and Bernardo were the guards on that team and did most of the scoring. Zetwick and Richards did the rebounding and tough work under the boards.

“It took a team effort to get where we did,” Meola said.

The 1980-1981 St. John team started 6-0, raising eyebrows in the community, inured to watching them lose.

“The years prior to that, we were not as competitive,” Meola said. “That’s why it was so significant, us becoming so competitive in both the county and NEC (Northeastern Conference).”

That season started on a high note, with the Heralds impressing spectators by winning the annual Harbor Tipoff Tournament that started the season.

“Frank Roskovics, the coach at Harbor, was always down at the Spot,” Meola remembers of yet another ACBF Hall of Famer. “He was a graduate of St. John and there was always a rivalry between St. John and Harbor.”

Meola averaged about 14 points per game that year.

“As the point guard, I also had a lot of assists,” she said. “I was a good ballhandler and was left-handed, which helped (because opponents weren’t used to defending left-handers).”

The final game of the season was Meola’s coup de grace.

“I scored 30 (of St. John’s 48) points, and that was before the 3-pointer,” Meola said. “That game was neck-and-neck and went into overtime.”

Though the Heralds enjoyed a very good season her senior year, another squad was more dominant. That was the Ashtabula Panthers, for whom the Diana Davis show was getting top billing. Davis, who once scored 50 points in a tournament game at Champion, became a member of the ACBF Hall of Fame several years ago. She is the leading scorer in Ashtabula County basketball history with 1,934 points.

“We were undefeated until we ran into Ashtabula,” Meola said. “Back then, the city schools — Ashtabula, Harbor, St. John and Edgewood — were very competitive. The Harbor games really come to mind.”

Meola also played softball at St. John, but those teams were less successful.

“Carla (Bernardo) was the pitcher; she was All-NEC,” Meola, who played center field for the Heralds, said. “Carla and I played both basketball and softball together. We still see each other when I come up north.”

After graduating from St. John, Meola began her college studies at the Ashtabula Campus of Kent State University. She tried out for the basketball team, but her heart wasn’t in it.

She had received a couple of letters of interest from colleges, but didn’t follow up on them.

“I decided to work and go to school at that time,” she said. “In the ’80’s, that was not a priority of mine.”

She took her bachelor’s degree in business administration from Kent and later added a master’s in finance from Florida Gulf Coast University.

During her summers while in college, she had worked as a teller at Key Bank in Ashtabula.

“I got the job right out of high school,” she said. “I liked it. Between working and school, I was very busy. Kent State (Ashtabula) had a basketball program at that time and tried very hard to recruit me.”

After college, she started working full-time for Key Bank in Ashtabula. In 1995, Meola, who will turn 50 this year, was asked to transfer to a new Key Bank in Estero, Fla., between North Myers and Naples, as district service manager. She jumped at the chance. She has currently advanced to the position of district business administration vice-president, managing three offices and 12 employees.

In the past several years, Meola has become accomplished in a different sport.

“I’ve developed a love for playing golf now,” she said.

She has joined the Executive Women’s Golf Association and currently serves as treasurer.

“Golf was always a family thing,” she said. “I started golf with my grandfather when I graduated college. It was something he and I could do together and I enjoyed it.”

For the past two years, she has reigned as chapter champion. In 2011, she won her flight, Flight 1’s semifinals, shooting an 81. That earned her a trip to Palm Desert, Calif., where she finished seventh of 36 golfers.

“That was a great experience,” she said. “This year ,I didn’t make it past semifinals.”

Meola is very grateful to her parents, Donald and Palma.

“My parents were good with us,” she said. “They supported all of us through our sports through all those years. They were very encouraging to all of us. All four of us have college educations and three of us have master’s. They gave up a lot, but they were never forceful parents who put a lot of pressure on us.”

Meola never married, but prides herself on being a great aunt to her seven nephews and nieces, one of whom plays for Lakeside and another for Lake Catholic.

A true Pioneer

Hiram Safford turned tiny Austinburg into county basketball power

By Chris Larick
For the Star Beacon

As far as anyone knows, Hiram Safford was the first Ashtabula County coach inducted into the Ohio High School Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame when that happened on Oct. 25, 1968.

The late Safford’s widow, Virginia, has a certificate that says so.

A current page on the association’s site maintains that the first year of induction was 1987. Clearly, that is not the case.

“New” rules for induction require a coach to post 300 victories. That may seem fair in this day and age, but the requirement back in 1968 was apparently 100 victories. Safford accomplished that between 1946 and 1957 at Austinburg, winning 105.

Regardless of which measurement is used, considering how many fewer games were played when Safford was coaching, it was quite an accomplishment. The Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation will honor Safford and 14 others by inducting them into its Hall of Fame on April 7.

The son of a Baptist minister, Safford, who died in 1998 at the age of 83, had a long and illustrious career as an educator and coach at Pierpont, Austinburg and West Geauga.

His high school days were spent at Shinglehouse High School in Pennsylvania, where he played basketball, baseball and soccer, graduating in 1933. He played one season of basketball at St. Bonaventure.

AL "RED" SCHUBERT, ON THE LATE HIRAM SAFFORD (shown here): "He was one of the greatest coaches I've ever seen. I never saw him raise his voice or throw a temper tantrum. If he wanted you to do something, he'd show you, then expect you to do it. I saw him mad, but he never took it out on anyone else." Schubert, a former star player at Austinburg High School, will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame with his coach April 7.

HIRAM SAFFORD, shown with one of his championship teams at Austinburg, will enter the ACBF Hall of Fame on April 7.

“Then I had to go to work,” Safford told Bob Thompson of the Painesville Telegraph in 1969. “It was during the depression.”

He worked several jobs while getting his college education, one of them at a silk mill in Shinglehouse.

After finishing his degree at St. Bonaventure in English, social studies and language in 1938, Safford had difficulty finding a job. He did janitorial work, substitute teaching and worked at a tannery mill before landing his first full-time teaching job in Pierpont in 1941.

During that time, Saffford played semi-pro baseball in Pennsylvania and New York.

At Pierpont, Safford coached basketball for a short time before being drafted into the U.S Army Air Corps in 1942, where he rose to the rank of captain, working in communication and utilities. He was in England, France, Germany and Belgium, serving close to the front lines near the transportation lines and fighter planes.

When he was discharged from the air force in December 1945, he took a job at Austinburg, teaching English and coaching basketball, baseball and track. While there, he took classes at Slippery Rock State Teachers College and Kent State University, earning a master’s degree in English from Kent in 1951.

“I had been teaching history, government and languages in high school,” he said. “I liked English the best so I decided to get my master’s in that.”

The Austinburg Pioneers won three league championships and one county championship while he was there.

Behind the coaching of Safford and the play of Al (”Red”) Schubert and Dutch Cotton (Cotton was inducted into the ACBF Hall of Fame last year; Schubert will join him on April 7), the Austinburg team won the Ashtabula County championship in 1953 and took the Big Seven crown both in 1952 and 1953. Others on the Pioneers team included Larry Brail (who died on Jan. 7 this year), Norm and Joe Kikel, Harry Foster, Jerry Clemmer and Arnold Burton.

“I scored about 25 points a game and Dutch was close to that, maybe 23 or 24,” Schubert said. “Dutch and I shared the scoring. If they’d put two guys on me, Dutch would score a lot. If they put two guys on Dutch, I would be the main scorer.

Austinburg won four straight games in the 1953 tournament, beating Rock Creek, Rowe, Edgewood and Kingsville before running into Fairport and falling, 66-44 to exit the tourney.

“Fairport and Mentor were always the top-notch teams,” Schubert remembers. “We were a Class B school. They were Class A. I couldn’t understand why we played them.”

According to Schubert, Safford had a big role in the Pioneers’ success.

“He was one of the greatest coaches I’ve ever seen,” Schubert said. “I never saw him raise his voice or throw a temper tantrum. If he wanted you to do something, he’d show you, then expect you to do it. I saw him mad, but he never took it out on anyone else.

“We played zone and once in a while, we played man-to-man,” Cotton said. “(Safford) was a zone coach. We played zone about 90 percent of the time. We caused a lot of turnovers. We had to move fast.”

“Safford was our coach from eighth grade through our senior year,” Cotton said. “He was very nice. He never got blown out of shape. He’d just say we had to go get the win, we had to hustle. I never saw him blow his lid. He was a super guy.”

In 1957, Safford accepted a teaching and coaching job at West Geauga, where he stayed until his retirement in 1979.

He coached junior varsity basketball from 1958-1963 for the Wolverines, but was never given the head job.

“It was always a disappointment that I never coached varsity basketball at West Geauga,” he later told Thompson.

He also coached track there, from 1961 to 1969, winning seven championships in nine years, as well as cross country for five years, winning championships in 1966 and 1967. In 1978 he was named head of the English department.

He played slowpitch softball in Painesville with his son, Steve, and Thompson during the 1960s and participated in volleyball in Chesterland.

When he retired in 1979, he and his wife, Virginia, did a lot of traveling. One of Safford’s favorite trips was to Cooperstown, N.Y., to visit the Baseball Hall of Fame. The couple also took several trips to Florida.

“We travel by car, about 300 miles a day,” he said. “My son calls us leisurely travelers.”

Hiram was married to Virginia, whom he met in West Springfield, Pa. when Hiram came into town after graduating from college and Virginia was still in high school, for 55 years before his death. The couple had a son, Steve; daughters Ann and Jane; and four grandchildren.

When he retired, Thompson asked him if he had any regrets.

“I wouldn’t change a thing,” he said.

“It was an exciting time,” Safford’s widow, Virginia, now 90 years old said. “There were so many schools, like Rowe and Fairport. We were married for 55 years before he died, and I still miss him.”

Kelly girl

Kelly Emerine is the latest Hitchcock to enter the ACBF HOF

By Chris Larick
For the Star Beacon

Kelly (Hitchcock) Emerine lists an event that occurred in 2012 as her proudest moment.

“Last year was probably my proudest moment when my dad (Gordie Hitchcock Sr.) got in (to the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame),” Emerine said. “He worked so hard for so many years. He played the low post and sometimes those people don’t get recognition.”

Emerine may have to revise her opinion in 2013, when she herself joins her father in the ACBF Hall of Fame on April 7.

Like her father, Emerine often played the low post, and she did it very well.

Though listed generously on the all-star teams she made at 6-feet, Emerine played the position for the Pymatuning Valley Lakers at 5-11.

Though they were a very good team throughout her tenure at Pymatuning Valley, the Lakers’ best year was doubtlessly her sophomore season (1990-91), when she was just one of three Hitchcocks on the team, joining her sister Ann, a junior, and her first cousin, Kim, a senior at the time. PV won its first 18 games that year and finished at 19-1, losing to Brookfield in the district finals in the final 30 seconds of the game.

“When we (the Hitchcocks) started to play together, we did really well,” Emerine said. “We were ranked fourth in the state.”

Because of her family background (the Hitchcocks all played basketball; a few are already in the ACBF Hall of fame), Emerine became acquainted with a basketball at a young age.

KELLY (HITCHCOCK) EMERINE: "Last year was probably my proudest moment when my dad (Gordie Hitchcock Sr.) got in (to the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame). He worked so hard for so many years. He played the low post and sometimes those people don't get recognition."

KELLY AND JOHN EMERINE, with their children, Lydia, 7, and Gavin, 3. Kelly, a former Pymatuning Valley standout, will enter the ACBF HOF on April 7.

“I played basketball in the fourth grade; it was something all of my family did,” she said. “My father got me doing it at a young age. Mom coached me in the fourth grade. It was just a little basketball. I also played tee-ball and baseball.”

Because of her height, Emerine played center and sometimes forward.

“In our area, one of the biggest teams was Crestwood,” she said. “I don’t think any of their players were under six feet.”

At the time, Pymatuning Valley played in the East Suburban Conference, against teams from Grand Valley, Cardinal, Newbury, Berkshire, Ledgemont, Perry, Kirtland and Fairport. The Hitchcocks were joined by Heather McGann and Angie Pashley on that very successful 1990-91 team.

“We did set plays,” Emerine recalls. “I was on the right side at the top of the key. We had some pretty good point guards. Grand Valley was always a big game for us. In the tournament, Berkshire was a big game. One of our guards had a grades issue (when we lost).”

“She was a very good defensive player in the paint, whether we were in the man-to-man or the zone,” her coach, Beth Helfer, also a member of the ACBF HOF, said. “She controlled the boards and pushed the opposing player out from the rim. She had a nice jump shot within 15 feet. For a player her size, she was an excellent passer, getting it inside or throwing cross-court. She’d get the ball into the low post or high post. She had a lot of assists.

“She was just a good all-around player. She could play the high post, roll to the basket. A lot of times, we’d put her at the point on our press. She had a lot of athletic ability and a great attitude. You couldn’t ask for a more coachable player. She’d take extra practice to work on her footwork in the post or work on passing. She was a real team player, every coach’s dream. I wish I had a hundred of her.”

As the Hitchcocks graduated, Pymatuning Valley’s victories went down, but Helfer still remembers the Lakers winning 15 to 17 games each of Emerine’s years.

“I had a lot of fun playing,” Emerine said. “We did fairly well, an above-average team that competed well. Rebounds were a big thing for me. I probably averaged 10 to 15 points a game, with about the same or more rebounds. Our guards were probably our highest scorers.”

Lettering for three years at PV, Emerine was an All-Ohio selection and first-team Star Beacon All-Ashtabula County in 1992 and 1993, was honorable mention All-ESC in 1991 and first-team all-ESC in 1992 and 1993 and was named to the second team All-Northeast Lakes district in 1993. She was the school’s MVP in basketball in 1993 and serveed as co-captain of the Lakers in her junior and senior seasons.

Emerine also played volleyball for coach Shari McCaslin and softball (as a pitcher) for Helfer. But her best and favorite sport was basketball.

She earned a partial basketball scholarship to Walsh College and played forward there for two years.

“I played some center, but girls were a lot taller there,” she said.

In her junior year at Walsh, Emerine decided to focus on her studies and gave up basketball.

“I wanted to be a nurse and focused on my career,” she said. “I’m a registered nurse now, got my associate degree in three years.”

After college she went to work at Broadfield Manor in the Madison-Geneva area. She now works at Lake Health Home Care, a business that sends its nurses into homes.

“It’s more flexible,” she said. “I have two kids, 7 and 3. I enjoy that a little more. It’s nice to help people. We serve all of Lake County and some of Geauga County. I work as needed, otherwise, I stay home with my kids. I’d rather take care of them than take them to day care.

“Some day I’ll go back. I miss it a lot, but you have to make sacrifices sometimes.”

Emerine met her husband, John, in Columbus after returning to Ohio from training she had in Arizona. John is a pharmacist with Metro Health in Cleveland. The couple lives with their children, Lydia, 7, and Gavin, 3, in Munson Township, near Chardon.

“I do enjoy it,” She aid. It’s a small town. I grew up in Richmond Township.”

Emerine has taken up running (along with her sister, Ann) and competes in half-marathons and ran her first marathon last May.

“I’m probably in better shape than when I was playing basketball,” she said. “And it’s a great stress reliever.”

Meanwhile, Gordie Sr. the doting grandfather, is already grooming the grandkids for a basketball career.

“Dad is already training (Lydia) for first-grade basketball,” Kelly laughs. “He already has her dribbling. We go to the YMCA and play basketball there. It’s hard for me to sit on the sidelines.”

A true tall tale

In Ashtabula County, 7-foot basketball players come around about as often as Halley’s Comet.

By Chris Larick
For the Star Beacon

For those counting, that’s roughly 75 years.

If so, it might be 2040 before we see the likes of Ashtabula’s Jim Gilbert again. Gilbert, who will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame on April 7, played basketball for coach Gene Gephart and the Ashtabula Panthers from 1963 to 1965.

Gilbert was discovered (which wouldn’t appear to be that difficult) by Gephart in the halls of Ashtabula High School as a freshman. One caveat though — Gilbert had only a rudimentary knowledge of the game. So Gephart assigned assistant coach Fred Yanero to tutor Gilbert in the fundamentals during his freshman year.

“We really started from scratch,” Gephart said at the time.

“I used to play on the playgrounds and I played when I was at Station Avenue,” Gilbert told Star Beacon sports writer Tom Harris in 2001. “I was kind of awkward. I took dancing lessons so I’d be able to move around more.”

Gilbert may never have made it to the roster of “Dancing with the Stars.” But he became agile enough to become a force in the area.

“We got him ready, then we polished him,” Gephart said.

JIM GILBERT, a former star at Ashtabula High School and the only 7-foot player to grace Ashtabula County hardwoods, will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame on April 7.

In just over two years Gilbert scored 801 points for Ashtabula, 377 as a sophomore and 420 as a junior. He would have breezed through the 1,000-point barrier except for one thing. He was too old to play as a senior, according to Ohio High School Athletic Association rules.

Gilbert owed a lot of his success to Gephart, but he credits his mother, Effie Boswell, for major contributions.

“We weren’t a rich family,” Gilbert said. “She always helped me out. She bought me basketball shoes and clothes for college. She pushed me. She said basketball was a way for me to get somewhere.”

Then there was Gephart, an inductee of the first class of the ACBF Hall of Fame.

“Coach Gephart helped me out a whole lot, not just with basketball,” Gilbert said.

Gilbert also helped himself, working at a car wash all through high school.

Gilbert played sparingly as a freshman, scoring just four points. But he exploded onto the scene in his sophomore season, scoring about 19 points a game and breaking former Panthers’ star Bob Walters’ scoring record with 35 points in a victory over Eastlake North. In just the second game of the season, he scored six points, but was a terror defensively, blocking 13 shots, still a Star Beacon area record. Not surprisingly, Gephart chose to use a zone defense with Gilbert under the basket, one of the rare times Gephart employed that tactic.

Ashtabula shared the Northeastern Conference championship (with Conneaut) that year and posted a 17-5 record overall. Of course, Gilbert wasn’t the only weapon Gephart had at his disposal. Joining Gilbert on that team were Randy Dramis, David Dewey, John Smith, Jerry Kaydo, Doug Featsent, Gib Jepson, Mike Kaydo, Eugene Jones, Jim Sheldon and Bob Webb.

Gilbert did even better as a junior, averaging 20.1 points per game and notching a 40-point game at the Mentor tournament. But, without as good a supporting cast, the Panthers slipped to 12-8. Then, as a senior, he was ineligible because of his age. So he kept his game sharp playing in the city leagues and on playgrounds.

If you build a 7-foot reputation, they will come, and Casper (Wyo.) Junior College did.

“They heard about Jim’s size,” Gephart said. “They came to Ashtabula and had Jim work out. They gave him a full scholarship except for the plane fare.

“Jim came from a poor family and had never been to a dentist. Bob Ball and Tony Chiacchiero helped raise money. We got enough for the plane fare and to have his teeth fixed.”

After one year at Casper, Gilbert moved on to Adams State. He averaged 18 points a game as a sophomore, but found out that college basketball was an animal of a different breed than high school hoops.

“The big difference in college was that most of the players were also football players,” he said. “They were a lot heavier. I had to learn to use my quickness; they’d try to push me out. I worked by myself and learned how to handle the ball.”

Gilbert said that he averaged about 60 percent on his field-goal attempts, using a hook shot and even shooting from the outside.

“I would go out and shoot from the corners,” he said. “I was double- and triple-teamed mostly.”

At Adams State Gilbert averaged 20 points and 11-plus rebounds a game, to go with an eye-popping seven blocked shots per contests his senior year.

At that time, 7-footers were rare, even in the NBA. It should come as no surprise then, that Gilbert caught the eye of professional teams, even though he weighed only 210 pounds at the time. After the 1969-1970 season he was drafted by the NBA’s San Diego Rockets and the American Basketball Association’s Washington Caps, the same year Pete Maravich, Dave Cowens, Calvin Murphy and Nate Archibald were picked. He was chosen as the first selection of the NBA’s fifth round, ahead of such names as Charlie Scott and Dan Issell.

But it was the Caps who showed Gilbert where the money was, offering him $120,000 for three years, with a substantial bonus and a new car. The contract was negotiated by former Cleveland Browns’ guard John Wooten, a representative of the United Athletes Association, a company that Wooten and Jim Brown had formed. The bonus and car were nice because Gilbert didn’t make the final cut. He felt he had deserved a berth on the team, but ...

“Back then, if you were from a small town, you didn’t make it,” he said. “It didn’t matter how good you were. Charlie Scott thought I’d made it because I had to guard him and blocked some of his shots.”

As was true then and is still true, players who don’t make American professional teams could go to other countries to play. In Gilbert’s case, that became Mexico at first. But in 1973, he found a better opportunity in France. He compared the competency level there to college basketball. Lacking local talent, French teams recruited Americans, one or two on each team.

It proved to be a successful trip. In the next 20 years, Gilbert played for Eveux, Asniens, Paris Racing Club, Doulogne-Surmer and Deauvais. But he did not become a household name. Basketball didn’t have the following in France that soccer had.

It also didn’t pay as well. In 1983 Gilbert took a job in a hospital to help pay the bills.

He wound up playing basketball in France for 20 years, retiring when he was 49.

“I only quit because I have a foot problem,” he said.

Gilbert married Luce, whom he had lived with since 1982, on July 8, 2000.

“James’ health is not so good,” Luce said recently in an email. “He still had neuropathy which affects his feet and now other organs too.”

Gilbert finally retired from his work at the hospital in Beauvois, France, last October. Luce also is retired from her work at Gillette, near Paris.

The Gilberts live in a house in Rainvillers, a small village near the town of Beauvois and about 80 kilometers (50 miles or so) from Paris.

In the past several years he became interested in old cars. He owns a 1962 Mercedes coupe.

For years Gilbert returned to Ashtabula to play in the annual Westside Shootout. Though he still returns to the United States, he now goes to South Carolina, since that’s where his sisters now live.

“I’m glad I came over,” he said of his years in France. “I never thought I’d get a chance to play. There wouldn’t have been much to do if I’d stayed around. I think I was the first guy to leave Ashtabula to play basketball. I came here because I wanted to play basketball, but I’ve always felt at home.”

Gilbert will be unable to attend his induction on April 7.

“But he is quite proud and sincerely touched to have been selected, and we thank you very much for it,” Luce said.

“Once there was a fleeting wisp of glory called Camelot...

“Don’t let it be forgot that once there was a spot for one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot.”

One brief shining moment ...

That was the story of the St. John boys basketball teams of 1988-89 and 1989-90.

Up to that point, the Herald teams were consistent — consistently bad. But, behind the leadership of their own King Arthur (coach John Bowler) and the heroic deeds of Steve Hanek, Jim Chiacchiero and Dave Golen (Lancelot, Galahad and Gawain?), they performed marvelous feats during those seasons.

And, to continue the metaphor, St. John’s basketball program fell back into the doldrums after their brief shining moment. Hanek, the center-forward on that St. John team, will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame on Apri 7, joining Chiacchiero, his teammate.

STEVE HANEK: "For those two years, it was like we were brothers. We did everything together. We found out we could compete. It was a good group of guys who meshed well into a team. Some teams that had more talent didn't do as well."

But Hanek was the player hardest to defend on those teams, according to no less a source than rival coach John Higgins, who will himself be inducted into the ACBF’s Hall of Fame this year.

Long and lanky, Hanek stood 6-foot-4 and weighed about 190 during his high school days. He scored 1,111 points at St. John, the top scorer in Heralds’ history at the time (Chiacchiero would later surpass him).

It took a year for the St. John cast to gel. The Heralds went just 6-15 in Hanek’s sophomore season.

“We were a young team when I started there,” Hanek said. “But it only made us stronger, and we came together as a team.”

That group was developing a chemistry. With Hanek scoring and rebounding, Chiacchiero sniping from the outside and Golen battling inside, Bowler found the formula he needed to succeed. Joined by point guard Augie Pugliese, an outstanding ballhandler, Greg Andrego coming off the bench and Steve Koproski muscling inside, St. John became a force to be reckoned with.

“For those two years, it was like we were brothers,” Hanek said. “We did everything together. We found out we could compete. It was a good group of guys who meshed well into a team. Some teams that had more talent didn’t do as well.”

Leading it all was Bowler, who worked his magic more recently, reinvigorating the Edgewood program this year.

“If we did things right, he was easy on us,” Hanek remembers. “If we were screwing up, we did a lot of running.

“He was an awesome coach, like a second father to us. He knows how to motivate people, knows how far to push people. But he’ll push them to their limit.”

Hanek paid Bowler back a little this season, working with Bowler’s bigger kids on the Edgewood teams.

Though he could have been successful in other sports, basketball was the only sport Hanek played at St. John.

“When I was a kid, I played everything, but I just related to basketball,” he said. “I had the most talent in it.”

The Heralds’ best season was his junior year, 1988-89, when St. John went 18-3 and claimed a share of the Northeastern Conference championship (with Ashtabula), the only NEC championship the Heralds ever won.

The St. John crowds, never much of a presence to that point, reveled in the team’s success, packing the gym.

That was particularly true when the Heralds hosted Ashtabula’s Panthers in a game that would decide whether the teams would share the title or Ashtabula would win it outright.

“We pulled into the parking lot about 5:30 (JV games didn’t start until 6:30 in those days), and people were already lined up outside the building,” Hanek said. “They were lined up down to Station Avenue. We beat (the Panthers), something like 64-62.”

In Hanek’s senior year, the Heralds went 17-6, finishing second to Harvey in the NEC standings. But they did win a sectional championship.

It should be noted that in Hanek’s junior and senior years, St. John won a total of 35 games. In the next eight years, the Heralds won just 27 games.

By 1999, the basketball program had two wins, an improvement on the previous two seasons, when they went winless. The program was shut down for several years after that.

Though Hanek had taken over the school record for scoring during that time, he wasn’t aware of his total production.

“I knew when I set the school scoring record,” he said. “It was somewhere around 900 points, They presented me a ball, but there wasn’t a big deal made about it. They didn’t stop the game or anything.”

After graduating from St. John, Hanek went on to play at Lakeland for two years.

“I played everything from big guard to power forward, the 2-3-4 positions,” he said. “Small forward was probably my best position in college. I didn’t have the weight for the bigger matchups.”

When he left Lakeland, he went to Urbana University in Urbana, Ohio (between Columbus and Dayton) for a year.

But he blew out a knee in the fourth game and received a medical redshirt.

The following year, he transferred to Walsh College.

“I started all four years,” he said of his college career. “At Lakeland I was a double-digit scorer. I wasn’t the leading scorer on the team. I did a lot of rebounding, too. I was like a point forward. I didn’t bring the ball upcourt, though.”

When he transferred to Walsh, he adapted to another role, that of defensive stopper for the Cavaliers, taking on one of the opponent’s best players.

“I sacrificed my scoring a little,” he said. “I dropped down to 10-12 points a game.

“My junior year at Walsh, we were just so-so. We were a younger group. In my senior year (1995-96) we went 31-5 and finished in the Final Four in Division II. We lost our first game in the Final Four to the eventual national champions.”

After college, Hanek took a job at Fasson in Painesville, a company that makes pressure-sensitive films that are used primarily in business products such as Post-It notes. Hanek supervised a crew that made decals for cars and RVs.

At that time, he commuted back and forth from his parents’ house in Ashtabula.

He eventually took a job at Millenium, which more recently became Crystal, in Ashtabula. That company uses titanium tetrachloride to make titanium dioxide, used as a base in paint. He works a swing shift, 12 hours on and 12 hours off, 14 days a month.

“The overtime is pretty heavy,” he said. “I work either 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. or 6 p.m. to 6 a.m.”

Hanek married Mai-Linh DiDonato in November 2002. DiDonato and Hanek had gone to St. John together for a year and reunited at Walsh, where DiDonato was studying nursing.

The couple bought a house on Myrtle Avenue at the harbor, a few blocks away from the home where Hanek grew up on Union Avenue.

The Haneks have two daughters, Izabella, 8, and Lauren, 4. They are expecting a son in June.

His athletic endeavors now are limited.

“I tried for a time to play basketball, but I have horrible arthritis in the knee I blew out,” he said. “My basketball days are pretty much done, so I play golf and bowl.”

He does pretty well at both. A member at Geneva-on-the-Lake Golf Course, he shoots in the low 40s for nine holes. Bowling at ABC Lanes, he averages 218.

He also works out at the YMCA in Ashtabula, where he occasionally runs into Jim Chiacchiero or Golan, two old teammates at St. John.

“I really enjoyed playing with those fellows,” he said.

Higgins had done his student teaching at Harbor in the spring of 1971. He applied for a regular teaching job at four schools. One of them, Geneva, offered him a position teaching math and coaching basketball as an assistant, along with golf. But the Harbor principal asked what Geneva had offered, then countered with the JV basketball job, plus golf when Bill Wasulko retired. A couple of weeks later, the offer was changed to coaching wrestling.

Higgins had never wrestled, but dived into preparation, pushing the furniture back and using Phyllis as an opponent. He also read three books about wrestling.

“We ended up second in the league,” Higgins said.

The following year, Harbor’s head coach, Larry Bragga, resigned to become Jefferson’s principal, and Ed Armstrong took over as coach for the 1972-73 season. Higgins became the freshman coach, serving five years in that capacity. Bob Short coached the JV teams, with Andy Isco and Frank Knudsen also assisting.

“Ed Armstrong was the biggest influence on my coaching career,” Higgins said. “Ed was a master of teaching fundamentals, a true psychologist and a great game strategist. He listened to us, the assistant coaches, but always made the final decisions. Ed and I agreed that we married way over our heads. Reta and Phyllis have been great wives and let us pursue our coaching careers.”

Another strong influence on his career was former Ashtabula coach Bob Ball, himself a member of the ACBF Hall of Fame. Higgins and Ball ran the clubhouse at Chapel Hills Golf Course together for many years, always talking basketball. Higgins asked Ball to come to his first varsity game.

They met at Garfield’s Restaurant the following day. Higgins expected a couple of tips, but what he got was a legal pad breaking down the entire game.

“I said, ‘Bob, we won the game.’ But I found out what a perfectionist he is,” Higgins said.

In 1980, Armstrong became athletic director and Higgins took over as head basketball coach. Some of his earlier players included Gordie DeLaat, Tim Jones, Dave McCoy, Steve McElroy, Robbie and Jamie Laveck, John Stranman, Scott Mickelson and Tim Givens.

“No player ever got to play unless they played aggressive defense and worked together on offense,” Higgins said.

“When Robbie Laveck was going into the army, he was worried about basic training. When he came back to Ashtabula once, he said, ‘It was easier than one of your practices.’ I wanted to have the best training of anyone we were going to see.”

Two of those players, DeLaat and McElroy, also played on the Higgins-coached Harbor team that finished fourth in the state one year. The others on that golf team were Mike DelPrince, Kep Ecklund and Rick Bean.

Higgins’ best team at Harbor included Dana Schulte at point guard, Kirk Willburger, Pat Colucci, Raimo Kangas, Dean Hood and a sophomore at the time, Andy Juhola.

“I liked to run a college-level offense but needed a dominating point guard,” Higgins said. “Things changed when Dana Schulte became a varsity player.

“I thought he was the best point guard in Northeast Ohio, period. He ended up third-team all-state. Dana was a thinker; he had basketball intelligence. Kirk Willberger was a superior defensive player at 6-2; Pat Colucci had a deadly baseline jumper; Dean Hood was our rebounder and hustler. Andy Juhola was just a sophomore, but I think Andy was the best player ever from Ashtabula County for completeness. He was cool under pressure.”

With that group, the Mariners won 17 games in 1980-81 and 18 the following year. In 1981-82, the NEC championship came down to a contest against Geneva.

“Geneva beat us in the championship game,” Higgins said. “Andy (Juhola) had the ball with a few seconds left and us a couple of points down. The Geneva kids were throwing ice on the floor, and the referee called Andy for traveling. We lost the championship on that.”

The Mariners were ranked eighth in their division in the state poll for a while that year. In a tri-county newspaper poll, Harbor was rated second, behind Mentor.

Other players impressed Higgins while he was at Harbor, including Mike Ginn and Tom Quinn.

“Mike Ginn was the most solid kid I’ve ever seen as a 6-footer,” Higgins said. “He was a tremendous scorer and rebounder for us. Tom Quinn was flashy. His junior year, he moved to Geneva, but he moved back as a senior.”

In 1984, Higgins had the aforementioned clash with the Harbor administration. So he left for Madison, where he found an empty cupboard.

“We didn’t have success there, though we had some talented kids, like our point guard in 1986, Mike Warren,” Higgins said.

Others Higgins remembers from his two years in Madison are Duke DiPofi, Cliff Holroyd, Ben Kriegmont, Scott Whitehouse, Todd Emmitt, John Josza and John Sandru.

“Those guys worked hard to improve every day,” he said. “The kids played hard, worked together and got better and better. My second year, we started to see some inroads there, started to become competitive.”

Higgins’ situation at Madison was made more difficult on his first day of practice by a serious car crash when another driver ran a stop sign. He began to see flashes of light that got worse.

He went to see Dr. Sam Morosko, who immediately sent him to St. Luke’s Hospital. He found out he had a detached retina and that his eye was hemorrhaging, recommending that he sit out at least a year.

Ed Naughton took over the team, assisted by Ed Dotson and Jack Austen. The Blue Streaks went 0-21 that year.

When he returned to the coaching reins in 1985, the Blue Streaks won 10 games. But the previously mentioned dispute with the administration brought about his resignation.

Higgins discovered that Ashtabula was looking for a math teacher and football coach. Principal Frank Farello said he could have the math job if he was willing to teach calculus. He jumped at the chance.

“When I got hired, I was not planning to get back into coaching, but I fell in love with Ashtabula (High School),” he said.

The next spring, in 1987, Farello called Higgins into his office and said that the school was replacing Bob Walters (also a member of the ACBF HOF) as basketball coach. Farello asked Higgins if he was interested in the job. He took it and won 16 games his first year, 19 his second, when the Panthers shared the NEC championship with St. John. Two of the losses his first year were caused by a teachers’ strike.

One of the stars of those Ashtabula teams was Sean Allgood. Higgins considers Allgood “the best all-around athlete I’ve ever coached.

“He was an assistant coach on the floor. We sent him into double teams because of his ability to hit the open teammate.”

Others on Higgins’ Panther teams included Deon Heasley, Adrian Mathers, David Whitaker, Jason DiDonato, Sedric Osborne, Jason Raffenaud, Brian Scruggs and Keith McGaha. He credits assistants Jim Hood, Jerry Raffenaud and Roby Potts with helping develop the talent there.

“These players bought into an aggressive fullcourt press, fastbreak style,” Higgins said.

In 2003, Higgins became athletic director at Ashtabula. He thought he could continue as basketball coach, but soon found a conflict in duties. During his days as AD, he worked with other schools’ athletic directors: Dik Pavolino, Al Goodwin, Larry Carlson, Susan Herpy, Bill Fails, Bina Larson, Dom Iarocci, Ron Weaver, Jim Henson, Marilyn Scullen and Mike Mochner, along with former Edgewood athletic director Ed Batanian, still another ACBF Hall of Famer.

“We were a tight-knit group,” Higgins said. “We worked for our own school, but we really worked together to make our league (the NEC) prosper.”

Higgins taught math all of his 32 years. Seven of his students have become math teachers. One of them, Don Rapose, is Lakeside’s principal. Another, Pat Colucci, is superintendent of Ashtabula Area City Schools.

“They are great choices to lead our schools,” Higgins said.

He remains proud of being a trailblazer in bringing advanced placement courses to Ashtabula and Harbor high schools.

The Higgins have now been married for 41 years. John retired after 32 years of teaching, Phyllis taught first grade for 35 years.

“She was an outstanding first-grade teacher at Thomas Jefferson Elementary,” John said. “She’s become a gourmet chef. We never have the same meal twice. We enjoy traveling, often to Maine or Hilton Head, and have been to Europe twice.”

The Higgins have two sons. Chris, the manager of the Staples Store in Lakewood, went to Kent State and now lives in Medina with his girl friend, Allison Brandt. Tim, who graduated from Ohio University, is part owner of the Ashtabula Insurance Center, along with Brent Bunnell. In December, Tim became engaged to Terri Andrus and the couple is planning on an April wedding.

Higgins remains active in retirement. In the winter, he plays racquetball with his opponent of nearly 40 years, Barrie Battorf. When the weather is nice, he plays golf with Myron Niemi, Bernie Haytcher, Joe Hassett and other golfers in their “Fish and Chips” group. He often breakfasts with Pat Sheldon, also a member of the ACBF HOF, reminiscing about old times.

“As I look back, I am so thankful for what my players have accomplished on the court and in life,” he said. “Athletics are a major influence on a person’s attitude and character, and I enjoy hearing of my players’ success in their adult lives.”

Spartan sharpshooter
Naylor’s nasty J was his trademark

By Chris Larick
For the Star Beacon

Most Ashtabula Basketball County Foundation Hall of Famers worked assiduously on their game.

But few could have practiced with the fervor and intensity of Conneaut’s Tom Naylor, who will be inducted into the ABCF’s Hall of Fame at its annual banquet on Sunday, April 7 at the Conneaut Human Resource Center.

Former Conneaut star Tom Ritari, already in the ACBF Hall of Fame, remembers Naylor, who passed away last year, very well.

“He was my best friend in high school,” Ritari said. “Both of us played lots and lots of basketball together. We’d scrape up games throughout the summer. That was our life; that was what we did.”

Tom’s father, L.R. (Spike) Naylor was a prominent citizen of Conneaut, an accountant with an office on Broad Street, who was elected mayor in the 1930s and again in the 1960s. The old Municipal, constructed under the WPA in 1939, was named for him. Spike put up a basketball court in his driveway. Whenever Tom wasn’t out delivering the Plain Dealer (on a route he built from 30 to 70 customers), he was on the court.

TOM NAYLOR (53) preps to make a backcut off a double-screen during his playing days as a Conneaut Spartan. Naylor will enter the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame on April 7.

TOM NAYLOR (57, with crown) and his Conneaut teammates won the outright Northeastern Conference championship in the 1962-63 season and shared it with Ashtabula in the 1963-64 campaign.

Tom went out every day and practiced basketball on it. Even when it snowed, he would shovel the court off and shoot and shoot and shoot. Then he’d go inside to warm up, go back out and shoot some more.

“He had a tremendous passion for shooting,” Ritari said. “Players could be a lot bigger than him, but if he got the ball above his head, it was going in. If they had the 3-pointer at that time, he would have scored a lot more.

“He was the best shooter I’ve ever seen at Conneaut High School, and I’ve seen them all. Matt Zapp (Zappitelli, who holds the Conneaut scoring record and who held the county record for many years until it was broken in 2011-12 by A.J. Henson of Grand Valley) was a great scorer, but Tom was a pure shooter.”

According to Ritari, Tom Naylor was also one of the first basketball players in the area (remember, this was 1962-64) to take up weight training.

“He made himself very, very strong,” Ritari said. “He was about 6-2, 180 or 185, but he could dunk the basketball. He had very strong legs; that came from weight training.”

Defensive League, Big Stats

At that time, the Northeastern Conference was a four-team league and Conneaut (at the time, called the Trojans) dominated it in basketball throughout the 1960s. ACBF Hall of Fame coach Andy Garcia stressed defense first.

“You were not going to score very much,” Ritari said. “It was based on defense first and we played a slow, controlled game on offense.”

Naylor still managed to score his points, though, 150 as a junior, when he was “a frequent starter in the late going,” and 347 as a senior (a 16.5 average). He also totaled 295 rebounds as a senior, an eye-opening 14.0 per contest (shooting 46 percent), and had 64 blocked shots, almost three per game. In one game, he grabbed 24 rebounds, a team high that season.

“Wherever you find a basketball, no doubt you’ll find Tom shooting it,” Garcia said. “You know, Tom wore out four pairs of shoes last season practicing. It takes perseverance in this sport as in any other sport as well.”

Naylor, who was tabbed “Bombing Tommy” by one source, was joined by a strong cast that included 6-foot-4 Don Goodman, 6-2 Vince Mucci, Bob Naylor (Tom’s nephew) and Jeff Garvey, Conneaut’s “Iron Five.” Mike Kehoe served as sixth man and started when Garvey got hurt.

“Goodman, T. Naylor and Mucci are a 1-2-3 punch under the boards and scoring,” the Conneaut News Herald praised.

Signature Performances

But it was Tom Naylor who ranked high in county scoring that season and sometimes dominated the Trojans’ boxscores. He had 21 of 38 points in a 38-25 victory over Girard, 21 of 44 in a 44-42 nailbiter against Geneva and 27 of 40 against Ashtabula.

That contest against Ashtabula was notable for another reason: It was the first time Conneaut tasted defeat that season after winning its first 12 games. The Trojans had won their first game against the Panthers, 47-32, but Ashtabula had the biggest man in the county in 6-10 Jim Gilbert (who would grow to 7-feet) and a great supporting cast.

Despite Naylor’s best efforts (27 points, 11 rebounds), the Panthers won, 46-40.

Conneaut assistant coach Jon Hall — still another ACBF Hall of Famer — said afterward: “Tom Naylor proved himself a leader tonight. He was there and came through when the rest of the team needed him the most. I’m proud of him, the kind of game he played.”

The contest was hailed as the best of his career.

The News Herald praised him as “coming through in tight spots to keep his team in contention until the waning moments of the game despite the tension and pressure he must have been feeling.... defensively and offensively, he never let the team slump into the depths of despair.”

Gilbert, meanwhile, led Ashtabula in scoring with 17 points.

“Gilbert and Naylor were having a battle royal on the scoreboard,” a writer said.

In the next game, Rowe handed the Trojans their second straight loss, 68-56, ending a six-year domination by their neighbor.

Conneaut finished the season at 17-4, sharing the NEC championship with Ashtabula, both 5-1 in the league. The Trojans won their first tournament game, beating Jefferson and their ace, Mickey Zigmund, 54-43. Naylor had 11 points, Zigmund 10. But then came the shocker: Geneva, which had lost both its games to Conneaut in the regular season, beat the Trojans, 40-37, in the second game despite 30 points by Naylor. Yes, Naylor scored 30 of Conneaut’s 37 points.

College Prospects

“Tom Naylor, indestructible on the boards, probably would be Player of the Year if there was such a selection,” one source said.

As it was, Naylor joined Gilbert and Zigmund (both of whom will also be inducted into the ACBF Hall of Fame this year), as an All-NEC selection, along with Ashtabula’s Gib Jepson, Geneva’s Tom Booth and St. John’s Terry Melaragno. Naylor also won scoring honors, scoring 100 points in his six NEC games. At first, it was thought that Gilbert had tied for that honor, but a recheck revealed Gilbert had just 98.

After he was also named Star Beacon All-Ashtabula County (with Gilbert and Zigmund again), he was described in this way: “Probably the best shooter and hardest worker was Conneaut all-time great Tom Naylor.

“Tremendously strong, he led an inexperienced Trojan team to the county’s best record of 17-4.... Tom, who has offers from 30 colleges, including Cincinnati and Michigan, posted his season-high game tally of 31 points against Pymatuning Valley.”

Despite the claim of 30 college scholarship offers, a later article was headlined “Naylor finds scholarship not easiest thing to get.”

In that article, his father, L.R., said, “He knows he will have to knock on some doors and introduce himself.”

Though one article claimed that Naylor was “approached by 75 colleges,” it was a letter from his superintendent at Conneaut, John Yesso, that helped him land a scholarship to Bradley University in Peoria, Ill.

Addressing Bradley coach Charles K. Orsborn, Yesso enumerated Naylor’s pluses, including the following: “he has desire,” “he is a hard worker, in the upper third of his class,” “he won state and national honors,” “he has size, 6-4” (that was a stretch), “he is coachable,” and “he is dedicated and loyal.”

Eventually, Naylor settled on Bradley.

Life After High School

Janette Speer, Naylor’s sister (who still lives in Conneaut), remembers Tom had an offer from a school in Casper, Wyoming, that his father favored.

“But he liked Bradley,” Speer said. “My father told him he would be a small toad in a big pond. He wasn’t tall enough.”

It didn’t work out.

As Ritari remembers it, the Braves had recruited a player from East Tech, either Charlie Parnell or Mel Parnell, who played Naylor’s position. At 6-2, or, generously, 6-3, Naylor was restricted to playing shooting guard or small forward in Division I.

Freshmen couldn’t play varsity basketball at the time. Naylor played on the freshman team, but not as a starter.

Bradley was a good team at the time, having won the NIT (a better tournament than it is now) the year before. And Naylor probably wasn’t fast enough to play the positions he was tall enough to play.

“He was probably outquicked, probably more on the defensive side than the offensive side,” Ritari said.

After his freshman year, Naylor transferred to Edinboro, where he roomed with his old pal, Ritari.

“He had to sit out a year,” Ritari said. “He had 50 points in an intramural game that year, in a game with a running clock.”

But Naylor had trouble with his academics and quit school.

“He went into the army,” Ritari said. “He played volleyball and basketball in the army. When he got out of the army, he wandered around to Columbus, California, Mexico and Florida. He was a general labor type person. He died in California, last year sometime.”

For a while after the army, Ritari remembers, Naylor worked for the Ohio Education Association in Columbus as a courier or mailroom person.

Not much else is known about his life after college. Speer remembers Tom married a woman the family didn’t care for.

One of the reasons we don’t know more was friction within the family. L.R. married twice and “there was some animosity,” Speer said. “Bob (Naylor’s) dad and I are brother and sister. I’m of the second marriage; Bob’s dad of the first. We were not close then, but we are now.”

Another HOF for Henson
Former GV star will go through doors of basketball shrine Sunday

By Chris Larick
For the Star Beacon

That boy racing on the field to replace the football...

Thirty years ago, that would have been Jimmy Henson, playing the role of ballboy for his father, the elder Jim.

But today it’s J.J. Henson, the son of the younger Jim, who will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame on Sunday, playing that role. On that date, Henson will become the first person to become a member of both the ACBF and Ashtabula County Touchdown Club Hall of Fame as a player. Henson is also a member of the Grand Valley Hall of Fame.

JEFFERSON FOOTBALL COACH JIMMY HENSON, a Grand Valley graduate, will enter the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame on Sunday.

Thirty-odd years ago, Henson reveled in following his father onto the football field and his uncle, Tom, onto the basketball court. That started at Cardinal High School, where both the elder Jim and Tom began their teaching and coaching careers, then moved to Orwell, where the Jim Henson family lived (Tom lived in New Lyme) to take head coaching jobs at Grand Valley.

“I enjoyed it,” Henson said. “We lived in Orwell, so I always went to Grand Valley schools. Dad was on the (Grand Valley) school board, so he had to resign that when he came over here.”

Early Sports Life

As Jimmy got older, he began his own sports career — playing tee-ball, flag football under Jack Scott and Dave Hendershott and youth basketball under the tutelage of his uncle Tom and Gary Harriman. Ralph Turk coached Jimmy in Little League baseball.

Since Orwell was such a small community, the same kids played all sports and became great friends doing it. Henson played all sports with Mick Shoaf, Brian Sharp, Scott Szabo, Dennis Covell and Sam Paskey.

As Henson grew up, he played seventh-grade basketball under Don Marsh, eighth grade under Dave Zitner.

“We were pretty good,” Henson said. “A lot of those guys played. We had fun. I remember playing in Jefferson, in the old high school, with the little court and tile floor (in the mult-purpose room). We had a tile floor in the old Grand Valley school, too.”

High School Highlights

At the time Henson was growing up, the Mustangs were a member of the old Grand River Conference, along with Fairport, Jefferson, Pymatuning Valley, Perry and Southington. They played schools like Berkshire and Cardinal, too, but the big thing at the time was the Bristol Tournament.

By the time he was in high school, Henson had grown to 6-foot-2. As a sophomore, he was the shooting guard on a tall team that also included Matt Lueders, Chris Moore and Ray Harriman. The Mustangs enjoyed a great season his junior year, with Henson, Harriman (the point guard), Derek Nichols, Tom Benge, Brian Olah and Rodney Harris. Tom Henson was head coach of the team, with Mickey Zigmund, who will also be inducted into the ACBF Hall of Fame this year, as an assistant.

“He was Uncle Tom,” Henson says of his head coach. “He had expectations of me, that I was going to give it my all all of the time.”

Henson is proud of the fact that the Mustang basketball team won 50 games in the three years he started — 16 his sophomore year, 19 when he was a junior and 15 in his senior season.

Track and Football Success

He was also a very good long-distance (1,600-meter) runner in track, good enough to make it to state as a senior.

“We had a real nice track team,” he said. “Mick Shoaf won the discus and placed in the shot at state that year and Ray Harriman placed in the 400. Our four-by-one relay team of Brian Diseen, Bill O’Brien, Adam McElroy and Lamont Eaton still has the county record. But they had the baton knocked out of their hands in the regional finals and didn’t make state.”

But Henson’s best sport — the one he wound up playing in college — was football. With Henson at quarterback (and defensive back), Grand Valley went 4-5 his sophomore year and 6-4 his junior season before really blossoming when he was a senior. Though Henson was an effective thrower, his father used his old formula, running the ball a lot. That senior year, the Mustangs went 9-1 in the regular season, making the playoffs for the first time in Grand Valley history. Unfortunately, they ran into O.J. McDuffie and the Hawken Hawks in the first round of the playoffs and lost in a close game.

College Career

After earning Star Beacon Ashtabula County Defensive Player of the Year honors as a junior and Offensive Player of the Year honors as a senior, Henson had several opportunities to play Division III football. But his dad also got a flyer from St. Joseph’s College in Rensselaer, Indiana, a Division II college.

“We took off after a basketball game and drove out to Indiana,” Henson remembers. “It just fit. I felt comfortable with some of their athletes.”

He also received athletic and academic scholarships to St. Joseph. Division II schools are permitted to give a limited number (35) athletic scholarships, but can also split them, so that more athletes can take advantage of them.

Henson lettered all four years at St. Joseph’s, starting as strong safety as a junior and senior.

In addition to being 6-2, he had filled out to 210 pounds and was a physical player.

“A lot of times, I was like an outside linebacker,” he said.

Coaching and Teaching

“I loved (St. Joseph’s). I liked the people. I made some life-long friends. It was a small school, about 1,000 students. It felt comfortable. All the friends I made, we all lived in the dorms for four years together. It was a tight-knit group. We grew up together and got a very good education.”

Henson majored in elementary education at St. Joseph’s, but his teaching career was put on hold when he got into college coaching as an assistant.

He began at Tiffin (Ohio) University, working with the defensive backs, then moved on to Ashland University as a graduate assistant coaching the receivers.

When he finished his graduate work, he got a job at West Liberty (W. Va.) where he coached the linebackers. From there, it was back to St. Joseph’s as linebackers coach and defensive co-ordinator. He then went on to Mercyhurst, much closer to his family.

During his coaching odyssey, Jim had married (Becky) and the pair had given birth to J.J. So when the staff at Mercyhurst was let go, as happens often in coaching, Jimmy finally became a teacher, in the classroom after all that time.

He got a job as a permanent substitute teacher at Riverside, where his old pal, Mick Shoaf, was superintendent, along with another Ashtabula County friend, Dennis Holmes.

“It led me to a full-time teaching job,” he said of the substitute job, one most teachers find less than desirable.

Jefferson Years

After Henson had been teaching at Riverside for three years, Jason Root decided to step down as Jefferson’s head football coach. Henson took the job as head football coach and eighth-grade science teacher eagerly.

“I had been working up to that point,” Henson said. “I wanted to be a head coach.”

That was in 2005. He has now been at Jefferson for eight years and had enough success on the football field to be named Star Beacon County Coach of the Year in 2005 and 2011. Before this just-completed season, Henson spent two years as eighth-grade girls basketball coach under the legendary Rod Holmes.

“This is a great community,” he said of Jefferson. “We’re fortunate to have beautiful facilities and I really enjoy the kids here. I feel comfortable raising my kids here.”

Family and Passions

Though some Ashtabula County coaches are not happy with their current league affiliations (or lack of affiliation, in the cases of Edgewood and Conneaut), Henson is content with Jefferson’s new league, the All-American Conference.

“I love it,” he said. “I’m not saying I don’t miss our old rivalries, but we are developing rivalries with every team down there. Our kids are starting to know the kids down there. In football, there is great competition, a great league. This league does a lot of things right.”

He also enjoys his teaching assignment — eighth-grade science.

“As a teacher, you want to help kids, and that’s a crucial age,” he said. “I think a teacher can have an impact. I get every eighth grader in every class, so I get to know my kids in junior high track. To me it’s a positive.”

Henson is a devotee of outdoor sports — hunting and fishing primarily. He uses a crossbow when hunting deer, wild turkeys or rabbits since he has a bad shoulder and doesn’t have the time to put into shooting practice.

“With a crossbow I can be more accurate,” he said. “You want to do it as humanely as possible.”

His wife, Becky, sometimes hunts with him, and took down a deer with a crossbow a couple of years ago.

One of his favorite hunting companions is old friend John Kampf, a former Star Beacon sports writer now at the News-Herald in Lake County.

“I’m very fortunate to have a wonderful sister,” Henson said. “But I don’t have any brothers. My brother is John. It’s been that way a long time.”

Henson also enjoys golfing and has a pretty good game developed when he was caddy master at Ogleby Park. He and Becky have participated in a couples golf league at Hickory Grove for a couple of years, though that might be difficult this year since Becky has moved from teaching at Lakeside to a job at Andover Bank.

Jim and Becky have been married 13 years and have two sons, J.J., 13, and Nate 10. J.J. is a seventh grader who plays football and basketball and runs track, just like his dad did. Nate is in the fourth grade and is already playing basketball.

Henson’s father, also Jim but not Jim Sr., still coaches the offensive line at Edinboro University and teaches math there. This year marks his 45th year of teaching.

Yo, Mick!
Zigmund had anything but a rocky career during his playing days at Jefferson

By CHRIS LARICK
For the Star Beacon

Somewhere around the eighth grade, Mickey Zigmund saw a sequence of pictures in a magazine demonstrating all of a player’s footwork in stop action up to the point that he took a jump shot.

Zigmund studied that as if it were a textbook, then went out into his garage, where his family had installed a basket, and tortuously replicated each move, time and again.

“At that time, no one taught you how to shoot the ball correctly,” Zigmund said. “At all hours of the day, I’d go out there and practicing shooting, getting the footwork down and getting the shot off.”

That diligent practice came in especially handy for Zigmund, who will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame on Sunday, since the small gyms at the time allowed players little space to work their magic in.

“Everyone had small gyms,” Zigmund said. “Jefferson, Perry, Rowe and Edgewood all had little gyms. It was more congested in half court. The referee would be under the basket and you could use him for screens. I’d work hard at getting to the split in the zone, worked on getting shots off my dribble. One of the best at it was (Ashtabula’s) Bob Walters.”

Zigmund lived right next to the old Jefferson High School (which became the elementary school and has since been torn down) growing up. When teams threw their old basketballs away, Zigmund and his brother, G.T., would retrieve the old balls and play with them. G.T. was four years older and wouldn’t let Mickey get a shot off.

“He was huge to me,” Mickey said. “I said to myself, ‘One day I’m going to beat him.’ I did the same thing to my son (Steve). I never let him win.”

Mickey was the second-youngest of five boys behind Larry, G.T., Ken and Charles.

When Zigmund was in the fifth grade, Dallas Ensman, the principal of the elementary school, formed a team consisting of fifth and sixth graders, something Zigmund found “awesome.” The group wound up playing only three or four games.

“He lined us up and said ‘Go shoot a basket,’” Zigmund said. “We were so bad there were no more practices.”

But Zigmund persisted, going out for the junior high team, a squad dominated by the eighth-graders, who looked upon the seventh-graders as if they were vermin.

“Greg McNutt and I decided we would try out,” Zigmund remembers. “We went to Lenox, where they were practicing. They didn’t want us there, but I had the superintendent’s kid (McNutt) with me. My first basket was in the seventh grade against Austinburg. I banked in a long shot. I was so excited. The last game was against Geneva. A kid fouled out, so I got in. I made a foul shot, but we got killed.”

Zigmund’s mother helped him practice. She had played basketball in Kingsville, the old-style girl’s game that had three players on each side of half court.

“She never played defense,” Zigmund said. “She knew I needed practice.”

A Mr. Baker (first name unknown) coached Zigmund when he was a freshman. Baker had been an All-American in football at Allegheny.

“He was a god, all the coaches were,” Zigmund said. “I don’t know if he knew anything about basketball.”

By the time he was a sophomore, Zigmund had a problem — with his shoes. He wanted Converses, but the coach picked another kind, heavier shoes. Zigmund formed huge blisters on his feet, blisters that would later cause calluses that had to be sliced off after basketball season.

At the time, high school rules didn’t allow games on week days. As a result, teams often had to play back-to-back games on Friday and Saturday.

“It was awful,” Zigmund said. “It was worse when you played a team that hadn’t played the night before. By the second half of the Saturday game, my legs were sore. My shot would flatten out. I never played well on Saturday.”

Jefferson wound up going 18-3 his junior year, 1962-63, with Zigmund one of the starters.

“We had a new school, and I would pick the lock to get in to practice,” Zigmund said. “I loved that new gym (the old Falcon Gym). I took my little rim from my garage and nailed it up. Sometimes, Judge (Rich) Stevens went with me. Everything was so new. We weren’t intimidated anymore when we went on a big floor. Everything seemed to blend. Even my friends seemed cleaner.”

Zigmund and the other Falcons also got to see themselves on film for the first time, when Bill Herndon started filming the games.

“I was so excited,” he said. “I’d get to see a game on film. But I couldn’t believe how slow it was. I could see every mistake. I was so disappointed.”

Zigmund considers himself just one of a cast of good players his junior year, and certainly not the best.

“My teammates were good,” he said. “I rode in on the coat tails of Jon Freeman and Ken Taft. Jon Freeman, who later went to Case Tech, was the county’s leading scorer the whole year. Ken Taft had the biggest hands, did a lot of rebounding and was a good scorer. Our offense was a lot of one-on-ones and two-man games. I would shoot off picks.

“I was the two-guard; my game was strictly perimeter. I’d drive left-handed and as soon as I saw my man turn, I could shoot all game. I never drew a lot of fouls.

“But some games, you can’t win by shooting jump shots. They would open things up underneath, though. I was not the big scorer or ballhandler.”

Freeman and Taft graduated in 1963, much to their opponents’ delight.

“I was the only one back,” Zigmund said. “It was disheartening. I thought everything would change, that we weren’t going to be very good in basketball.

“But we had Danny Foster, Rick Havens, Larry Smith (who was a Division I pitcher at Cleveland State) and Bobby Vance, the point guard, 5-8 but a good ball handler. Judge Rich Stevens came off the bench, with David Ray, Mike Johnson and Fred Johnson. We were so small, 6-foot and 6-1.”

With that group, the Falcons went 11-7 in the regular season, 12-8 overall.

When he graduated, Zigmund was only 17 years old, and was “academically intimidated.”

He had letters from Baldwin-Wallace and Findlay College. When he went to visit B-W, he saw little interest in the coaches’ eyes. He was put on a waiting list there.

He enrolled at Findlay without a scholarship. He made the team, but was at the end of the bench.

“I was slow,” he admitted.

He had been a good baseball player at Jefferson and had an opportunity to play that sport at Findlay. He wound up starting at first base and (occasionally) third base.

During his time at Findlay, Zigmund also wound up playing baseball against Tim Mizer, who was a longtime basketball coach at Jefferson. Findlay itself also had two more eventual Jefferson coaches, Al Graper and the late Bill Phillips, on the team.

At the beginning of his senior year at Findlay, Zigmund was offered the job as junior-varsity basketball coach. But the demands of coaching, playing baseball, and writing papers eventually led him to forgo student teaching, which later cost him a teaching certificate.

After temporary teaching and coaching at PV, Zigmund was drafted in 1970 and served in the U.S. Army, spending 16 months in Germany as a clerk due to his typing skills.

Upon his return, he worked construction until 1976, when Jim Henson offered him a coaching and teaching position at Grand Valley. Zigmund coached there for 26 years — 25 as head baseball coach, 13 as JV basketball coach, 13 as a football assistant, and taught English.

Zigmund retired a few years ago. He now trades vintage baseball cards and enjoys walking.

He has two children by his former wife, Cynthia — Steve, who works for Young Democrats in Washington, D.C., and Lindsey, a counselor at Town Hall II in Kent.

Carl Stokes - ACBF Hall of Fame!

By CHRIS LARICK
For the Star Beacon

At 5-foot-11 or 6-feet, Carl Stokes jumped center for the New Lyme Deming Rangers between 1944 and 1948.

"I was as big a player as anyone on our team," Stokes said recently. "I don't know what they feed these guys now."

Stokes, who will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame on Apr. 7, was the best player for the Rangers. He began his freshman year on the junior varsity but was good enough to be moved up to the varsity after two or three games by then-coach K.M. Retallick. ACBF Hall of Fame coach Russell Bethel took over the reins at Deming for his junior and senior years.

At that time Deming was a very small school, boasting just nine boys and eight girls in Stokes' senior class. The Rangers played other small schools — Orwell, Rock Creek, Andover, Jefferson, Rowe, Pierpont and Austinburg.

"We used to have three leagues in the county," Stokes said. "We were in the Buckeye League. We had about 25 boys in our high school. Since they had junior varsity and varsity teams, all the boys got a chance to play. In my junior year, we played Jefferson in the county championship game at Edgewood, but lost by one point. We should have won."

Stokes was joined on the Deming team by Ellsworth Reeve, Alex Konya, Bill Ahola, Henry Bogdan, Norman Mackey and Bob Schultz. Only Stokes, Mackey and Schultz are still alive.

After his senior year, Stokes was chosen as a first-teamer on the Star Beacon's first annual All-Ashtabula County, All-Tourney Scholastic Basketball Team.

"New Lyme's Carl Stokes undoubtedly won the nod of most county coaches for his steady, consistently top defensive play," the writer for the Star Beacon said. "Stokes was rated one of the best guards in the entire county tournament. He boasted a decent scoring average from the field, also taking over scoring duties when Alex Konya was too well-guarded."

Stokes was also a true scholar-athlete. In his senior year he was voted president of the Ashtabula County National Honor Society.

Basketball was a somewhat different game during his career, Stokes said.

"We were only allowed four fouls. The game is so much faster now, and we were pretty fast. It's a lot rougher now.

"That's a war out there. I can remember when I was playing some boys saying something like, 'Stokes has the biggest rear end I've ever seen. I can't get around it.' I remember one of the refs from Ashtabula saying, 'You have your hand on him. You have to get it off."

According to Stokes, if a team scored 25 or 30 points a game, it thought it had done well.

Stokes was known more for his defensive play than for his offense.

"I never scored a whole lot," he said. "I think the most I ever had was against Rock Creek. I think I had 27."

Stokes considered Bethel a top-notch coach.

"He brought a different basketball game to New Lyme," Stokes said. "We started to run more, run the fast break. He was a good coach. I remember when we were way behind at the half and he chewed us out. We went back out and tied the score in just a little while. We still lost by two or three points though. That was probably Jefferson."

In addition to playing basketball, Stokes also competed in baseball.

"I played wherever the coach put me," he said. "I pitched, caught, played first base or shortstop. I was a pretty decent baseball player. When I was out of school, I played in a fast-pitch softball league for seven years. Bill Brainard was the pitcher on that team. I played first base or shortstop. We had a league right there in Jefferson. In some tournaments we went to Youngstown and played."

He also played basketball after he graduated, for Jefferson's Clinton Drugs.

"I liked playing ball and I had nothing to do at night," he said. "One night up there I think I had 54 points. We also went to Painesville one night and played against a team of Cleveland Browns' players who got together and went barnstorming. Some of those guys were 6-foot-8 or 7-feet tall. It was tough for us to compete, but they only beat us by about five points."

Though he was a good high school basketball player, college was never a consideration for Stokes.

"Our family has owned a (dairy) farm we bought in 1901," he said. "It's been in our family ever since. My grandfather (farmed), my dad did, I did and now my son and grandsons do. It's on Route 46 south of Jefferson."

As any farmer could tell you, a dairy farm with 175-200 cows is not an easy life.

"We get up at 4:30 every morning to milk and do that three times a day," Stokes said. "When I was 14 years old, my grandfather took sick. I started getting up at 5 o'clock then and did my milking before school."

Stokes has been married to Joyce for 53 years. The couple has five children: twin daughters Cindy and Susan, Sandy, JoAnn and Kenneth.

Cindy works on the farm, with help from Kenneth, who also works for a petroleum business south of Orwell. Susan lives in Wyoming. Sandy has a degree in agriculture and works in animal husbandry. JoAnn works with horses at Colorado State University.

Stokes, 83, was a very good bowler for many years, averaging about 180 in leagues at Jefferson Lanes, ABC, St. Angelo Lanes and others.

He hunted for years, but doesn't do it so much any more.

"Now the woods are all overgrown with weeds," he said. "You can't walk through them any more."

One of Stokes' favorite memories is playing baseball on the Field of Dreams in Dyersville, Iowa, with his son-in-law when he was around 70 years old.

"Some young fellows were playing ball there," he recalls. "We watched them for a while, then I asked if I could have that bat. I took 12 or 15 swings, then my son-in-law did too. About 200 feet from home plate was a corn field. If you hit the ball in there, you had to go hunt it."

About seven or eight years ago, Stokes was stricken with prostate cancer. He went through radiation successfully.

"I have been cancer-free for several years now," he said. "I was lucky they caught it before it got out of hand."