Congo Jim
Adams made impressions during his days at Conneaut that continue to resonate, even today

By Chris Larick
For the Star Beacon

Kids Jim Adams played basketball with at the Congregational Church in Conneaut marveled at his athletic ability.

So much so that when they attended a movie about Jungle Jim in the Belgian Congo, they couldn’t help making comparisons.

Thus Jim “Congo” Adams was born.

“People still call me ‘Congo Jim,’” Adams said. “I played against bigger centers than me, but I outjumped them.”

Adams, who graduated from Conneaut High School in 1954, will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation on April 13 at the Conneaut Human Resources Center.

Though he was just 6-foot-3, Adams was referred to in newspaper clippings during his high school years as “huge” and “a giant.”

He scored 868 points during his junior and senior years at Conneaut, mostly on layups, tip-ins and an occasional dunk. But he also had an effective hook shot.

At that time rebounds weren’t kept track of very well, but Adams got his share.

“I was on the boards a lot,” he said. “Andy Garcia (an ACBF Hall of Famer) was my coach and he taught me to jump up and tap the ball in. He was a great coach. He could teach you a lot. He went to Akron South and made the All-Akron team (as a player). He’s a Hall of Famer there, too, and is in the Conneaut Hall of Fame. I’m in that, too.”

Then called the “Trojans,” Conneaut went 13-9 in Adams’ junior year (1952-53). But Adams was the only returning letterman for his senior season. He was named captain, and, in a low-scoring era, became a dominant factor, scoring 24 points against Millcreek and Springfield and 21 against Geneva. He had 20 in a 66-49 tournament loss to Orange, a game in which he dominated the 6-8 opposing center.

“He didn’t outscore or outrebound me,” Adams said. “I could jump. I weighed about 190-200 but was fast. On the football team, only the three guys in the backfield could beat me and then only by a yard.

“Those guys were good. Cowboy Snyder and Ron Mauri were really fast. We had a tough team that year.”

His best game was a record-setting 39 points against Albion in a 65-51 victory. And he didn’t get to play the entire game even then. If a game got one-sided, Garcia would pull his starters and let the reserves play.

“By halftime, I had more points than the other team had,” he said.

His point total would have been better, too, had he played varsity as a sophomore.

“When I played in the 10th grade, there were so many out for basketball that they didn’t need anybody like small schools do,” he said. “I had to play junior varsity in the 10th grade. They did dress me for some varsity games when the other team didn’t have a JV team. Our JV team was 10-6. The varsity was 13-9 my junior year and 10-11 my senior year. But we didn’t have a lot of players that year.”

Other than Adams, the starters were Darrell Maukonen, Dale Martin, Jim Ely and Buck Cifelli. George Hassler was also on that team.

One person who was impressed with Adams was Bill Ritter, a former Ashtabula star who had moved up to become the captain of the Army basketball team. Ritter had married a girl from Conneaut, Mary Ann Phillips. Seeing Adams play, Ritter tabbed him as “sure-fire college material.”

In addition to their regular schedule, the Trojans also played the Conneaut alumni each year. But that came to an end in Adams’ senior year, when 56 fouls were called and seven starters ejected. Adams scored 11 points in that game, all on free throws, going 11 for 11 from the foul line. Garcia canceled the annual event at that point.

In addition to basketball, Adams played football and ran track at Conneaut. He played right end for Elmer Peaspanen’s football team and says no one ever scored over his side of the defense. He also caught some passes.

He also competed on the track team all three years. In his senior season, 1954, the Trojans went undefeated in track under Garcia, the only time in history that has been the case.

Adams was a high jumper and pole vaulter, high-jumping 6 feet and pole-vaulting 12 feet. Those were good numbers in those days. The “Fosbury Flop” hadn’t been developed yet and most used the Western roll. Neither the pole itself, now fiberglass or some other exotic material, nor the pit, then sand or sawdust, were conducive to great vaults. The pole was generally made of bamboo or steel. Bamboo would break and steel wasn’t flexible.

Adams was good enough to qualify for the state meet three years in a row. He finished third in the vault in Euclid as a sophomore, sixth in the state in the pole vault and fourth in the vault and sixth in the high jump as a senior.

Those state meets were in Columbus, and Woody Hayes, the legendary Ohio State football coach, always attended to scout talent.

“I sat with Andy Garcia and him and he asked me if I was interested in playing football at Ohio State three years in a row. He said, ‘I’ll get your tuition paid,’ but I had no interest in doing that. I wasn’t too fond of studying, though I could get by with a C and an occasional B.”

Instead of going to college, Adams enlisted in the U.S. Army and was sent to Korea. Though technically a peace had been signed to end the Korean War, on occasion there were flareups along the 38th Parallel.

“They were still shooting,” Adams said. “There were a lot of traps. Everything was in disorder. There was fighting back and forth.

“We had to watch the ammunition dump. (The North Koreans) would try to get that.”

But there was also time for sports while he was in Korea. He played basketball and softball and ran track.

“Our track teams won the Far East championship,” Adams said. “I didn’t go out my first year, but they said I could have my own Jeep if I did so I could drive wherever I wanted to go for track. I played basketball for the U.S. Army and made the all-star team. I also played softball and made the all-star team. We had to go way back from the 38th Parallel. We had a lot of guys there watching us.”

After he got out of the army after three years in 1957 Adams took a job with Marx Toys in Girard, Pa., spending five years there. Then he went to work for Bury Compressor in Erie. Serving as traffic manager in shipping and receiving, he broke a couple of fingers when he tried to push some material through a machine too fast.

“It didn’t heal right,” he said. “I broke seven of my fingers working there.”

He worked there for 12 1/2 years before returning to Conneaut to work for Emco-Wheaton. In 1977, Harry Church got him a job with RMI in Conneaut.

In 1992, he got hurt and went on disability.

While he was working those jobs, he continued to play sports. He played on a City League basketball team that included Jerry Puffer, Denny DiPofi, Phil Sanford, Bill Smith and Steve Bosick. That team, under sponsors like Johnny’s Market and Hirschbeck Pontiac, won six of seven Conneaut City League championships. The seventh year, that team lost in the championship game.

Adams was also instrumental in starting the CLYO’s Little Gridders in Conneaut in 1974.

After those seven years, Adams gave up basketball and concentrated on hunting (deer and pheasants), along with bowling. He averaged about 170 in bowling until his poorly mended fingers started bothering him. Now 78, he has given up hunting since it bothers his sinuses too much. He says he watches a lot of television these days.

He lives with his second wife, Patricia. Each of them has three children. Jim and his first wife gave birth to J.C., Jeff and Holly, while Patricia’s children are Jack Carr, Karen Simmons and Linda Kehoe.

A Falcon marksman
Jon Freeman led Jefferson to a banner season in first year of consolidation

By Chris Larick
For the Star Beacon

When he was inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame in 2013, Mickey Zigmund maintained that he had ridden in “on the coat tails of Jon Freeman and Ken Taft.”

Whether the ACBF put the tails before the coat is a moot question, since Zigmund’s credentials were impeccable. But if there has been a slight in Freeman’s case, it will be corrected on April 13 at the Conneaut Human Resources Center, when Freeman will join Zigmund in the ACBF Hall of Fame.

The Jefferson squad of 1962-63 — the first year of consolidation at Jefferson and the first season in the new (now, torn down) high school — was a talented cast, consisting of nine seniors and one junior, Zigmund. Freeman, Taft, Jim Golen and Ron Shore were the senior starters. Another well-known countian who came off the bench was Larry Bragga, who went on to become a coach at Harbor and then longtime principal at Jefferson.

The Falcons went 18-3 that year under coach Herb Smolka before being upset by Geneva in the sectionals at Ball Gym in Ashtabula.

“We played a 1-2-2 (offense),” Freeman said. “I was probably the right guard, or right wing. I was only 6-feet, but I could jump pretty well. Sometimes, I dropped down low.

“We had a good team with several scorers and rebounders. We probably had the best percentage of wins in school history.”

That year, Freeman led Ashtabula County in scoring (with 17.8 per game) as well as the Western Reserve League, which the Falcons won, with 18.2. In that same county scoring list were already-inducted ACBF Hall of Famers Paul Freeman (fourth), Gordon Hitchcock (eighth) and Tom Ritari (15th).

Freeman recorded 30 points in an 85-45 victory over Rowe that senior season. He was named to the first team All-WRL squad (along with Ritari; Paul Freeman was second-team). He was also selected as an honorable mention All-Ohioan.

After the triumph over Rowe, the Star Beacon gushed about Freeman, calling him “nifty” and saying “In a great exhibition, he hit from anywhere and everywhere with jump shots and added a few good drive-in shots.” He was also termed a “swivel-hipped driving forward.”

Freeman had begun his basketball at Dorset Elementary, but when he was in the third or fourth grade, Dorset was consolidated into the Jefferson district.

“Dorset had built a full-size gym prior to that,” Freeman said. “We were able to play basketball mornings and afternoons and an hour at lunch. In cold weather, we played a lot of basketball. That gave us an advantage.

“My junior year, we played on the old gym at the (Jefferson) elementary school. We called it the matchbox. It’s torn down now.”

One aspect of his game that Freeman prided himself in was his free-throw shooting.

“I made 17 in one game,” he said. “At the end of the game, the press was on and I was bringing up the ball. I was a good foul shooter.

“I also scored a lot on the fast break. We’d get the rebound and get into the transition game. I’d get fouled a lot that way.”

In addition to basketball, Freeman played quarterback on the Jefferson football team. He had a decent junior year, but strained a ligament in the first game of his senior year and didn’t play thereafter. He also played baseball and ran track.

“In baseball, I pitched and played shortstop,” he said. “But I didn’t play a lot. I ran the half-mile and 440 in track, but was nothing exceptional.”

As good as Freeman was at basketball, he was even better in the classroom. He was valedictorian of his senior class (1963) with a perfect 4.0, the first of those in about 20 years at Jefferson.

He went on to play basketball at Case before it was merged with Western Reserve. Freeman started for three years there. In one game his senior season, he hit 31, years before the 3-point line was in effect.

“I’d get a double pick at the top of the key and get a jump shot off,” he said.

Case wasn’t all that successful as a team, finishing at about .500 each of his years. Freeman was more interested in academics.

“It was a tough school,” he said. “School came first. I didn’t stay out at night. At Case, if you don’t study, you’re gone. Your first day there they take you to a big assembly hall and tell you, ‘Look to your left. Look to your right. Only one of the three of you is going to be here (at graduation).’”

Freeman managed to get a three-point plus and graduated with honors with a degree in electrical engineering. He eventually would go on to graduate studies and received his Ph.D. from Case in 1973.

“It took a while,” he said. “We had a little company we were just getting started.”

In 1974, Jon and his father, Albert W. Freeman, incorporated Freedom Industries, Inc. Based in Dorset, the company is a cathodic protection service organization that designs, installs, and maintains cathodic protection systems especially for water tanks. It also manufactures cathodic protection equipment including anode systems, reference cells, IR Drop Correctors, and the MACPU® (Modular Automatic Cathodic Protection Unit).

When Freeman Industries, Inc. was founded, Albert already had more than 25 years of experience with cathodic protection systems for water tanks. Jonathan also had several years of experience working with cathodic protection systems.

“Initially, Freeman Industries, Inc. was strictly a service organization that provided cathodic protection services for water tanks,” Albert Freeman said in a brochure. “However, because of the need for improved equipment and techniques, a development program was undertaken to provide modern technology for cathodic protection. The result of this program was a complete line of state-of-the-art equipment for the cathodic protection of water tanks. Two U.S. Patents have been granted covering the equipment and methods provided by Freeman Industries.”

In 2004, Adam Freeman, Jon’s son, joined the Freeman Industries family and is now the President of Freeman Industries of Wyoming. He has degrees in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, is an NACE-certified Cathodic Protection Specialist. Then, in 2009, Andrew Freeman, another son, joined the family business. Andrew has a degree in Electrical Engineering from Grove City College.

Currently, Freeman Industries, Inc. furnishes and installs cathodic protection systems and provides annual testing and maintenance services in the United States for several hundred water tanks located from border to border on the east coast, through the mid-west to the Rocky Mountains. Among the company’s local clients are Andover Village, Orwell Village and some of the Holiday Campgrounds facilities. Other clients include Virginia Beach, Arlington County in Virginia and some water tanks in the Pittsburgh area.

Jon married the Jean (Barger) from Jefferson in 1978. In addition to a son (Paul) from a previous marriage, Jon has four other children: Adam, Nathan, Rachel (Badgett) and Andrew. Adam and Andrew work in his business (which is still located in Dorset) with him, while Rachel, a former nurse, now is a housewife and mother.

Nathan, according to his father, has “wanderlust.”

“He is a world traveler and recently curriculum advisor and teacher at a Catholic school in Argentina,” Jon said.

Jon plays basketball with two or three of his boys occasionally and “can still hit the 3,” he said. “We didn’t have that when I was in high school.”

He also plays an occasional round of golf. But he and his family spend more time skiing near Golden, Colorado. The family also has a house in Wyoming, where they spend time in the summers.

Fast Eddie
Kropf got his kicks, first with Spencer on hardwood, then, with Ohio University in soccer

By Chris Larick
For the Star Beacon

Told by legendary Ohio University basketball coach Jim Snyder that he was too short for the Bobcats’ basketball team, Eddie Kropf went out for the soccer team as a senior.

Soccer was a sport that Kropf had never played.

“I didn’t even know the rules,” Kropf said.

But the 5-foot-11 Kropf was made the team’s starting goalie. Surprisingly, he posted four shutouts in 10 games, still a record at Ohio University. After the season, he was named All-American, along with one other Bobcat.

“I had handled the basketball all my life,” Kropf explains. “My reactions were tremendous.”

Kropf, who will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation at the Conneaut Human Resources Center on April 15, started playing basketball at Assumption School in a church league in the eighth grade. His father erected a basketball hoop in his back yard on North Myers Road in Geneva Township.

“All the neighborhood kids played, Gale Alderman, who was on the Spencer team of 1958 and 1959 with me, and Jim Pevec. A lot of times I played by myself.”

By the time he was a sophomore, Kropf was starting on the Wildcats team coached by legendary Al Bailey, a member of the inaugural ACBF Hall of Fame class.

Bailey was known as a firebrand.

“He got excited a lot,” Kropf said of Bailey. “But it didn’t bother the players at all.”

According to Kropf, Bailey played a give-and-go offense.

“That was his whole offense,” Kropf said. “We had to pass the ball off and go to the basket. If that didn’t work, we’d come around and do it again. He ran strict man-for-man defense.”

Spencer had an excellent team, led by Lyle Pepin, one year ahead of Kropf, inducted into the ACBF Hall of Fame in 2013.

Other starters on that team included Alderman, Ron Randa and Pete Balint, with John Weaver coming off the bench.

Bill Peters, a reserve on that team and a good friend of Kropf’s, researched Kropf’s entire basketball career at Spencer. The Wildcats went 21-2 his sophomore year, losing only to Jefferson (a loss they would avenge later in the season) and to Columbiana in the districts. They did it mostly with defense, with most of the games in the 40s, some of them in the 30s. Four times, they made it to the 60-point level, the biggest a 66-39 defeat of Edgewood.

As a sophomore on that 1957-58 team, Kropf usually scored in the single digits, though he did post 20 against Perry that year. His average for the season was 5.7.

That great season was followed by an even better one. In 1958-59, the Wildcats won their first 22 games, some of them by scores like 73-29 (over Kingsville), 80-31, 60-24, 67-34, 78-22, 69-15, 69-26, 77-35 and 65-25.

Spencer was finally stopped in the districts, falling to Northwestern, a team led by future major-league pitcher Dean Chance, 50-43.

“That was a very close game,” Kropf said. “We didn’t allow very many points all season long. Opponents only averaged 23 points a game against us.”

Kropf averaged 7.6 points a game that year as a junior on a team dominated by seniors. After the season, he was selected to the Western Reserve League All-Stars first team as a playmaking guard.

It figured to be a tough season in 1959-60 with all the starters except Kropf graduating and it was. Jim Pevec, Dave Tirabasso, Steve Gibbs and Peters replaced the graduated seniors.

The Wildcats started with a 56-45 victory over Kingsville, a game Kropf scored 44 points in, a school record that still stands (and will continue to stand since Spencer consolidated with Geneva in 1961).

“I would get the ball and drive to the basket most of the time, or stop and shoot a jumper, or stop and feed Tirabasso or the other players going to the basket,” Kropf recalls. “I handled the ball like (Kyrie) Irving does for the Cavaliers.”

Scoring 44 of his team’s 56 points was a remarkable feat, but one not appreciated by Bailey.

“He pulled me by the pants and said, ‘There are other players on this team,’” Kropf said. “That did get me upset. He was a hothead.”

In that game, Kropf hit 12 of 16 field-goal attempts to go with 16 free throws.

Bailey might have been better served to let Kropf shoot more. Spencer went just 6-11 that year and lost its first game of the sectionals to Williamsfield.

Kropf scored 17.9 points per game that season and was selected to the All-WRL team. He also won the accolades of his coach.

“He said in the yearbook that I was his most coachable player,” Kropf said of Bailey. “I would listen to what he had to say.”

While in high school at Spencer, Kropf won the 1960 Kiwanis Club Citizenship Award. He was a member of the Key Club, Thespian Club, Buckeye Boys State, Homecoming King and was voted Most Popular Senior Boy. He earned three letters in basketball, track and football and served as co-captain of the football team.

In track, he won the mile run and placed third in the half-mile as a senior. After his senior year, he was selected to the first-team All-Northeastern Ohio squad and honorable-mention status in the all-state voting.

After his selection to the first team All-Western Reserve League team his senior year, Kropf won a basketball scholarship to Ohio University and played as sixth man as a freshman. But when he went out for the team as a sophomore and junior, Snyder cut him. That’s when he decided to play soccer.

After graduation, Kropf got a job as an industrial education teacher at Wickliffe High School, where he taught woodworking, electronics and drafting for 32 years, before retiring in 1996. He also found work as a carpenter in the summers.

“I was very handy,” he said. “My uncle and I were in the carpenter’s union. We built houses and things like that for 10 years. We helped build the Watergate Towers in Euclid, off Lakeshore Drive, and the Perry Nuclear Power Plant.”

Kropf met his wife, Eleanor, who hails from Lakewood, while dancing at Capelli’s Dance Hall in Wickliffe, when he was 25.

“I wasn’t much of a dancer,” he admitted. “Mostly, we did the waltz and jitterbug. After three dates at Capelli’s, we were going steady.”

The Kropfs have been married for 46 years and have three children, Debra (“Debbie”), David and Jeffrey. All three are college graduates.

Debbie works at Progressive Insurance off Route 271. David is employed by Charles Schwab, working with 401-Ks. Jeffrey is a chemist who got his master’s at Penn State, his doctorate at the University of Michigan and also did two years of post-doctorate work. He’s currently employed by the Gilead Company in Connecticut.

“He’s working on a cure for arthritis,” Kropf said.

Eddie played basketball, volleyball and softball in a church league in Euclid (Epiphany) until he was 45.

“My wife and kids would come to the games,” he said. “It was a lot of fun.”

He took the game of golf up at age 37 and is in a league with his old pal, Pepin, at Ironwood in Hinckley.

“I’m still in the A division,” he said. “I have a handicap of nine.”

Mighty Mike

Geneva’s Blauman proving to be one famous guy

By Chris Larick
For the Star Beacon

Mike Blauman was an All-Ohio baseball player at Geneva High School.

He was a star in football in both high school and college, good enough to be selected for the Ashtabula County Touchdown Club’s Hall of Fame in 2006.

But it was basketball that Blauman played until he was 52 years old.

He was good enough at hoops to be selected to the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame, into which he will be inducted on April 13 at the Conneaut Human Resources Center, along with 14 others.

An entire group of men played for most of those 25 or 30 years. Geneva, with Blauman, Al Hogan, Ernie Pasqualone, Louis DeJesus, Norm Urcheck, Al Landphair and Tony Hassett was the high school best represented, but players like Lou DiDonato from St. John, Scott Humphrey and Tim Richards from Conneaut, along with Dr. Frank Sailors, also played.

“We played for 30 years, most of the time in Mentor, played in 30-and-over and 40-and-over leagues,” Blauman said. “When we got to be old, they put us in the open division. That was tough.”

Those days are gone, but Blauman still plays against the coaches in his son, Chris’, league.

“If I wasn’t so old and my knees weren’t so bad, I could still play,” he said.

Blauman recalls playing on outdoor courts as a kid growing up in Painesville, where he competed against stars like former Ohio State quarterback John Mummey.

His parents, Bill and Marge Blauman, moved to Geneva before Mike’s eighth-grade year. He credits Tom Conner, his coach in the eighth and ninth grades, for an early foundation in fundamentals.

“He was a very good coach and a great player,” Blauman said of Conner.

“When I got to high school I played for coach Bill Koval. He’s a legend. It was his way or the highway. You had to slow it down, get good shots, play fundamentally sound, play good defense.

“With his style, we won a lot of games.”

Perhaps the best team that Blauman played on at Geneva came his junior year. Six-foot-6 Randy Knowles, who would go on to play college and pro ball, transferred into Geneva that year as a senior. Koval also had the 6-1 Blauman, 6-3 John Hejduk, 6-5 Al Hogan and Mike Barker to work with. Six-3 Ned Tennant came off the bench. That may have been Koval’s biggest team ever. The Eagles went 17-3 but fell in the sectional finals.

“We lost to Harvey,” Blauman said. “It was a nip-and-tuck game, but we lost by a couple of points. We had a fine team but just didn’t mesh in the tournament.”

However, the following year, 1970, the Eagles did mesh, despite the fact they had lost most of their starters from the year before.

Ernie Pasqualone and Norm Urcheck, who are already in the ACBF Hall of Fame, started that year, Pasqualone as a sophomore. Al Landphair also started. Blauman and Landphair were the tallest players at 6-1 each. But the Eagles made a memorable tournament run.

“We won the sectionals and went to the district finals,” Blauman said. “We beat Cleveland St. Joseph’s in the regular season, then beat Cleveland Heights in the sectional finals. We upset the team that beat Cleveland St. Joe’s, 99-98. We beat (Cleveland Heights), 44-41. Everett Heard, their great player, averaged 21 points a game and I held him to two. Ernie (Pasqualone) held Mike Greenwald to two. That was the highlight of our senior year.”

In the victory over St. Joe’s, Blauman scored the winning free throws in the 56-55 upset, then was mobbed by fans. He had 24 points in that game to lead the Eagles.

Blauman, who played guard and forward that year, led the Northeastern Conference in scoring that year, with about 18 points per game, a shade better than Ashtabula’s Jim Hood (another ACBF Hall of Famer) and was a first-team All-Ashtabula County and All-NEC selection.

An all-state player in three sports in high school, Blauman had to decide which one to play in college. He had played quarterback under Tom Jennell as a sophomore in 1968 (the Eagles went 6-3-1 that year), Gary Prahst as a junior (when Geneva posted a 9-1 mark and won the NEC) and Bob Herpy as a senior (Geneva was 7-3).

Blauman was an effective quarterback at Geneva, playing on a team that also included standouts like running back Tim Packrall, who still holds the school all-time rushing record. Blauman connected on 49 of 82 passes for 569 yards and 5 touchdowns as a junior. When injuries depleted the Eagle running back position in Blauman’s senior year, he turned into more of a rusher and gained 360 yards on 79 carries, while completing 37 of 98 passes for 386 yards. He was a unanimous selection as a first-team quarterback on both the Star Beacon Ashtabula County and All-Northeastern Conference teams, in addition to being a first-round pick as a defensive back.

A lot of the credit for his success has to go to his parents, Bill (who died in 2011) and Marge, Blauman said.

“They were instrumental in everything I did,” he said. “They were great parents; they went to every game.”

Prahst had moved on to an offensive coordinator’s job at Ashland College and recruited Blauman to that school, surprisingly (to Blauman at least), offering him a full scholarship.

Blauman backed up Ronnie Slater at quarterback his first year at Ashland (like Geneva, the Eagles). He did get into one game and, running the option, raced 89 yards for a touchdown.

When he was a sophomore, Blauman was switched to safety. That year, the Eagles went 11-0 and were ranked fourth in the country. They gave up just four points a game.

The Ashland players thought that they would go to the Division II championship game, but Heidelberg, also undefeated, got the nod instead. The Student Princes were badly beaten in that game.

“It was the biggest disappointment in my life,” Blauman later said.

The Eagles went 7-3 his junior year, when Blauman recorded seven interceptions as a defensive back and ran four or five punts back for touchdown. They also won seven games his senior year. By that time he was tired of football.

“If I had to do it all over again, I might have gone to college for basketball,” he said.

Blauman graduated from Ashland in 1975 with a teaching degree, a degree he would never use.

His father had established Northeast Plumbing Supply in 1961 and asked Mike if he would come work for him.

“He said, ‘Give it a shot,’” Mike said. “I never left.”

Mike eventually took over the running of the business. He sold it recently.

Mike has four children: twin daughters Emily and Amy (30) and sons Mike (27) and Chris (11). Blauman moved to Madison in 1990 and all his children have played for Blue Streak teams. Mike Jr. was a star for the Madison boys basketball team, while Emily and Amy both played on the Madison girls basketball team.

Emily and Mike graduated from Mount Union. Amy is a Mercyhurst and Cleveland State graduate. The twins both work in the healthcare field.

His job with his father proved advantageous as the kids grew up.

“I could go to the kids’ games,” he said. “I never missed any of their games.”

Right now, Blauman is coaching and following the athletic career of his son, Chris, currently in the sixth grade at Madison. Chris is in two or three basketball leagues, including a traveling league.

“He’s taking up the torch for his father,” Blauman said. “All the Madison kids are playing together. There’s a lot of basketball being played.

“Chris is playing with kids he plays with in middle school. In the summer, they’re not allowed to play as a team. Then he plays on a traveling team at Lost Nation, with a mix of kids.”

Divorced, Blauman has been with his “significant other,” Laura, for five years. Her daughter, Jillian Gibson, plays basketball for Lake Catholic.

Blauman just retired from the plumbing business on Jan. 1. He’s in the process of figuring out how to spend his retirement years.

“I play a lot of golf,” he said. “And I coach Chris. I still have to find out what I’m going to do.”

One of the men Blauman plays golf with is Clyde Koski, another member of the 2014 ACBF Hall of Fame class.

“I’ve played golf with him and we’ve formed a friendship,” Blauman said. “He went to Harbor. I guess he was a great basketball player. He’s a little guy.”

Clyde could glide
Guard helped lead the Harbor Mariners to three consecutive WRL championships

By Chris Larick
For the Star Beacon

When Clyde Koski signed up with the Pruden Chicks, an independent basketball team of the 1950s and 1960s, he was introduced to a new style of the game.

The Pruden Chicks were led, at the time, by Al Bailey, the Spencer and Geneva High School coach who became a charter member of the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation’s Hall of Fame many years later.

Bailey recruited Koski and Al Ziegler to run the team from their guard positions— and Bailey really meant run.

“That was probably the first big-time basketball I ever played,” said Koski, who will be inducted into the ACBF’s Hall of Fame on April 13 at the Conneaut Human Resources Center. “He was a great player at Duquesne and wanted you to run as fast as can be, up and down the court like you see them play today, run and gun and play defense.”

Koski, who played at Harbor from 1953–1955, found that unusual. Like most coaches at the time, Mariners coach Elmer Gray stressed movement of the ball and working for a good shot.

“He was a bit laid-back and easy-going,” Koski said of Gray. “He didn’t get all emotional; he was a nice person.

“It was a different game back then. We did play some zone, but we set up plays, not a real fast type of basketball. The scores would be 40 to something or 50 to something. I look at the 3-point line now and think that’s right about where I was shooting from.”

Koski had begun his basketball career in his neighborhood, playing at the old Washington School. He remembers little of his junior high team.

At Harbor, he was a 5-foot-9 left-handed guard. Lefties are often thought to have an advantage because right-handed players aren’t used to them, but Koski doesn’t recall any edge. He did have to change his game because of it, though.

“When I played against Ashtabula the first time as a junior, Bob Ball was the coach,” he remembers. “I scored about 10 or 12 points against them. The next game, (Ball) put a player on my left hand. I couldn’t move to my right then. But from then on, I started going to my right.”

The Mariners won the Western Reserve League championship three years in row between 1954 and 1956 and notched victories over some pretty potent teams — Mentor, Cleveland St. Joseph’s and Ashtabula.

But Harbor was a small team. Its center, Bob Peura, was a 5-11 junior in Koski’s junior season.

On the other hand, most teams lacked the height that they have in the present day. Exceptions like Geneva’s Dave Love (probably 6-5) and Kingsville’s 6-6 Ray Reed were rare.

Harbor went 12-8 (7-1 in the WRL) in 1953–54 and 10-8 (7-1) in 1954–1955, Koski’s senior year, winning the WRL championship for the third straight season that year. In addition to Koski, Gray started Bob Sidbeck, Bob McNutt, Keith McCullough, Donald Jones, Bob Lampela and, at times, Joe Pinney.

CLYDE KOSKI of Harbor (far right), shown with fellow Ashtabula County standouts (from left) before the 1954–55 season — Dave Love of Geneva, Neil Volk of Edgewood, Ron Hinkle of Conneaut, Dick Schwarz of Edgewood and Ray Kovocs of Ashtabula. Koski will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame on April 13.

THE 1954–55 HARBOR MARINERS won the Western Reserve League championship for the third year in a row under the direction of coach Elmer Gray. The Mariners were (seated, from left) Don Jones, Bob Sidbeck, Keith McCullough, Clyde Koski and Bob McNutt and (standing, from left) Ken Swanson, Joe Pinney and Ernie Thomas.

CLYDE KOSKI 1955

CLYDE KOSKI Present-day

CLYDE KOSKI and family.

“Bob Sidbeck was our big man, but not big for a forward or center, probably 6-1,” Koski said. “He played inside. Bob McNutt was a guard, like me. Keith McCullough was about 6-foot and was a junior forward. We had a bunch of good junior players (my senior year). Elmer (Gray) moved some of them back and forth.”

Koski was the team’s leading scorer, notching 119 points in eight WRL games (14.9 per game), third in the league behind Madison’s Chuck Woldtke and Kirtland’s Armand Hernandez. He was named to the All-WRL first-team. Though he ranked in the top five in the All-Ashtabula County voting, he was assigned to the second team, since two other guards received more votes.

“I felt kind of deflated about that,” he said. “They went by position. I was pushed to the second team that way.”

The All-Ashtabula County first team that year included Geneva’s Love, Rowe’s Dick Hill, Chuck Naso from Jefferson and Ashtabula’s Jim Welty. Hill and Naso are already in the ACBF Hall of Fame and Welty and Koski will join them this year.

“Hill was a good little guard from Rowe,” Koski said. “Love was a big, lanky kid. Chuck Naso was a good shooter. Welty was a nice player from Ashtabula, one of the first players I saw that did things a little fancier, like reverse layups. He was a little ahead of the field that way.”

Koski also fought through injuries. He was heavily taped against Geneva.

“He couldn’t drive in on his ‘stop-and-go specialty,’” the Star Beacon wrote. “But he still had 14 in a 63–58 loss.”

Koski didn’t start until his junior year, a fact he attributes to talented players in the higher grades.

“It’s all about the competition,” he said. “We’ve got more competition up here (in the northern part of the county). It’s a whole different ballgame.”

In Koski’s senior year, Harbor won the sectionals at the Edgewood gym — now Braden Junior High.

“We played those up on the stage there,” Koski said. “We beat Kingsville to win the sectional but then got beat by Lowelville.”

Some have said that the small gymnasiums prevalent during those times held down the scoring in games.

Koski claims it helped him.

“I was a good ballhandler,” he said. “I could fake a guy out of position, go to my left and take a jump shot or pass the ball. I was a good passer.”

He was also an excellent free-throw shooter. He won the sectional foul-shooting award by making 19 free throws, 13 of them in one game.

Despite his high school success, Koski had no interest in playing basketball in college.

“I took the general courses in high school,” he said. “My dad was an old railroad worker and I liked it on the railroad.”

Koski himself took a job on the railroad after graduation, then moved on to work for Union Carbide for 12 years. After that, he labored in sheet-metal construction in Cleveland for three more years.

“Then I saw the light and got a job on the coal dock as a foreman. My last five years I worked on maintenance on the dock.”

When Conrail took over the company Koski was working for, he took a severance package at age 59. That was almost 18 years ago.

“I’ll be 77 in a week,” he said. “I don’t do a whole lot.”

Koski married his wife, Nancy, whom he met at an Ashtabula bowling establishment, in 1962. The couple has two children: Kevin, who played basketball at Harbor, graduating in 1984, and Brian, a 1986 graduate who played baseball for the Mariners. Kevin is married to Kathleen (Perry) and Bryan to Gina (Tredent). There are three grandchildren: Jenna, 16; Matthew, 13; and Everett, 5.

Two of Koski’s grandchildren play basketball in Mentor. Jenna is a sophomore and plays both varsity and JV ball. Matthew, an eighth-grader, plays for a Mentor junior high team. Both play a lot of AAU ball in the summer.

For fun, Koski plays golf, mostly at Harbor Golf Club. He has a 13 handicap there. He has often played with another ACBF Hall of Fame 2014 inductee, Mike Blauman.

A Spartan, a Laker... a Hall of Famer
Sean Freeman started at Conneaut, but he really blossomed at Pymatuning Valley

By Chris Larick
For the Star Beacon

Pymatuning Valley star Sean Freeman’s love for basketball came at an early age. But it was at Conneaut, not PV, that it first blossomed.

The son of Conneaut principal Paul Freeman, a basketball legend in his own right and a member of the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame, Sean loved attending the Spartan basketball games as a youngster.

“I have a lot of respect for Ashtabula County high school basketball,” said Freeman, who will join his father in the Hall of Fame on April 13 at the foundation’s banquet at the Conneaut Human Resources Center. “My brother, Brett, played three varsity years at Conneaut and was kind of my childhood hero. I was probably the last child of the pre-technical era.”

College and pro basketball weren’t televised to the degree that they are today, so most of the basketball Freeman watched at an early age was the high-school variety, in person. Too young to be a member of Conneaut’s famed (or notorious, depending on one’s viewpoint) “Stage Crew,” Freeman watched from the stands.

“High school basketball was a big deal for me,” he said. “My brother liked to hit those 20-footers before the 3-point line was introduced. I’d always ask my dad who to watch (from the opponent). He’d say Andy Juhola (from Harbor) or Ralph DeJesus (from Geneva).”

SEAN FREEMAN powers to the bucket during warmups before a game during his spectacular career at Pymatuning Valley. Freeman will join his father, Paul, in the ACBF Hall of Fame on April 13.

DANIEL FREEMAN, 5, will see his dad, Sean, go into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame on April 13.

As he grew up, Freeman loved to play on those old courts on Broad Street in Conneaut, where, in their heyday, up to 60 youngsters competed in pickup games.

Sometimes, Freeman stayed so late into the evening that his father would have to come to get him, saying that it was too dark to play basketball.

“My dad would say, ‘Get home,’ and I’d tell him I had to make three shots in a row before I could leave,” Freeman said.

Growing up, Freeman would play with the likes of future Spartan stars Matt Zappitelli and Mo Wofford. That was before the family moved to Andover after his eighth-grade year when his father became principal at Pymatuning Valley.

He had played junior high ball at Rowe in the seventh and eighth grades. As a freshman at PV, he started on the varsity team from his second game on. That PV squad started 0-5, the last loss of which saw the Lakers blow a 22-23-point lead to Jefferson.

“I remember Coach (Bob) Hitchcock just sitting and looking at us afterward,” Freeman said. “He didn’t have a lot to say. But it was a bad feeling knowing we had let something get away.

“From then on, we had a terrific year, winning 12 of our last 16 games to win the (Grand River Conference) after a slow start. We were young at the time, just one senior.”

That season paved the way for one of the school’s best years ever, Freeman’s sophomore year, when the Lakers won their first 22 games before being beaten in the district by Hawken in overtime.

The team had size with Freeman (about 6-3 at the time), ACBF Hall of Famer Steve Oman, Jason Poole and Gordy Hitchcock. It had the shooting of Doug Hitchcock and Rod Brown and the playmaking of Hitchcock.

Doug Hitchcock was the team leader.

“Doug was an unselfish player for a great player,” Freeman said. “We knew we had a chance to be decent. We were ranked as high as fifth in the (state) polls. The loss to Hawken was a tough loss.

“We were a very unselfish team who played well together. An undefeated team doesn’t happen very often.”

It certainly didn’t happen his junior season, when the Lakers lost Oman to Grand Valley and most of the other starters graduated.

“We were barely over .500,” Freeman said. “We started 2-7 before we started to put things together.”

PV moved to the East Suburban Conference Freeman’s senior year (1989–1990), where they faced tougher competition in the likes of Berkshire, Kirtland and others. Still, the Lakers wound up second.

“That team didn’t have a lot of height,” Freeman said of a group that included Brad McNeilly, Andy Brown, Paul Hochran, Matt Spellman and Mark Pitsinger. “With my being the leader, the ball was in my hands a lot. I led the league in rebounding and was second in scoring. I took pride in rebounding. I could have 25 or 26 points, but if I didn’t have 12 rebounds, I felt I didn’t hustle.

“I always said if I couldn’t get three rebounds in an 8-minute period, I wasn’t getting after it. That’s the fun part of the game.”

Freeman scored 1,301 points during his high school career, still the seventh-highest total for all boys players in county history, the fourth-highest total when he graduated.

Among his honors were special mention All-GRC and honorable mention All-Ashtabula County as a freshman, first-team All-GRC and honorable mention all-county as a sophomore, first-team All-ESC and all-county as a junior and senior, and first-team All-Northeast Ohio and all-state as a senior. He started on league championship teams in his freshman, sophomore and junior years, was the team leader in assists, points, rebounds and steals as a junior and senior and won the 1-on-1 tournament for four consecutive years. He was also selected by the Star Beacon as a player on the Dream Team of the Decade for the 1980s.

“I was very honored to be named as one of the top 10 basketball players in county history by the Star Beacon,” Freeman said. “I was very humbled by that mention.”

One of his proudest accomplishments was being runner-up to eventual Ohio State football star Robert Smith as Northeast Ohio Athlete of the Year.

He really enjoyed playing under Hitchcock.

“He was a great coach,” Freeman said. “He always stressed unselfish basketball, making the next pass. He stressed defense and was always calm and collected. He was like family; my dad had played with him. He expected a lot out of us.”

Freeman was also a standout on the baseball diamond and the gridiron at Pymatuning Valley. As a quarterback in football, he led the Lakers to a 9-1 record under coach Ken Parise in 1989 and was named Star Beacon All-Ashtabula County Offensive Back of the Year as a junior and senior. He shattered the school passing record (formerly 1,017 yards) as a senior with 2,091 yards and had a punting average of 42.2 yards. For his career, he threw for 4,641 yards (a county record) and 48 touchdowns. He had a chance to play Division I football, but didn’t really consider it.

In baseball, he had set the career highs for home runs (21) and RBI (90) after his junior year.

“I didn’t play junior high football and had no intention of playing football,” he said. “I played on the golf team as a freshman. But (Parise) saw me there and I eventually went out for football.”

College coaches wanted Freeman to play football exclusively. Freeman wanted to play baseball.

“It was a stressful time,” he said. “Ohio State was involved. So were Bowling Green and Georgia Tech. It was a crazy time.”

One of the deciding factors was the college football itself, which was larger than the high school version.

“I didn’t have big hands for my size,” he said. “I wasn’t sure I could throw the college ball 50 or 60 yards. And I really wanted to give college baseball a shot.”

Kent State wanted Freeman as a baseball player. Eventually, that’s where he wound up.

He had pitched and played first base in high school. At Kent, he became a full-time first baseman.

“I ended up playing first base all four years,” he said.

He was inducted into the Kent Baseball Hall of Fame.

Over his career at Kent, Freeman had a batting average of .333 and held the doubles record in addition to the record for most games played.

He was drafted by the Detroit Tigers in 1994 and wound up five or six classes short of a degree, spending four years in the Tigers’ system, five overall in the minor leagues.

In Class AA Jacksonville in 1996, he was part of a team that won a championship. The following year, he went to spring training with the Tigers, but was injured and never played in a major-league game.

Freeman then went to work for Tony LaRiche Chevrolet in Willoughby as a salesman and spent seven or eight years there. From there, it was on to Quicken Loans as a banker for six years.

But he had been having back problems for years and finally wound up having intensive back surgery.

“It was a five- or six-hour surgery,” he said. “It’s been a couple of tough years for me. I had a tumor pressing against a major blood vessel.”

His back won’t allow him to sit for any length of time, so working has been impossible for the past couple of years.

“I’m not in a wheelchair, but at times, it gets so painful I have to lie down,” he said.

Now divorced, Freeman has a son, Daniel, 5. He moved back to the Andover area about a year ago.

Bowler struck often
Former Ashtabula star still has the fire in him that spurred him to greatness

By Chris Larick
For the Star Beacon

Growing up, Tim Bowler and his friends didn’t miss a chance to play their favorite sport.

Not much has changed over the last several decades.

Oh, the venues are nicer, the time is tighter, the joints are creakier.

But the love for hoops remains unquenchable.

“Basketball will be part of my life forever,” Bowler said. “It’s molded my character.”

Bowler will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame on April 13 at Conneaut Human Resources Center.

Bowler first started basketball at the old Chestnut Elementary School in Ashtabula. His dad, John (“Jack”) was the assistant basketball coach there, helping out Bill Mercilliot.

“My father would rebound for me,” Bowler remembers. “He fed me the basketball for hours. Some of the guys I played with as a kid were Dave Welton, Bill Law, Mike McKinney, Larry Johnson, Jim Holley, Skip Gray, Pete Candela, my brother John and Frank Tuttle.

“We would play all day until dark. Then, Frank (Tuttle) would bring out a floodlight and extension cord and hang it on the fence so we could play all night. We’d shovel off the snow and play until our fingers split.”

The group of boys would also play in a barn in bad weather.

“It was a chance for me to meet people,” Bowler said. “I met a lot of people playing basketball — Ray Groce, Phil Soltis, Bob Maney, Joe V. — playing in a barn. It was crazy the way we’d go at it. We’d go to different schools to play.”

At the age of 55, Bowler is still playing, in a 30-and-over league. One of the commissioners of the league is Hall of Famer Andy Juhola.

In fact, the group of players Bowler competes with now could make up an entire chapter in a “Who’s Who” of Ashtabula area basketball, people like Juhola, Jim Chiacchiero, Dave Golen, Jim Welty, the Osborne brothers (Bill and Mike), Bill March, Louis DeJesus, Ernie Pasqualone, John Bowler...

“They’re guys I’ve played with for a long, long time,” Bowler said.

After his days at Chestnut Elementary, Bowler went on to play for Roby Potts and Joe Scardino at West Junior High School, then on to Ashtabula High School, where he played for coach Bob Walters from 1973-77, starting as a freshman guard after a few games. One of the Panther stars on that team was Bill Osborne. Roosevelt Corpening was also a good player.

TIM BOWLER (43) of Ashtabula fights Panther teammate — and current longtime Jefferson tennis coach — Lou Murphy (21) for a rebound during a game at archrival Harbor. Bowler will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame on April 13.

TIM BOWLER (44): “I could shoot; that was it. I shot the ball. That was pretty much what they had me doing, even to this day. I didn’t have a lot of speed and couldn’t jump high. I’d get into position, get a pick, get open and shoot.”

TIM BOWLER, a 1977 Ashtabula graduate, still enjoys playing the game that will take him into the ACBF Hall of Fame in April.

Bowler would eventually play forward, too, at 6-foot-3.

“It wasn’t like it is today,” he said. “Players now are huge. But I think we had more love of the game.”

By his senior year, at least before he hurt his foot, Bowler was playing with Scooby Brown, Tom Hill and David Benton. But that was a year before Ashtabula really took off, with Deora Marsh, Lou Murphy and Perry Stofan all contributing to that fine squad.

Bowler is pretty definite of his contributions in those years, before he graduated in 1977.

“I could shoot; that was it,” he said. “I shot the ball. That was pretty much what they had me doing, even to this day. I didn’t have a lot of speed and couldn’t jump high. I’d get into position, get a pick, get open and shoot.”

Under Walters, the Panthers were a high-scoring team.

“We were always up in the 70s and 80s, even 100, sometimes,” Bowler said. “We scored a lot. We ran a motion offense and had a lot of good players, players that understood the game, the same as we do now. It was a lot of fun passing to the open guy and have him hit the shot.”

Ashtabula was on a roll early in Bowler’s senior season, winning seven straight games. Then bad weather forced cancellations that brought about a 15-day period without a game. Worse, during that lull in action, Bowler broke a foot, costing the Panthers their leading scorer.

“I don’t think we won the NEC (my senior year),” Bowler said. “We could have if I would’ve been able to play.”

Much of the Panthers’ success has to be attributed to their coach, Walters, Bowler said.

“I would praise Bob Walters highly,” he said. “He taught me the right way, the fundamentals. Without a learning process, you don’t grow up. Now it’s all run-and-gun, not playing defense or passing the ball.

“I never had a problem with (Walters). We got along well. He was the coach. Nobody likes to lose games. If you listened to him, you got better. To me, that’s the right way to go.”

Even though Bowler played only about a half a year his senior season, Lakeland Community College offered him a scholarship. Playing guard and sometimes forward, he continued to shoot and, when he left Lakeland to get married two years later, he held the school scoring record.

He then married Eileen Rebera, who had been the cheerleading captain her senior year, as Bowler was basketball captain.

“We’re childhood sweethearts,” Bowler said. “We’ve been together a long time.”

Bowler got a job at Tim Brown’s Chevrolet dealership for a while, then to Premix’s management training program. After that, he had a stint with TCI’s telecommunications company.

Eventually he took a job as marketing manager at Wheeler-Rex, now Rex International-USA Inc.

“They’re a manufacturer of pipe tools,” Bowler said. “That’s why I’m going to Japan (in April, causing him to miss the ACBF banquet). We have factories in the United States, China and Japan. I’m their vice president and am going to a global meeting in Japan.”

Rex International is a family business employing 350 people, 22 of them in Bowler’s Ashtabula division. Bowler has worked for Rex for 25 years and has been vice president since 2008.

“I’ve traveled all over the world,” he said. “It gives me an opportunity to get out of all this weather.”

Tim and Eileen have two children: Marie, 28, and T.J., 25. Both played basketball for Lakeside, though Marie started with Harbor before consolidation. Area fans will remember T.J. as a great 3-point shooter and Marie as a point guard.

Marie graduated from Mount Union and now works for Progressive Insurance in their big office off Route 271. T.J. sold cars for Greg Sweet Chevrolet in Conneaut for a while and is now a salesman at Mentor Honda, living in Mentor.

Eileen got her master’s degree and teaches fifth grade at Erie Elementary in Ashtabula.

“My wife is great,” Bowler said. “All these years, she’s let me play the game I love. She’s been helpful and loving and raised the kids. She makes my life so much easier. I was traveling a lot in the beginning and she was always there for everything. Life has turned out real well for us. We’re living a dream.”

Bowler’s mother, Carmel, is still alive. His father, John (or Jack) died when he was 50, when Tim was 21 or 22.

In addition to basketball, Tim plays a lot of golf.

“I probably play five or six times a week when I’m in town,” he said. “I don’t travel a lot in the summer. I joined the Madison Country Club and golf at Harbor Golf Club. I’m a 15 handicap, am just figuring it all out now.”

Silvieus blazed a trail
Warrior was one of first girls in the U.S. to receive an athletic scholarship

By Chris Larick
For the Star Beacon

Once upon a time, girls high school sports didn’t exist, at least not on a competitive basis.

Once upon a time, no one awarded female athletes college scholarships.

Then, in 1973, along came Title IX and everything changed.

Oh, not at once. It took a while for high schools and colleges to get their act together.

Though she denies it — sort of, anyway — one of our Ashtabula County girls, Edgewood’s Laura Silvieus, blazed a trail for others to follow.

LAURA SILVIEUS: "We didn't have volleyball at Edgewood when I was there. You could play that in a recreational league. There were no other girls sports in high school (other than basketball and softball) — no volleyball, golf, tennis or soccer."

In that same year, Silvieus, along with one other girl, was awarded a scholarship to the University of Chicago, a consequence of the enactment of Title IX, part of a longer education bill, which stated: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

Bob Ettinger, in a fine article on Silvieus and Title IX written in June, 2012, celebrated the 40th anniversary of Title IX. It should be required reading for all high school female athletes. They’ve come a long way, baby. And much of that progress is because of Title IX.

Silvieus, who will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame on April 13 at the Conneaut Human Resources Center, could never have imagined what would happen as she was growing up. Like so many other girls before her, as a youngster she played sports with her siblings and friends in the neighborhood, playing baseball on a field set up on a vacant lot. Unlike so many others who followed in her footsteps, though, she didn’t play organized sports until high school. They simply didn’t exist for girls.

“It wasn’t until high school that there was any kind of organized sports,” Silvieus said recently from her home in California.

Since Edgewood was a three-year high school at the time, that meant she didn’t play until she was a sophomore, and that year she played only basketball. She would add softball for her junior and senior years.

Under then-coach Barb Andrews, the Warrior girls played a limited number of games since few schools — Silvieus thinks Ashtabula, Conneaut and Harbor were others — offered girls basketball. No champion was crowned, no tournament held. Silvieus can’t even name her teammates. Time has erased that memory.

“That season was maybe six games,” she said. “There was a running clock with 8-minute quarters. The games were very short. You could score 10 to 25 points in a game. It was considered a women’s game so there wasn’t much contact. Back then, any contact was a foul. At least we played fullcourt, though, not with those old Iowa rules (which meant each player was restricted to either the offensive or defensive end of the court).

“We probably won as many games as anyone else. Our uniforms were like boys’ jerseys over white tees. We just played for fun.”

She does remember playing softball with Laura Hecht, Sarah Sweeney and Vivian Fuller under coach Jackie Hillyer, and with her sister, Ginny, who was two years younger than Laura.

“We didn’t have volleyball at Edgewood when I was there,” Silvieus said. “You could play that in a recreational league. There were no other girls sports in high school (other than basketball and softball) — no volleyball, golf, tennis or soccer.”

Hillyer, who died last August, praised Silvieus highly.

“She was extremely quick to learn,” Hillyer said. “She had the ability to learn something and transfer it to a physical skill. She could see it, understand it and do it.

“She was so predominant among her peers. She just had all that natural talent. She had the kind of body and brain that made her a good athlete.”

Silvieus was a very good athlete. She served as captain of the Warrior softball and basketball teams and was MVP of the Ashtabula Recreation Volleyball League. But that’s a pretty slim portfolio for a scholarship offer.

She was also president of the student council, president of the senior class, vice-president of the science club and a member of National Honor Society, Who’s Who in American High School Students and Girls State, all good qualifiers for an academic scholarship.

“I was valedictorian, I had good grades, I was very athletic,” Silvieus said. “There were a couple of schools that were interested in me. I probably would’ve gotten financial aid. I would have gone to college whether I got a scholarship or not.”

Still, considering Silvieus’ limited participation, it might be surprising to some that she was singled out as one of the first two female high school athletes to be awarded a college scholarship to play sports. But the time was ripe.

The University of Chicago wasn’t really looking at Silvieus (no films, of course). And she wasn’t looking at Chicago. But the two found each other.

One of her teachers showed her an article in Parade magazine mentioning that Chicago was seeking one high school female athlete for a scholarship.

“I just called and asked for an application,” Silvieus said. “I don’t want to brag, but I think I had a solid application.”

When the college reviewed the applications, it found two worthy candidates — Silvieus and Noel Bairey of Modesto, Calif. Those two were chosen from nearly 1,000 applicants to receive the first Women’s Athletic Association-Gertrude Dudley Scholarships.

Silvieus takes little credit for paving the way for untold numbers of female athletes.

“I didn’t knock down any barriers,” she told Ettinger in 2012. “I just happened to be there when doors opened. Hopefully, I did my parents (Roy and Doris Silvieus of North Kingsville) proud.”

It’s a good bet she did. Between 1974 and 1977 Silvieus was elected team captain for 10 of her 12 volleyball, basketball and softball teams at Chicago. She was named MVP in volleyball in 1975 and 1976 and in basketball in 1977. She still holds many records there.

“Laura was clearly a team leader,” said Hillyer, her softball coach at Edgewood and an Equal Rights activist. “She just emerged as a leader. She was never out to gain any of what she got.”

Nowadays, of course, it would be impossible to play three college sports. There is too much specialization. Coaches expect you to be immersed in one sport the entire year.

“That was way before you had to pick one sport,” she said. “I could play three and they didn’t overlap much. The University of Chicago put me into the Hall of Fame when it was just getting started with the inaugural class.

“I just really enjoyed sports. They made going to college a lot easier. They were fun. They’re just a good thing for kids.”

Silvieus credits her college coaches — Patricia Kirby and Mary Jean Mulvaney, in particular — with her success. “(Mulvaney) is probably the one who pushed me through,” she said.

College competition at the time wasn’t like it is now. University of Chicago teams, not a member of the NCAA at the time, would play big schools one week and small colleges another. By the time she was a senior, they took on schools like Northwestern.

“They creamed us,” Silvieus said.

The education she got at the University of Chicago, a highly ranked academic school, made the 8-hour trip (one way) from North Kingsville worth the travel and the homesickness she felt at first.

“I wouldn’t trade it for anything,” she said.

After graduation, Silvieus went on to get her MBA from Chicago. She had worked part-time for a law firm as an undergraduate. That brought her experience and good recommendations.

She worked for the phone company and RIA retailers for a while. Meanwhile, her sister, Lynne, and her husband had moved to California.

“They said, ‘Come on out here,’” Silvieus said. “I did and took a job with a law firm and never looked back. It’s the climate, the people. It’s much more forward-looking and tolerant.”

In 1986, Silvieus hooked up with the Donahue, Gallagher Law Firm in Oakland, Calif. as office manager.

She retired after 25 years with Donahue, Gallagher but continues to work on a limited basis.

“I’m semi-retired,” she said. “I work from home for the law firm. When I retired, they asked if they could keep me on retainer. I wanted to stay home and that’s what I’ve been doing (for about 10 years).”

She plays golf with her nephew about once a week and enjoys hiking, backpacking and snowshoeing.

“I don’t play organized sports anymore,” she said.

Silvieus has no children, but dotes on nieces and nephews. Her sister, Lynne, lives near Laura just outside Oakland and has a 9-year-old daughter, Emily, who is a competitive gymnast.

Her dad and mom, Roy and Doris, still live in Kingsville.

Jim Welty Jr. will join his father in ACBF HOF

By Chris Larick
For the Star Beacon

The pass that was tipped then intercepted to end the San Francisco 49ers’ hopes of reaching the Super Bowl also put an end to Jim Welty’s dreams of getting there for a second straight year.

Welty, now a pilot for the 49ers’ owners, the DeBartolo family, was hoping to see a happier ending for the 49ers than last year, when he suffered along with the team in their loss to the Baltimore Ravens. But the result of Colin Kaepernick’s pass ended all that.

Welty, who will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Hall of Fame on April 13 at the Conneaut Human Resources Center, took a circuitous route toward being a pilot. As a youngster, he was more interested in the basketball court than the sky.

His father, Jim Sr., had been an exceptional player at Ashtabula (see related story) and had erected a basketball hoop on the family’s garage. Jim and his brother, Glen Welty, made good use of that basket.

Welty read his father’s clippings, looked at his trophies and wanted to emulate him. So he started playing with the kids in North Kingsville at about 8 years old.

“We had a lot of kids who played ball,” he said. “I could practice my ballhandling (on the outdoor court). I played at Mount Carmel.”

The boys of North Kingsville played all sports, but Welty gravitated toward basketball.

“I liked the athletic end of it,” he said. “That’s what I aspired to do.”

One of the other players was Jay Corlew, later a teammate of Welty’s on the basketball court and a football star at Edgewood and Mount Union and the most successful football coach in Lakeside High School’s short history. Corlew, whose father, Gerald, was such a successful groundskeeper at Edgewood that the stadium was named after him, was a year younger than Welty.

On one cold day, Welty, Corlew, Jim Sjoestrom and Cline Hunt congregated to play some hoops.

“Somebody said, ‘It’s too cold to play basketball outside; let’s see if we can get in the school,’” Welty said. “We found a window we could open and got in and played basketball. We’d go to any lengths to play. Pretty soon, here came a policeman and Mr. (Gerald) Corlew. Mr. Corlew saw us standing there and threw a fit. But he didn’t do anything more than give us a speech. We didn’t do it to be mean, we just wanted to compete, to play basketball. Mr. Corlew was always a good friend of mine.”

Welty, along with some of his pals, played junior high basketball at Mount Carmel.

“I was just an average player then,” he said. “It wasn’t until I started at Braden (Junior High) that things changed. My dad was my inspiration. I’m a believer in genetics. He worked with me to get a jump shot going. I knew I wasn’t that good and was a little shy about everything. I didn’t play much. I’d sit at the end of the bench and try to hide so I didn’t get put in. It was less stressful that way.”

At that time Jeff Cicon, now a member of the ACBF Hall of Fame, was the best player in Welty’s class. He and Welty were the only ones from their class to play all four years at Edgewood.

The Warriors were coached by the late Dave Cline. They were a decent team, but not a great one.

“That was probably a combination of coaching, talent and chemistry,” Welty said. “When I was in the 10th grade, Al Goodwin was my JV coach. I felt very comfortable with him. I was waiting to grow up and mature.”

Welty started as a junior, but the Warriors didn’t click too well that year.

“It wasn’t Mr. Cline’s fault,” Welty said. “His personality was laid-back, soft-spoken. He expected you to give your best without pushing you for it. He wasn’t able to extract our talent.”

Edgewood went 4–15 that year.

“But I could feel we were getting better,” Welty said. “As a kid, I couldn’t define it, but I just knew. Jeff (Cicon) and I were coming back for our senior year. That year was like one of those ‘Boys of Summer’ stories, with components coming together. Jeff and I were coming back, but we needed more pieces of the puzzle.”

Those pieces started to fit when Jon Hall Sr. took over the reins at Edgewood and brought his son, Jon, with him. In addition, Todd Corlew, a good shooter, transferred from Ashtabula to Edgewood.

“We needed a coach, a point guard and some ballhandlers,” Welty said. “Jonny took over at point guard. We had me, at 6-1 to shoot and help with rebounding and Joel Cuffman, who was 6-2, to be a rebounder and defender. I got the feeling we had something going here.”

The Warriors won their first 14 games that year, en route to an 18–2 season. Included in the victims was Collinwood, a team no one expected the Warriors to beat. They were finally ousted in the district semifinals by two points by Lake Catholic, led by All-Ohio center Dave Youdath.

“The thing about that year is that, with so many years of not winning, no one saw it coming,” Welty said. “We just had to learn how to win, had to adapt to that mindset. Mr. Hall was the mastermind behind it.”

Welty wonders how far the Warriors could have gone that year had they not been nipped by Lake Catholic, which made it to state before being edged.

“We were very, very close,” he said.

After graduation, Welty and the younger Hall went to Lakeland to play basketball in 1980–81. He did all right, but didn’t start and left school for a while. When he went back for the 1982–83 season, he found an improved team. Hall had left by then, but Jay Corlew was on the team.

“We had a good team and traveling was fun,” Welty said. “Everything fit. I was coming into my own, really clicking. I started the year by scoring almost 25 points a game the first three weeks of the season. I saw my name on the walls of the (Lakeland) lobby as being in the top 10 (junior college scorers) in the country. How cool was that?”

But, during a pickup game at Corlew’s, one of his friends landed on Welty’s foot, buckling a toe. He missed a few games. When he returned, the magic was gone.

The next year, Welty transferred to Kent State. He was warned by coach Jim McDonald that, at a bit over 6-feet, he would have a hard time making the team, but he gave it a shot, anyway.

Then he injured his back badly enough that he had trouble just walking.

“It just tapered off from there,” he said. “I played in recreation leagues for a few years and just stopped playing about five years ago.”

Welty attended Kent for a year, but didn’t get his bachelor’s degree at that point to accompany the baccalaureate degree he had from Lakeland. Eventually, he did receive his degree in aviation from Edison State College in New Jersey.

After leaving Kent, Welty worked for Champion Box in Jefferson and Stone Container. But in the meantime, he had gone flying with his sister’s fiancé, a Chicago United Airlines pilot. He immediately got the bug to fly.

“I was in my mid-20s and would go out and take flying lessons with Kettunen Aeronautical, with a guy named Al Gardner,” he said. “I got my private pilot license.”

Welty went on to get his instructor’s certificate and did lessons for a while.

“I worked through the ranks and got some corporate jobs starting in the ’90s,” he said. “My first big job was with the Hanna family (prominent in Cleveland). Once, I flew for the Secretary of the Treasury. I’d fly back and forth from Cleveland to Kentucky and Georgia. (The Hannas) were into horse racing. I’d fly one person and her family to the race tracks.

“(My schedule) allowed me to stay in touch with everybody. I could play sports, had free time to go to graduate school and stay active.”

About 10 years ago, Welty landed a job with the DeBartolo family, owners of the San Francisco 49ers, and flies them to their games in their Lear jet. He was able to attend last year’s Super Bowl and most recently flew them to the NFC Championship Game in Seattle.

“After last year’s Super Bowl loss (to the Baltimore Ravens), I was probably more depressed than the players,” he said. “I wanted to be a part of that. I had credentials to be on the field. It was a thrill to be there for the pregame festivities. I met Jerry Rice and Steve Young.”

Now divorced, Welty has two daughters, Riley, 15, who plays volleyball at Edgewood, and Cameron, 7, who attends Royal View Elementary in Willowick. His brother, Glen, lives locally and his sisters, Pauline and Corinne, are flight attendants. His mother, Kathleen, is a big sports fan.

Like father, like son

Jim Welty — Sr. and Jr. — will enter ACBF HOF together

By Chris Larick
For the Star Beacon

The Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation will do something it has never done before at its banquet on April 13 at the Conneaut Human Resources Center.

It will induct a father-son combination into its Hall of Fame.

Jim Welty Sr. and Jim Welty Jr. will both enter the hall, Jim Sr. posthumously. In fact, Welty Sr. might already have been in had he not been so humble.

But Welty Sr.’s qualifications are unquestionable. The leading point-scorer on a powerful Ashtabula Panther team (1953–1956) coached by ACBF Hall of Famer Bill Ball as a junior and senior, the elder Welty (known hereafter in this story as just “Welty”) was the only unanimous selection for the Star Beacon’s All-Ashtabula County first team in 1956.

Among the 594 points he scored in three years for the Panthers were 241 points as a junior and 247 as a senior for a team that went 17-3 in 1954–55 and 20-4 (11-1 in the NEC) in his senior year, 1955–56. He scored 21 against Conneaut (using what one newspaper called “his highly-regarded one-hand shot”) while sick in a 62–50 victory that made Ashtabula 15–1 at the time.

After lauding the Panther defense that had overcome an early Trojan lead in that game, Star Beacon sports editor Jim Noyes wrote, “the second paramount factor in the Ashtabula win was a slim 5-foot-11 inch senior basketball player named Jim Welty. If there was any question in anyone’s mind as to the ability of the 1954–55 All-County hoopster, it was erased by Friday’s display. And to top it off, Welty was sick with a cold throughout the week and was listed as a doubtful starter.”

The 21 points Welty scored that night were only four off the school record at the time. That year the Panthers averaged 58.1 points per game while holding opponents to 44.2. At that time, Ashtabula’s games were played in the gymnasium at West Junior High School.

In fact, Welty scored those 21 in the first three quarters and could have easily set a new mark except for the fact that he started passing off to teammates.

“Welty scored the first two baskets in the second half, then was content to feed teammates and uphold his end of the fabulous Panther defense,” one article said at the time.

The unselfishness of that Panther team can be seen by the fact that Welty’s 247 points were followed by Ken Kovacs’ 246, Tim Johnson’s 161, Bob Gilchrist’s 147, Dave Corts’ 117, Phil Carlo’s 105 and Cosie Patrick’s 104.

After Ashtabula won the sectional tournament that year, Welty was selected the most outstanding tournament player. When that happened, he said he wanted to put his teammates’ names on the trophy because “they helped me win it.”

During his senior year (1955–56), Welty’s teams twice broke the school scoring record, the second time by beating Edgewood (at the time called the “Bulldogs”), 80–54. Ball’s Panther team of that year also came within one game of tying the consecutive-win record of 15 before being beaten by Geneva.

When the season was over, Welty was the only unanimous choice for the All-Ashtabula County team and was joined by teammate Kovacs, Jefferson’s Chuck Naso and Geneva’s Dave Peterson on the first team. Welty, Hinkle and Naso had also been first-teamers as juniors.

“Fans will long remember the one-handed sets and drive-in layups,” the article that accompanied the announcement of the all-county team said.

Kovacs, who started as a senior forward when Welty was a junior, remembers his former teammate well.

“The first thing that comes to my mind is that he was very unselfish,” Kovacs said. “He was an excellent basketball player, not just as a shooter, though he was a darn good shooter. But his passing was impeccable and he had good hands. When need be, he could score points.

“I recall that Jim would dribble down the floor. He didn’t run down the floor; he glided down the floor. He had eyes in the back of his head when it came to passing. His assists were always there, the scoring was always there, the rebounding was always there. He was the consummate basketball player.

“He was always very level-headed. I don’t think I ever saw him excited about anything. You could see the intensity in his eyes and when he needed to, he would ratchet it up a bit.”

Welty’s son sees many parallels to his and his father’s career.

“In my dad’s senior year, (the Ashtabula Panthers) were 20–4,” Jim Welty Jr. said. “My senior year, we were 20–3. That’s unbelievable.

“When my dad played in 1954–55, they lost three games by six points. We lost our first game by two, to Riverside by two and our district game by two.”

According to Welty Jr., his dad had several offers to play at small colleges, including Muskingum, but turned them down.

“He played baseball and earned three varsity letters (in high school),” Welty Jr. said. “He was a good hitter with a good glove.”

A year or two after graduating from Ashtabula High School, Welty joined the Army and was sent to Fort Ord in Monterey, Calif. He spent most of his service time (1957–59) in Bamberg, Germany.

He married Kathleen (Paulik) in 1959. The couple gave birth to twin daughters Colleen and Corinne in 1960, Jim Jr. in 1961 and Glen in 1965.

Jim Sr. went to work at Kroger’s in the Saybrook Mall (now Giant Eagle) and Moses General Store on State Road, working in the grocery business for two or three years.

He then went to work for the New York Central Railroad (which later became Conrail) as a brakeman and worked there nearly 40 years before retiring in 1999.

“He worked different shifts,” Jim Jr. said. “A lot of time, he was working when we were in sports. Most of his life was dedicated to working and supporting his family. We did take vacations. He’d visit old army buddies in Kansas or Minnesota.

“He was a big handyman around the house, also. He always had a project going. That was an incentive for me to go play ball.”

Kathleen Welty worked for a while at Carlisle’s as a saleswoman then settled down to be a housewife for the growing family.

“They had a long, happy marriage,” Jim Jr. said.

Of the children of Jim Sr. and Kathleen, Colleen went to the University of Akron and then became a flight attendant for United Airlines. Corinne worked for TWA for many years, gave it up to raise a family, then got back into it a couple of years ago with a United subsidiary. She also has her teaching certificate. Jim Jr. starred for Edgewood and played for Lakeland before becoming interested in flying. He now is the pilot for the DeBartolo family, owners of the San Francisco 49ers. Glen, who also played at Edgewood, now works for Progressive Insurance. Jim Sr. and Kathleen have six grandchildren.

Harriman was in a hurry

Mustang used his athleticism to help him and his GV buddies to much success

By Chris Larick
For the Star Beacon

Ray Harriman landed the head football coaching job he had dreamed of for so long at Newbury in 2006.

But the opportunity wasn’t everything he had hoped for.

“I continued to teach at Berkshire the whole time (2006-2009),” Harriman, who will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation’s Hall of Fame on April 13 at the Conneaut Human Resources Center.

“I was head coach at Newbury for three years and had a different staff every year,” he said. “I had no coaches in the building (Newbury High School). There was no Health and Physical Ed (Harriman’s field of teaching) job open. There was no consistency. But they had some hard-nosed kids and I enjoyed it.”

The Harriman family had moved to Orwell from Cleveland when Harriman was in elementary school. It didn’t take Ray long to adapt to his new environment.

“I got into sports at the earliest possible age, playing flag football,” he said.

The Grand Valley community was, and remains, a close one. With just 98 or 99 students in Harriman’s graduating class, it was inevitable that everyone was well-acquainted with each other.

“It was a tight-knit group, really tight,” Harriman said. “I knew the same guys from junior high school all the way through.”

That pertained particularly to athletics. Harriman played sports with boys like Derrick Nichols, Ron Granger and Brian Olah all through school. A class behind, Jimmy Henson and John Kampf joined them on Mustang teams. Kevin Martin was another mainstay. Tom Benje moved in at the beginning of Harriman’s high school years and joined the group.

There was a lot of talent in those classes and they made the most of it, in football, basketball and track.

In 1984-85, his junior year, Grand Valley’s basketball team went 16-5 before falling to Liberty in the sectionals. The following year, the Mustangs were 19-5 and made it to the district finals before falling to a tough Windham team.

Harriman played point guard on those teams, notching 191 points, 85 rebounds and 50 assists as a junior and 330 points, 80 rebounds and 77 assists as a senior. He was joined in the starting lineup by Henson at shooting guard or wing, Nichols at forward, Benje at center and Granger at another guard.

“We used a three-guard system,” Harriman said. “Brian Olah was our sixth man off the bench. Jim (Henson, already in the ACBF Hall of Fame) was the leading scorer; I led in assists. He was a better shooter than I was.

“All of us had our roles and we had a nice little run. It’s a shame it came to an end before regionals, but Windham was really good... had a couple of good players. But it was a lot of fun.”

At the core of the Mustangs’ success was their coach, Tom Henson, another member of the ACBF Hall of Fame.

“We responded to his toughness and aggressiveness,” Harriman said. “We were so aggressive. Defensively, he did a good job with us, had us playing as hard as we could. He got everything he could out of us.

“I definitely appreciated it. He had a tight-knit group of assistants. We had the same coaches every year. (Schools) don’t have that longevity to the system now. We were fortunate as athletes that we had the same staff in football, basketball and track every year.”

Harriman might have been a better track athlete than basketball player. Running the 400-meters, he placed sixth in the state as a senior.

“I still, as of today, have the school record in the 400 at 49.8,” he said. “A lot of our school records are still up there from the classes of 1984-1987, some of Mick Shoaf’s and our 3200-meter relay team’s. But basketball was my favorite sport.”

Harriman was also a running back and linebacker on some very good Mustang football teams. Grand Valley made it to the playoffs the year after he graduated, before being beaten by Hawken, which could boast having future NFL star O.J. McDuffie on its athletic teams.

Harriman remembers McDuffie from the previous year.

“We went into the Hawken (football) game 3-0 or 4-0,” he said. “That was his first game as a wide receiver. The most impressive thing about him is his ability on the basketball court. You couldn’t make an outlet pass because of his reactions. He was a different level of an athlete.”

After graduation from Grand Valley, Harriman gave football a shot at Mercyhurst as a defensive back. But an injury ended his career there after a year.

He joined the United States Army and spent 9½ years there, advancing to an E-6 (master sergeant) level.

“I was in Desert Storm,” he said. “I spent six months over there, from October 1990 to April, 1991.”

As a member of the First Cavalry, Harriman was in a howitzer section, handling ammunition.

“When you go into something as well-prepared as we were, you don’t think twice about (the danger),” he said. “The military is a good system. I learned a lot working with everyone. Everyone has to work as a team. Everyone works together because of the system.”

Because he had some college experience, the rest of Harriman’s career was spent in a safe environment. Most of the time, he served as a recruiter or a trainer.

“The last two years, I was a drill sergeant,” he said. “I got out as an E-6. If I’d stayed in, I would have been an E-7 within a year, but one of my goals was to teach and coach. I never lost track of that. And I think I was burned out a bit. I was halfway to retirement, but I have to be all in to something; I can’t be 85 percent.”

When he got out of the service in 1998, Harriman was 30 years old. He went back to college under the GI Bill and worked his way through a bachelor’s degree in health and physical education and a master of arts in teaching at Cameron University in Oklahoma.

He had married while in the service, but that lasted only a few years. There was one daughter, Caitlin, from the union.

“My daughter was up in Ohio with my ex-wife, so I made the decision to come back (to Ohio),” he said. “I was offered a job at Berkshire High School as a health and physical education teacher and junior high school football and basketball coach. I taught and coached there through the 2004-2005 football season under Mike Stiles.

“They fired Mike after that year. We were building something. It was a tough time for me personally.”

Harriman took the defensive coordinator job at Notre Dame-Cathedral Latin the next year, 2005, while continuing to teach at Berkshire. But that lasted just a year when the head coach there was fired.

“I was starting to take that personally now,” Harriman said.

But he applied for the head coaching job at Newbury and got it, serving in that capacity from 2006 to 2009, again while teaching at Berkshire. He found the difficulties in that job that have already been cited.

He continued teaching at Berkshire until 2012. That made it 10 years of teaching, and for Harriman, that was enough.

“I like change,” he said. “It’s kind of refreshing. I’m 46 now. I’ve spent the last two years doing social media, a business for educators.”

He moved to Nashville recently.

“I have a few friends here,” he said. “It was a matter of wanting change.”

He keeps himself busy trying to get established in the social media business. His website, OurhouseUSA provides educators a chance to air mutual concerns.

“We can connect people quickly all over the country,” he said. “It gives people a chance to get involved in their school districts.”

His daughter, Caitlin (Thompson), is a stay-at-home mother married to an Air Force member and is living in Fairfield, Calif. The couple has one daughter, Caroline.

His parents, Gary and Shirley, still live in Orwell. They have two other children: Tom, who graduated from Grand Valley in 1982; and Gary, a 1984 GV graduate.

“They were very supportive,” Harriman said. “I always knew my parents were there (at games).”

Harriman also credits his coaches: Ralph Turk, Joanne Bevacqua, Don Marsh, Gary Hines, Ron Chutas and Jim and Tom Henson.

“I appreciate them,” he said. “You always knew what to expect from them.”

French didn't need English

PV star's sweet shot was straight and true during a stellar career

By Chris Larick
For the Star Beacon

In the act of shooting a basketball, there’s hot and then there’s hot. Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame coach Beth Helfer of Pymatuning Valley remembers a game in which one of her players was hot.

“I remember one of her biggest moments came when we played a game at Champion,” Helfer said of Heidi French.

“Renea Ackerman, a legendary coach, was the coach at Champion at the time. Heidi was really on. She started shooting 12- or 15-foot jump shots and making them. When (the Golden Flashes) moved out to pick her up, she shot from farther out. The farther out they moved, the farther out she shot it. She was making 18-20-25-foot shots, drilling the shots one after another.

“After halftime, they went out to get her at halfcourt. She went straight up and hit nothing but net. Renea Ackerman walked up to me and said, ‘She’s unbelievable.’ I think she had 28 points (actually 32) that game. She was on fire, couldn’t miss.”

French, who will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame on April 13 at the Conneaut Human Resources Center, now lives in Chardon but grew up in Andover, where she played basketball for PV.

French, the daughter of Myron and Shirley French, grew up in a basketball family. Her brother Mike and sister Samantha preceded her on the Laker courts and she competed against them on outside courts.

“I was the baby of the family,” she said.

Graduating from PV in 1981, French played forward on a team that also included Sandy Stokes, Sue Boggs and Barb Hedden and was coached by Helfer.

“We had a pretty good team. We were co-champs of the GRC (Grand River Conference, which included Jefferson, Grand Valley, Ledgemont, Perry and Fairport in addition to PV) in 1981.”

Hedden played point guard on that team, with Boggs at shooting guard and French at forward.

“This was back in the early days of girls basketball,” Helfer said. “It was just getting started up in the county. Heidi was probably the purist shooter of any girl I ever had. She had all the skills you could want and was very unselfish. She could pull up and hit the jump shot, drive on you or dish it off if she saw someone else open.

“She was the type of offensive player you liked to have on your team. She was a phenomenal offensive player.

“That was a great crew, a well-balanced team. There was no ‘I’ on that basketball team.”

French played JV ball as a freshman, then started for the varsity for three years, scoring 843 points, averaging about 15 or 16 points per game.

“The most I scored was 32 points in that game against Champion,” she said. “I’ll never forget it.

“We had a pretty good team. We were co-champs of the GRC in 1981.”

Though she played forward, French remembers shooting from the outside quite a bit, in addition to rebounding.

“And I was a pretty good foul shooter,” she said.

French recalls the Lakers playing a controlled offense under Helfer, with the team scoring in the 50s.

“Beth was a good coach,” she said. “She was always someone you could go to if you needed to. She played everybody; she gave everybody a chance to play.”

French also played softball at Pymatuning Valley in 1978, as an outfielder.

In basketball she was the GRC’s Most Valuable Player in her senior year and played in the games now known as the Star Beacon Senior Classic.

Not long after she graduated from PV, French took a job at Heather Hill, a rehabilitation center and nursing home in Chardon, near the Geauga County Hospital. She has worked there for the past 32 years.

“I assist the therapists there in physical therapy and occupational therapy,” French said. “If you need a hip replacement, you come here.”

French’s golden retriever, Dakota, recently died at age 15, so she obtained a new golden puppy, which is now three months old.

“It keeps me young at heart,” she said. “But I forgot how much work they are.”

She enjoys photography and would like to travel more than she does.

French’s father passed away in 2008, but her mother is still living in Andover, though she goes to Florida once a year.

“My dogs are my kids,” she said. “My sister (Samantha) lives in Bristolville and has three boys. My brother still lives in Andover on Stanhope Road.

“Playing basketball is my most memorable experience. I remember playing against (Jefferson’s) Shellie Crandall (an ACBF Hall of Famer). That was really a big rivalry back then between Jefferson and PV, a big thing in the ’80s. She was a good ballplayer. I also remember (Geneva’s) Anita Tersigni (another ACBF HOFer). She was pretty good.”

Interviewed almost exactly two years to the day of the fatal Chardon school shooting on Feb. 27, 2012, French remembered the effect it had on people she knew.

“I wasn’t affected by the shooting, but people I worked with had kids there,” she said. “That was something, finding out what that coach (Frank Hall, now the head football coach at Lakeside) did. He will always be a hero in my eyes, a great man.”

One Golen in mind

St. John's Golen did anything necessary to help his Heralds get a victory

By Chris Larick
For the Star Beacon

When John Bowler wanted a model for the attributes he was determined to instill in his Edgewood Warrior basketball players, he naturally turned to Dave Golen.

Golen, one of the stars on Bowler’s 1988–1991 St. John Herald teams, always demonstrated the tenacity and hustle that Bowler admired.

“He called me when he became coach at Edgewood and said, ‘I’d like to have you come back and help,’” Golen, who will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation on April 13 at the Conneaut Human Resources Center, said. “‘I want you to show them how to play hard.’

“I had a ball doing it. I’ve done it for the past three years. Coach lets me talk to the team a little. It’s giving back a little.”

Golen, who grew up in Lenox Township, had begun playing basketball as a kid at the old Dorset Elementary School.

“They had open gym and my dad took me,” Golen said. “I picked up the game and really loved playing it.”

He went to Jefferson through the eighth grade, then started at St. John.

“Larry Daniels was coaching there at the time and John Bowler was his assistant,” Golen said. “I liked Coach Daniels and Coach Bowler. I got to know Jimmy (Chiacchiero) and Steve (Hanek). My uncle Jim was a good ballplayer and a lot of people said I could jump and rebound like my Uncle Jim.”

The Heralds team Daniels and Bowler assembled became arguably the best in school history, tying Ashtabula for the Northeastern Conference championship in the 1988–89 season, Golen’s sophomore year.

Chiacchiero, who is already a member of the ACBF Hall of Fame, was the point guard on that team and a remarkable shooter, especially from 3-point range.

“He was a very good player, one of the best guards I’ve ever played with, even in college,” Golen said. “He was a super guy, too. He and Steve made me feel welcome at St. John. We still play in leagues and he’s still tough. He’s a heck of a player, a shooter, but he does everything well, shoot and rebound.”

Hanek, who is also a member of the Hall of Fame, was 6-foot-6, but could play outside as well as inside.

“He was one of the first guys I saw who could handle the ball at 6-6,” Golen said. “He was very mobile and active. He wasn’t just a postup player; he could shoot jumpers and three-pointers and drive. He was very athletic; a very good player. To this day, we have a good friendship.”

One of the biggest reasons Hanek could play outside so much was that Golen had him covered under the basket. Though only 6-1, Golen could rebound with anyone.

“I was more of a power forward and sometimes center,” he said. “Whatever they needed. Coach Bowler was good for us, got us where we needed to be. He would do whatever he had to do to win.

“I could jump pretty well and get position. Coach Bowler said at Edgewood, ‘Watch how Dave goes for that rebound. He goes after it harder. If you can play against him, you can play hard.’ I always tried to play the right way and to play hard.”

In addition to the three stars of that St. John team, Augie Pugliese and Greg Andrego were starters. Pugliese was a good point guard, excellent at distributing the ball. He could hit from the outside, but spent most of his time passing the ball. Andrego was a good shooter.

“Greg is still a great guard and plays with us to this day,” Golen said. “I’m lucky to have played with such good players, who are even better people.”

After all these years, that 1988–89 season still stands as the school’s best in basketball.

“I think we’re the only team in school history to win the NEC,” Golen said. “That’s one thing all of us are proud of and still talk about. St. John has moved into a new building but the trophy is still in that case.”

Golen, the son of Fred and Susan Golen, credits Bowler with much of that success.

“Coach Bowler is a great coach with a lot of energy,” Golen said. “One of the best things he did was make us compete against each other. We had hard practices, but he let us play, let us freelance a little bit.

“I also learned a lot of basketball from Larry Daniels when I was younger.”

One of Golen’s sterling performances came in the Star Beacon Senior Classic when he poured in 43 points to lead the Blue team to victory — still a Classic record.

In addition to basketball, Golen played four years of baseball for the Heralds (as a catcher), earning Star Beacon All-Ashtabula County honors as a senior to go with his first-team honors in basketball.

After averaging between 18–20 points and about 15 rebounds per game as a senior, Golen had to make a decision whether to play college basketball at Lake Erie College or Walsh College.

“I liked it at Lake Erie,” he said. “They were building a program, there were some good guys there, it was close to home and I liked the coach (Sam Corabi). Coach John D’Angelo (the great Harvey coach) came over to help us.”

Golen started every game for the Storm, except for one, when he was late for a practice.

“I played small forward and big guard, sometimes power forward,” he said. “I had a good career there and am now in the Lake Erie College Hall of Fame. As far as I know, I still have the career record for rebounds.”

Lake Erie was a high-scoring team at the time, benefiting from the recruitment of stars like Golen, Bob Chandler, Jason Waybrecht from Euclid, point guard Brett Vana from Padua and Kenny Murray from St. Joseph’s.

“We ran and pressed and did what we could do,” Golen said. “I loved rebounding. We took our lumps as freshmen but we got better.”

The Storm made it to the NAIA Division II tournament Golen’s senior year as an independent.

“They took eight teams and we were the eighth team,” Golen said. “But we went to St. Louis and beat the No. 1 seed, Trinity, in overtime, before we lost to Chicago.”

Golen remembers tying the Trinity game in regulation, setting up an overtime that Murray dominated, hitting five 3s.

“Someone missed a shot and the ball came right to me,” he said. “I laid it up and the game went to overtime.”

Golen graduated from Lake Erie in 1995 with a degree in biology. He went to work for Premix in North Kingsville, where he had worked in the summers while in college. He then moved to North Carolina and worked for a chemical company there for about five years before returning to this area to take a job with Avery-Dennison in Painesville. He spent a couple of years there before taking his current job at the Perry Nuclear Power Plant, where he works in maintenance.

“It’s long hours, but it’s a good job and steady work and it pays well,” he said.

Now divorced, Golen has two children, Anthony, 15, and Isabella, 12. Anthony runs cross country for Lakeside and races four-wheelers, while Isabella is into cheerleading and the dance team.

Golen continues to play basketball, often with his former teammates and Hall of Famers like Andy Juhola and Tim Bowler. Hanek doesn’t play any more because of old injuries.

“I’m going to play until I can’t play anymore,” he said. “I’m fortunate Coach Bowler asked me to come out and play. I like to give back.

“When I got the call (about his induction into the Hall of Fame), my first thought was, ‘That’s amazing, that with all those great players, they would pick me.’ I was humbled. I just played hard and banged around.

“I really enjoyed the game. It’s humbling that I played good enough to get to the Hall of Fame. I’m very fortunate to have played for Daniels and Bowler and the guys we had. I’m fortunate to play with guys I stay in touch with. If I needed something, those guys would be there and I could call them. And I still remember my dad driving me to all those games.”

Talent run amok

You name it, Nadine Cox excelled at it during her days at Geneva

By Chris Larick
For the Star Beacon

Geneva’s Nadine Cox was such an outstanding track athlete that it would be easy to forget that she also starred in other sports.

In basketball — the sport at which she will be honored by her induction into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame on April 13 at the Conneaut Human Resources Center — she was good enough that Harvard offered her a scholarship.

Yes, that Harvard.

There is little dispute that Cox made the right decision to attend Ohio State on a track scholarship. By the time she finished her eligibility at the very place where she had enjoyed one of the greatest performances in state track meet history (more on that later), Cox had won three Big Ten championships in the discus and shot put, one of them in the shot as a freshman. She also reached as high as third at the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women’s national championships and 10th in the USA Track and Field national championships.

NADINE COX of Geneva (42) shows off her tremendous athleticism during a game against Conneaut on the Eagles’ former home floor at the old high school. The three-sport star will enter the ACBF Hall of Fame on April 13.

Cox showed her athleticism at an early age, winning the softball throw at the sixth grade’s Field Day. She began track in junior high school. Since, at 5-foot-10 1/2, she was fairly tall and coaches felt height was an advantage for certain events, she was thrust into throwing the shot and discus.

Height was also an advantage in volleyball and basketball, of course, and Cox excelled at both of them, too.

“I loved basketball and volleyball,” she said. “I probably could have played college basketball if I had taken the kind of interest in it that Anita (Tersigni) did.”

The years Cox played — 1978-79 and 1979-80, her junior and senior years — were seasons of strength for the Eagles in girls basketball, which had been contested as an NEC sport for only a few years, at the time. Geneva went 18-3 her junior year, winning an NEC and sectional championship. Her senior year the Eagles were 21-3, repeating as NEC champs and winning another sectional title.

Cox was a vital part in the Geneva machine.

“I played in junior high and worked my way up the ranks,” Cox said. “We had a lot of good players at Geneva as upperclassmen (like Kim Korver) and for a while, I watched and learned from these wonderful, competitive players as a junior-varsity player.

“By my junior year, I started in a forward position, playing opposite of Anita Tersigni. I was a year-round athlete at Geneva, participating in volleyball and, of course, track. But I think that basketball rounded me out as an athlete, improved my overall athleticism, which paid off for me, especially later in track and field. And while it may sound cliche, I learned a lot about teamwork from basketball, people offering their best up toward a common goal, pushing each other to excel together. It’s the best stuff athletics has to offer.”

Though the Eagles’ record was slightly better in her senior year, Cox feels the team Geneva put on the court her junior year was a better one.

“Anita and I were juniors that year and we had some really strong seniors on the team, like Liz Jessup and Becci Rocco,” she said. “Liz was our point guard, our playmaker, smart, quick and elusive. Becci, a great all-around athlete, added even more dimension to our team’s weaponry.”

Other contributors included Becky Ritchie, Sonia DeJesus, Edie Doherty and Terry Hudson.

“That created a very deep bench,” Cox said.

“We had great leadership in our seniors and a wonderful balance of attacking point and wing positions, with two forwards who were aggressive and relentless on the boards on both sides. If the ball ended up anywhere near that board and the shot did not go in, it was a darn good bet we’d rebound it and score off of it.

“I think that this allowed our players to work the outside shot more and open up the key. We didn’t have 3-pointers back then, but if we had, we may have been even tougher to beat. And when you put a penetrating quick player like Liz into that mix, we’d score. When you have an Anita Tersigni on your team, who had exceptional inside play and who also happens to have a great outside shot, we’d score.

“We’d score if we made the shot and we’d score if we didn’t. And you couldn’t press us defensively, we were too quick and had really good ballhandling skills. We were tough on defense, but offensively, we were at our best. What I remember most about my teammates is their dedication to excellence. We really pushed each other to get better, to do our absolute best. Anita and I would have countless one-on-one scrimmage sessions after practice, on weekends, anytime we could find an open gym. We really challenged ourselves to be the best we could be.”

The Eagles were coached those years by Sally (Toukonen) Dulak, whom Cox credits for much of Geneva’s success.

“Somehow, Coach Toukonen figured out how to use our talents to our best advantage,” Cox said. “Things always felt balanced and complementary on the floor. She always had a specific game plan that did not expose our weaknesses but looked for ways to use our strengths to target and exploit our opponents’ weaknesses. She was not an ‘in your face’ type of coach. She didn’t need to be. She got us. She knew that we demanded excellence from ourselves and nurtured that, facilitated our own leadership, encouraged our own destiny.

“She believed in excelling at the fundamentals as well, drilling into us ballhandling, passing, shooting, boxing out and rebounding skills. I remember hours on end of shooting free throw after free throw and running laps in between to mimic the game situation. She would also look for ways to really challenge us — often scrimmaging boys teams, picking up the speed of our game, taking us to the next level. As a female coach, she was unapologetic in her pride in us as talented female athletes. We felt that support and I think it really contributed to our success.”

Though many years have passed since those days at Geneva, Cox remembers two games in particular, both her senior year.

“We were undefeated and were playing against Ashtabula; we won that night by only two points,” Cox said. “They were a fast team and ran us to death. We were having an off night and we really had to dig down deep and gut that one out. It spurred us on later to make sure we never put ourselves in that position again and galvanized us for the rest of the season.

“I also remember our loss against Mentor in the district semifinals. It was our last game together, the last game I’d play for Geneva with these wonderful teammates. I remember sitting down in the middle of the floor at the final buzzer, feeling exhausted and sad and disappointed and satisfied all at the same time. It was one of those lifetime moments of reflection, realizing what I had been a part of and how truly special it had all been.”

That game ended Cox’s competitive basketball career. But it wouldn’t have, had she accepted that Harvard offer. And she did consider it.

“Yes, I did,” she said. “Who wouldn’t? I left Geneva with the confidence that I would have done well had I played basketball in college, but my track career was calling. I don’t regret my decision, but it’s fun to daydream about it sometimes.”

Cox still had her senior year of track to compete in, and she made the most of it. With the help of Eagles track coach Linda Henry, Cox had honed her skills to the point where, as a junior, she won the discus championship at the state meet in Columbus with a throw of 140 feet after finishing second her sophomore year.

“In my senior year, my goal became getting to state in four events,” she told the late Karl Pearson in 2007. “I knew I could make it in the discus and shot put. I was thinking about trying to get out in the 200, but I knew it was going to be tough getting out of the Cleveland area in that event, so they put me in a relay. That didn’t quite work out.”

So Henry and Cox gave that up, and took a shot at the long jump.

“We sort of found the long jump out of the blue,” Henry said.

That was two weeks before the state meet. Astonishingly, she took third place in the event in Columbus, and added a fifth in the shot put.

But it was her best event, the discus, at which she really shone that weekend. On her last throw — each of her six throws had surpassed the preceding one — she hurled the discus 155 feet, two inches. It was a meet record and it stood for several years. That throw still stands as an Ashtabula County record, nearly 34 years later.

While she was at Ohio State, establishing herself as one of the best female discus throwers in the country, Cox was preparing for a career in medicine.

She originally wanted to be a veterinarian, like her uncle. But she took her degree in medical technology in 1985 and worked in the medical laboratory industry for nine years.

Eventually, she decided she wanted a more personal connection in medicine and went back to Ohio State for her medical degree, graduating in 1998.

After serving her internship and medical residency at Mount Carmel Medical Center, she established her own private practice in Gahanna, near Columbus, in 2001.

“I am currently working on joining a larger practice sometime this year,” Cox, now 51 years old, said. “While I see all types of patients now, I still have a special place in my heart for the athlete. I have been the team physician at a local high school, The Columbus Academy, for the past 12 years. I see myself and my teammates in these kids while working the sidelines — the drive, the dedication, the push to achieve something that you can look back on years later and still be proud.”

She is no longer much of an active athlete, but continues to contribute in sports.

“At 51 years old, I feel my athletics catching up to me,” she said. “I am not playing any sports now, but have dabbled in racquetball and league volleyball through the years. I did coach track and field athletes at Worthington High School right after leaving college.

“There is something so rewarding in seeing a young female athlete first believe in you as a coach, follow your plan, and see the confidence build in them, culminating in their success. I coached a great group of kids for four years, before leaving to enter medical school.

“I have recently moved out into Delaware County, and started walking my dog in my neighborhood. I passed one of my neighbor’s homes last spring and there was a young girl out throwing the discus in her yard. What are the chances, right? We have since teamed up and I am working with her and her sister now. So I am back to coaching and really enjoying it.”

Cox’s mother, Lynn, and her father, also Lynn, continue to live in Geneva. Her sister, Meredith, resides in West Virginia and works in business administration, while her brother, Matthew, lives in Texas and is employed in restaurant management.

Garcia earned his stripes

Phil Garcia has seen changes in basketball's rules and changes in its style of play.

By Chris Larick
For the Star Beacon

Phil Garcia has seen changes in basketball’s rules and changes in its style of play.

Most importantly for our purposes, he’s seen the changes of guard in Ashtabula County basketball.

When it comes time for the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation to make selections for its players of the year and its Hall of Fame, Garcia is the one whose opinion is most valued and most credible. In each case, he’s seen most of them play (or coach) and he’s done it with an impartial eye.

PHIL GARCIA will be part of the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation’s Hall of Fame Class of 2014 when he is inducted Sunday.

Garcia, who will be (finally, in my opinion) inducted into the ACBF’s Hall of Fame on Sunday at the Conneaut Human Resources Center, has stood just a few feet from so many of the players and coaches who are candidates for Player of the Year and Coach of the Year, as well as those players and coaches who have entered or will enter the Hall of Fame. And he’s done that for more than 40 years. He’s probably seen more outstanding county players than any other living person.

“I think I’ve seen a good portion of them,” Garcia said. “Coach and player-wise, I’ve seen a lot of them.”

He’s seen changes in the game, too. When he first started, back in 1973, jump balls were held to start each quarter. All field goals counted as two points. In fact, the 3-point shot has probably changed the game more than anything else, in his opinion.

“It’s opened up the game,” he said. “You see more of a fast-break offense than before.”

Changes in officiating are more subtle, he said. While he concedes that more contact is allowed than in the past, there’s not that much difference in the way he calls a game now and when he did it in the 1970s, he feels.

“You adjust to the game,” he said. “When the ball goes in the basket, it makes it easy. A foul is a foul. A violation is a violation.”

Any slight adjustments are brought about by directives from national or state organizations in a bulletin that each official receives — and is expected to study — each year. How much hand-checking is allowed is one aspect of officiating that could fluctuate year to year, for example.

“Zone defenses make it easier to call,” Garcia said.

He does admit that the game is faster now.

“It’s more uptempo,” he said.

Garcia, who will be inducted into the Ohio High School Athletic Association Officials Hall of Fame one week from today — the day after he enters the ACBF HOF — tried his hand at basketball in school, learning the game from his father, long-time Conneaut coach Andy Garcia, an original member of the ACBF Hall of Fame. But Phil admittedly didn’t have a lot of talent for the game and was cut as a senior by Paul Freeman, also an ACBF Hall of Famer. At that point, Garcia kept stats for the Spartans, traveling with the team. He also ran cross country.

He had begun officiating as an umpire in Little League and, in the case of basketball, as a referee in junior high school games. By age 19, he obtained his license to officiate basketball, at that time needing only to pass a written test with 75 percent or above. Now, a 25-hour class is required, a class Garcia himself organized and has conducted for 19 years.

After an apprenticeship in which he worked junior high, freshman and JV games, he was officiating some games at the high-school level by his second year. That his dad was the official assigner for the Northeastern Conference didn’t hurt his progression.

His first NEC game was a contest between Harvey and Geneva, coached by two legendary coaches, John D’Angelo of Harvey and Bill Koval of Geneva, another ACBF Hall of Fame coach.

“I was nervous, but it went all right,” Garcia said.

At least partially because of his father’s connections, Garcia quickly got jobs in Lake, Geauga, Cuyahoga and Trumbull counties to supplement his Ashtabula County assignments. By his fifth year, he was working tournament games. His first such contest pitted Clark Kellogg’s St. Joseph’s team against Dave Youdath’s Lake Catholic Cougars.

From there, it was another step up to state tournament games. Garcia has worked 10 girls state tournament games and one boys tourney contest. That’s in addition to the three state baseball tourneys he’s umpired, one softball state tournament and one football state tournament game.

Garcia’s officiating schedule has kept him busy year-round. He has held his baseball and softball officiating certificate since 1974 and has worked football games for 22 years.

In addition to actually officiating so many games, he’s kept busy as an assigner of officials, a job his father held before him, assigning officials for seven schools in the Premier Athletic Conference, St. John, Conneaut, Edgewood and Grand River Academy, as well as junior high assignments for others, including Jefferson. He also assigns officials for other sports, including wrestling, football, volleyball, baseball, softball and track. In short, Garcia has a hand in almost every high school sport, one way or another.

Early in his career he found his life employment as a caterer. Phil’s Catering is now headquartered at a building at the intersection of Carpenter and Lake Roads in Ashtabula. The hours mesh well with his officiating schedule.

“It gives me the flexibility I need to do all those (other) things,” he said.

“It just seemed natural to me. I liked the idea of working for myself and it gave me more time to handle all my officiating assignments.”

Garcia has catered events as large as Premix’s 30th anniversary celebration (early in his career), with 4,000 people in attendance. But area sports figures are probably more familiar with his catering at the Ashtabula County Touchdown Club and Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation banquets.

In fact, Garcia is a charter director of the ACBF. In addition to catering that event, he also serves the organization well in organizing tournaments; helping choose high school players, coaches and officials for honors; helping with the selection of Hall of Famers; and introducing each year’s selection of Official of the Year at the banquet. I’ve probably forgotten something, but Phil is a difficult person to keep up with.

“I think it’s a wonderful organization,” he says of the ACBF. “It promotes basketball in the county, honors the (current) players and coaches and honors those of the past. Those are amazing stories to read what happened 30 or 40 years ago. For those people to get recognized is important.

“It brings out the history of Ashtabula County basketball. The county has had some amazing players and coaches. Mike (Joslin) and Nick (Iarocci), with the input of the directors have done a nice job with it. I hope it keeps going.”

Garcia’s officiating schedule has been disrupted for the past couple of years because of medical issues. In 2012, he discovered he had pancreatitis and was hospitalized for 10 days. A year later, he had to have his gall bladder removed. During that surgery, it was discovered he had a hernia. The combined operation meant seven more days in the hospital.

He credits Dr. Goel of the Geneva Medical Center for getting through those surgeries.

“Dr. Goel is an excellent doctor,” he said. “He did a tremendous job, kind of saved my life. I was in critical condition with the pancreatitis.

“I’ve fully recovered after the second (operation). I want to get back on the football field. Right now I’m doing a little softball and baseball, along with assigning officials.

“My family helped a lot through my illness — my brother Rich and his wife and my brother Andy, along with my cousin, John Ruth.”

Garcia is 58 now, but has no plans to give up his officiating soon.

“I realize I’ve lost a step or two, but I like to think I’ve made up for it by having better mechanics and being in better shape,” he said. “I owe it, especially to the players and the coaches, to give it my best effort, night in, night out, regardless of the game or the caliber of the teams.

“It’s been enjoyable and I plan to continue to officiate if my health is good. I enjoy working with my fellow officials and athletes. Every game is big to the kids.”

Garcia credits officials who preceded him — people like his dad, Bud Ruland, Bill Sopchak, Bill Brainard and Henry Garvey — with inspiring him and teaching him.

He also appreciates the work of those who help him in his catering business — Theron Osborne, Terry Brown and Shirley Orlando, as well as all the teenagers that have worked for him and with him all these years.

“They’ve kept my business going,” he said. “They’ve been a big help there.

“The staff at Geneva Medical Center has been tremendous. I couldn’t get better care. All the officials I’ve worked with, the coaches and players, have been great. I’ve had a very rewarding career, and I appreciate it.”