Carlos Aponte

By CHRIS LARICK

Determined to play college basketball but hindered by his family’s financial situation, Carlos Aponte wasn’t about to leave his fate in the hands of other people.

So Aponte took action. He went to the guidance office at Ashtabula High School and laboriously copied down information about college coaches from three-by-five filing cards.

Using the information gleaned there, Aponte made personal contact with the coaches.

“That got me a few phone calls,” he said. “It was a long process. There weren’t a lot of offers. But by the end of the year, two colleges showed an interest. Bob Huggins, who coached Walsh at the time, said he’d visit, but wanted to wait until the basketball season was over. Meanwhile, the coach at Dyke College, Michael Friedman, in Cleveland called and came down for one of my tournament games. I had 36 points and 15 or so rebounds, the best game I ever had. He called me that week and offered me a scholarship.”

Waiting for Walsh’s offer, Aponte, the son of Emilia and Domingo Aponte, didn’t accept immediately. But when all that school could come up with was a half-scholarship, his course was decided. Aponte would be a Dyke Demon.

Aponte had enjoyed a fine career for Ashtabula’s Panthers, then under the tutelage of ACBF Hall of Fame player and coach Bob Walters.

“He was very astute in the fundamentals of the game,” Aponte said of Walters. “For me personally, learning the fundamentals of how to shoot, dribble, set picks and play defense — all those things — were the basis of my going forward in the sport.”

At the time (Aponte graduated in 1985), there was no shortage of basketball talent at Ashtabula High School, and Aponte had to wait his turn. By his junior year, though, he was starting alongside Terence Hanna, Louis Taylor and Terry Thompson. That group took the Panthers to the brink of the Northeastern Conference championship that year. Only a loss to Madison in the last game of the season prevented a title.

“We had mixed success my senior year,” Aponte said. “Edgewood and Geneva beat us out. Those two teams lost only to each other and Ashtabula. We beat a lot of teams, but couldn’t sustain it. We had lost a little size from the last year. We played as hard as we could and made a run at it.”

Aponte and his siblings had been encouraged to take part in athletics from a very young age.

“My mother was all about ball sports,” he said. “She got me and my sister and brother involved. (Youth) basketball was not as well organized as it is today. I remember losing at basketball when I first started in elementary school. In sixth grade I’d run and run, shooting and passing the basketball. When I got to junior high I wanted to try out for the basketball team. I used to go down to the West Street courts. The kids were all bigger. The littler kids (like me) couldn’t play ’til the sun went down.

“In the seventh and eighth grades I tried to play against the high school kids. Playing with older kids helps you learn the game a little better.”

Aponte also played midget league and football with his mother’s encouragement.

“She was the greatest spectator in Ashtabula County,” Aponte laughs. “Me and my brother (Jason) and sister (Maria) all did ball sports."

When he was a freshman, Aponte broke his foot playing football and didn’t play that game anymore. He did continue playing basketball and baseball all through high school. In baseball he played first base and was voted all-county his senior year, batting over .400. He would later try out for the Cincinnati Reds when they recruited in Ashtabula County and made the first cut. But he didn’t get a contract.

“My baseball dreams ended right there,” he said.

In basketball he deferred to Hanna as a junior, averaging about 12 points and 10 rebounds and making second-team all-county and all-conference. But he became the main scorer after Hanna graduated and averaged about 20 points and 15 rebounds as a senior, earning first-team honors.

That raised his stock so that he received the scholarship offers from Walsh and Dyke.

Ten games into his freshman year, he became a starter with the Demons.

“That year we made the national finals of the NLCAA (National Little College Athletic Association),” Aponte said. “In the championship game we lost to Bristol College in Tennessee. I started at center at 6-foot-5 or 6-6, playing against guys 7-feet or 6-10. I started the last three seasons as well. I ended up as the second all-time leading rebounder with 1,046 rebounds and fourth-leading scorer with 1,471 points."

Dyke later became Myers University, then, after a financial scandal, Chancellor University.

“They discontinued the sports program, so I’m probably to this day the second-leading rebounder and fourth-leading scorer,” Aponte said. “I’m only the second player in school history to get 1,000 points and 1,000 rebounds.”

His sophomore and senior years (1987 and 1989) he was named to the NLCAA All-American team with 14 other players and went on a tour to Caribbean islands like Aruba and Curacao, playing teams there.

Aponte majored in marketing at Dyke, a business school. His first job was around Cleveland with a company called Captain Tony’s, a chain of restaurants. In 1992 he moved to Chicago and worked at the Lodge Management Group, a night club chain. Then, in 1996, he returned to Ashtabula County to take a job with Premix, which is now named A. Schulman, where he now serves as Global Key Account Manager.

“This is the best job I ever had,” he said.

He played basketball in summer leagues for a while after graduation, including a stint on a team that included former Cleveland Cavalier Ron Harper. He also played recreation league softball.

As a child, his dad had taken him to the races at Raceway 7. At some point, his interest in racing rekindled.

“I was talking with my wife (Kimberly) 10 or 12 years ago and she said I should try it,” Aponte said. “I bought a car and we worked on it. I got out on the track and (raced) for 10 years. I won the track championship at Raceway 7 in 2009. It was a neat experience, very enjoyable.”

Carlos and Kimberly (née Luce, who also played basketball at Ashtabula), a teacher, have two children: Ayden, 19, a freshman at Kent State University; and Carly, a senior at Lakeside, who plays basketball for the girls team there.

“She has had a good career there,” Aponte said of Carly. “She has 885 career points.” Carly had also amassed 814 rebounds and 284 blocked shots at the time of this writing (with two games remaining in her career). “She could be (Lakeside’s) leading rebounder.”

Carlos’s brother, Jayson, once scored 43 points in a game, an Ashtabula High School record. Carlos himself holds the rebounding record with 26 in a game.

“I got 26 on 6-9 Fred Galle, who played for Edgewood,” Carlos said. “He works for A. Schulman too. Of course I brag it up.

“My daughter had 21 rebounds the other night. I thought, ‘You’d better stop. I don’t want you to get 26.’”

Carlos dunking over St. John’s Steve Petro, at victory lane at Raceway 7 in Conneaut, with Lakeside AD Michael Cochran, Carly, and wife, Kimberly.

Denny Sabo

By CHRIS LARICK

Conneaut High School basketball players and fans were accustomed to coaches who were well-enough acquainted with the talents of their players to run an offense that fit those talents.

Coach Jerry Sweed, who coached Denny Sabo and the rest of the Spartan squad of 1974-1975, wanted to run and gun. That style didn’t fit the players.

“It didn’t work out so well,” Sabo said, in reference to Conneaut’s 9-10 record that season.

The Spartans had been a very competent squad when Sabo was a sophomore in 1972-73, making it to the district finals before falling to the top-ranked team in the state, Barberton.

“Four of their guys went on to college,” Sabo said. “We got pretty far down, but came back. I think we lost by about 20. We scored 70 though. They had a super team and took it to us pretty good.”

Sabo, who will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame on Apr. 2 at the Conneaut Human Resources Center, played with a few different teams in his three years as a starter.

As a sophomore, he played as point guard with Tim Humphrey, Ron Grubke inside, Tim Wheeler and John Stolson. When Humphrey, Grubke graduated, Bill Dawson joined the group. On Sabo’s senior team were Danny Sharp, Jim Lebzelter, Mark Sanford and John Cournet, along with Sabo.

“Harbor, with Jim Bradley, and Ashtabula were pretty good,” Sabo said. “But I think Geneva won the NEC that year. We ended up beating Harbor and Ashtabula.

“My junior year the Ashtabula game at Ball Gym was probably our best game. We beat them in overtime. My senior year our best game was probably against Riverside. That was probably one of my better all-around games. We’d run and gun my senior year, my sophomore year too. Wheeler was getting a lot of rebounds."

In addition to basketball, Sabo played the outfield on the baseball team. He quit football as a freshman, wanting to concentrate on basketball and baseball.

“We had a pretty good baseball team all three years,” he said. “Ron Young was our coach. I batted about .400 all three seasons.”

After Sabo’s senior season, he shared Player of the Year honors for the Regional Press All-Ashtabula County team with Bradley.

“Sabo became the top guard in the county from the very beginning of the season as he finished with a 15.2 scoring average and also led the Northeastern Conference in assists and steals,” Mike Starkey wrote in the Star Beacon. “The senior guard stands 5-10.”

Others on that team included Wayne Games and Dan Craine of Geneva, Chris Hamman and Carl Renwick of Grand Valley, Pete Candela of St. John, Bill Osborne of Ashtabula, Pete Richards of Edgewood, Jim Searcy of Jefferson and Randy Linsted of Pymatuning Valley. Jim Lebzelter and Danny Sharp of Conneaut earned honorable-mention honors.

In the state UPI voting, Sabo was the only cager chosen to the Class AAA All-State squad, earning honorable mention status.

After graduation, Sabo started college at Youngstown State, playing basketball and baseball.

“I played basketball my freshman year, then found a job in the steel mill,” he said. “It wasn’t working out in college, so I decided it was time to get a job."

Sabo worked at Union Carbide for 30 years and was able to retire 10 years ago. He and his second wife, Beth, moved to California, then to Arizona, near both the Nevada and California borders, where they have spent the past year-and-a-half. Beth (née Shaffer) is a 1986 Ashtabula graduate.

The couple lives in a 55-and-older recreational vehicle resort, where they work part time.

“I work outside, do a little groundskeeping and landscaping,” Sabo said. “My wife works in the office. I tore out my shoulder and can’t do a whole lot (of sports). We play a lot of putt-putt (golf). If I shoot baskets, I have to shoot left-handed.”

Sabo has a daughter, Joline, who lives in Ashtabula with his three grandchildren, Jalin, Leila and Brandon.

“Brandon is pretty much into football,” Sabo said. “He plays a little basketball.”

Rob Ferl

By CHRIS LARICK

During the turbulent times of the early 1970s, Rob Ferl and other athletes of his age often found a safe haven in sports. In Ferl’s case, that often meant basketball.

“At that time it was toward the end of the Vietnam War,” Ferl said. “There was Civil Rights unrest and the Kent State shootings.

“There was kind of an unrest in the universe. We dealt with that a lot within the context of basketball. I remember during the time of the moon landings, our coaches — Harry Fails, Paul Freeman and Tom Ritari — were taking us everywhere to play basketball. We would just go. Some of us kids in Conneaut were tucked away from the unrest by the fun context of sports and basketball. During many of the big events in the ‘60s and ‘70s we were tied up in basketball.”

Those thoughts, of course, are in retrospect. Ferl and his teammates were too busy playing the game to spend a lot of time philosophizing about current events at the time.

Ferl, who will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame on Apr. 2, spent a lot of time with one of those teammates.

“Tim Richards (who is already a member of the ACBF Hall of Fame) and I go way back to when we were 11 and 12 years old,” Ferl said. “We played on opposing baseball teams. We spent a lot of time playing against and then eventually alongside each other.”

The best basketball team Ferl and Richards played on was the 1970 team (they graduated in 1972) as sophomores.

“We went to Canton and pretty far in the tournament,” Ferl said. “Scott Humphrey, Al Razem, Jeff Puffer and John Colson were on that team. We had some talented guys and were scoring a lot of points. We got far that year because we would press the ball. I remember as a sophomore (the Spartans) scoring 100 points in a game, back before the three-point line. At times we’d score a lot.”

At that time Conneaut was coached by Harry Fails, with Paul Freeman and Tom Ritari as assistants. All three are in the ACBF Hall of Fame.

“Those guys were great coaches,” Ferl said. “They would teach kids. When we were coming up in the eighth and ninth grades Tom Ritari was important in that. Harry Fails and Paul Freeman were superstars in county (coaching) history."

Ferl’s years in high school were banner times for the county and the Northeastern Conference. Among the opponents Ferl recalls are Eugene Miller of Ashtabula and Ernie Pasqualone of Geneva.

“At the time the NEC was a huge league,” he said. “In 1969, 1970, 1971 and 1972 it was a strong league. We were in the Star Beacon all the time."

Ferl, 6-foot-5 at the time, played strong forward, averaging about 19 or 20 points a game his final two years, earning all-county and All-NEC honors.

“I finished somewhere in the top 25 all-time in the NEC,” he said.

In addition to basketball, Ferl played safety and end in football and outfield in baseball.

“To play three sports back in the day was not uncommon,” he said. “Sports were so important to us growing up.

“We all learned a lot about life and success through sports, especially basketball. We played all seasons. We’d all go up to the basketball courts in the summer. Our metaphors for life came out of basketball and sports. You don’t see that at the time, but increasingly as you look back. What you learn about leadership and success comes from your coaches and people on successful teams that made it happen.”

At the end of his senior year Ferl won the Bob Smith Memorial Trophy as the best senior athlete in all sports. He also graduated near the top of his class.

He went on to play basketball at Hiram until injuries “took that out of the equation” as he puts it. He continued to play baseball at Hiram while studying biology. After graduating from Hiram he went on to take his Ph.D. at Indiana University at the time Bobby Knight was coach and Isiah Thomas a player.

“I played a lot of AAU basketball there,” he said. “I played an awful lot of basketball in Indiana.”

Ferl went on to become a molecular biologist and eventually moved from Indiana to Florida. He is now a Distinguished Professor at the University of Florida.

“I still kept on playing basketball,” he said.

He has been at the University of Florida for 36 years now, spending most of his time as a research scientist.

“I have done a lot of work on the space program at Kennedy Space Center,” he said. “I spent six summers in the Arctic. Science takes me a lot of interesting places."

He met his wife Mary-Blythe, who is from Lakewood, at Hiram. She is a historian, working at the Florida Museum of Natural History, part of UF.

“In my later years, basketball has become harder and harder for me,” Ferl said. “Mary-Blythe got me into running marathons. We come up regularly to Cleveland to do the Cleveland Marathon and Half Marathon.”

Rob and Mary-Blythe have a son, Evan, 31, who lives in San Francisco with his wife, Courtney.

Ferl’s father, Joe, is a member of the Ashtabula County Touchdown Club Hall of Fame. His mother, Joanne, still lives in Conneaut.

“It’s a special thing,” Ferl said of his own upcoming induction. “I’m incredibly honored, especially when you look at the people in there, all those great athletes, to be placed in that group.”

Steve Carlson

By CHRIS LARICK

Deafening silence?

That’s one of the great memories Steve Carlson has of his basketball days at Edgewood High School.

Carlson, who graduated from Edgewood in 1986, remembers the great crowds that saw basketball games in the Warrior gymnasium.

“I remember several times the crowd was so loud that you could hear a pin drop, it was so deafening,” he said. “That was a highlight for me. I just loved that place. I have a lot of good memories of the people at Edgewood.”

Carlson, who will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame on Apr. 2, played alongside teammates Ryan Chandler, Fred Galle, Gary Goode, Kurt Kalinowski, J.T. Kanicki, Todd Hjerpe, Gerald McMahon and his cousin, Aaron Emery, at times during his high school career.

“I think we did well,” he said. “I remember our senior year we played Riverside at home for a chance to share the (NEC) championship. I feel we had pretty good teams during my sophomore and junior years. Fred was our big guy in the middle. Ryan was a very good ballhandler and playmaker. We focused on defense.”

At the time the Warriors’ head coach was Al Goodwin.

“He was tremendous,” Carlson said. “I loved playing for the man. He was a no-nonsense kind of guy. We’d come in, get our work done, work hard and get out of the gym. He made you understand your role. He loved his players and we all believed in the system, defense first. It was a good experience.”

A forward, Carlson was usually assigned to play in the low post, though occasionally he moved out to the wing.

“On defense I played all over in the 3-2 zone, sometimes the top, sometimes the wing, and in the trenches too,” he said. “I was pretty versatile.”

The year he graduated, 1986, was the final year before the three-point shot became legal in Ohio high schools, so there was no real incentive to shoot from outside.

“We ran a pretty simple kind of offense,” Carlson recalls. “It was the kind of offense that was predicated on getting a high-percentage shot. We’d pound it in low most of the time.”

Carlson, who was 6-5, 155 at the time (“all skin and bone,” as he puts it), remembers once being assigned to defend Geneva’s Richie DeJesus, a quick little guard.

“He was so fast and quick that he was tough to guard,” Carlson said. “We had trouble getting the ball over half-court. I had to back him down to do it, then get the ball to someone else to start our offense. It was a good thing there was no shot clock.”

That season Carlson and DeJesus were Co-Players of the Year in the NEC, as Carlson remembers.

In addition to basketball, Carlson was the top player on the Warriors’ golf team.

“My freshman year we weren’t that good,” he recalls. “We just hadn’t played enough. By my senior year we just missed going to state as a team. I was the number one golfer and the number two was often shared between my cousin, Aaron Emory, and Ernie Niemi. Tim Essig, who coached JV basketball for Al (Goodwin), was the golf coach. When Aaron and Ernie became seniors, Edgewood did go to state.”

After graduating from Edgewood, Carlson moved on to Grove City College (Pa.) to play basketball under John Barr, who was rumored to have played basketball on the 1960 Ohio State team with Bobby Knight.

“I don't think Coach Barr actually played for Ohio State but he certainly had a similar coaching mentality as Bobby Knight,” Carlson said.

Carlson started every game his freshman year, averaging 8.6 points a game for the Wolverines and shooting 56 percent from three-point range.

He injured an ankle his sophomore year and sat out several games, never regaining his starting position that season. He also sat out his junior year, but returned for his senior season.

That was a successful season for him, as he averaged 11.7 points per game and earned second-team all-conference honors. The Wolverines, meanwhile, won the conference championship outright.

“I don’t recall honestly being upset by not starting (my sophomore year following the ankle injury) because I knew I was a valuable part of the team and team success is what mattered,” he said.

“For a long time I had the team record for three-pointers. I had one game where I was six-for-six from three-point land. That was the highest percentage of three-point shots made in a game. As of the last couple of years that record was still standing. Somebody has probably surpassed it by now. I worked hard on my outside shot. I got a lot of good looks from the top of the key playing the trailing forward in the transition game.”

At Grove City Carlson majored in Communications and Psychology. After obtaining his bachelor’s degree, he moved on to Slippery Rock State University in Pennsylvania to get a master’s degree in Student Personnel Administration.

His first job after getting his master’s was at the University of New Orleans, where he spent three years. He moved back north then, obtaining a job at Ball State.

He has worked in higher education for 25 years, 19 of them as a career counselor. For the past six years he has worked as the registrar at Grace College in northern Indiana, a liberal arts school of 2,300 students.

He met his wife, Amy, at Grove City.

“I found a good one,” he said.

The couple has been married 25 years now. They have two children: a son, Grant, 21, who will be graduating from college this May; and a daughter, Jodie, 20, a sophomore at Geneva College, near Pittsburgh.

“I had a great time playing for Edgewood, with some terrific friends and teammates, and for Al (Goodwin),” Carlson said. “We played a pretty solid 3-2 defense and tried to keep games in the 40s (in points) if we could. The crowds were great. Those times were a lot of fun.”

Nara (DeJesus) Skipper

By CHRIS LARICK

No one knew quite what to expect when Geneva girls basketball coach Bob Herpy (better known as Eagles football coach) died suddenly in 1995, thrusting young Nancy Barbo into the spotlight as Geneva’s new girls basketball coach.

“They had different styles,” said Nara (DeJesus) Skipper, a 1999 Geneva graduate who will, along with her sister Rhea, be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame on Apr. 2. “(Barbo) was still a younger coach learning her style. She evolved into one of the best coaches once she became head varsity coach.”

The Eagles weren’t the dominant team they were to become at that time, but the fact that she had Skipper and several other good players, like Stephanie Clarkson, Kristen Clunk, Lindsay Step and Marlena Fox, on the court didn’t hurt Barbo's development.

“She did more conditioning,” Skipper said in comparing Barbo to Herpy. “I remember doing a lot more drills, especially conditioning types of drills. At times she wanted us to slow down, but we had a pretty quick team, quick from one end of the court to the other. We didn’t play many zones, used a lot of man-to-man with a lot of pressing. That’s where the conditioning came in.”

Skipper had learned the game of basketball early, playing with Rhea, her father Louis and his friends, like Ernie Pasqualone and Al Landphair, and neighborhood kids like Brian, Kevin and Eric Buckman on the family’s driveway.

“We’d also go on Sundays to the old Geneva High School,” Skipper said. “It became kind of a ritual to go on Sundays. The men would play on one court and the kids on another. There were some younger kids. We were the oldest girls.

“There weren’t a lot of girls. We played a lot of three-on-three tournaments in the summer."

The DeJesus girls also played bitty ball with the Geneva Recreation League.

Geneva is a small community and word gets around. Certainly the fact that there were two good girl players coming up reached Herpy’s ears.

“He was the first one to see the talent in me,” Skipper said of Herpy. “He had a very big impact on my career in general. He pulled me off the freshman team. He was so nurturing and such a good coach he made me feel comfortable, explained (my promotion) to the seniors so there wasn’t any animosity among my teammates.”

Fairly tall at about 5-10, Skipper played forward.

“We did well,” she said. “Not as well as they did after I left. (Barbo) was perfecting her coaching style. The first years were good but not compared with what she’s done with the team since. It takes time to build a program. You want to have the program to a point where the girls want to play because the team is winning. It took a while to build that foundation. The seniors set the tone for when the eighth graders come in.”

Both Madison and Jefferson had good girls basketball teams at the time. Those two teams became Geneva’s main rivals.

“Playing basketball with my little sister was some of the most fun I've had in my basketball career,” Nara said. “We had a connection on the court. Most times, I could tell what she was going to do before she did it. I knew the look she'd get right before she stole the ball or made an amazing assist. She brought a lot of energy to our team.”

Skipper, who scored 1,006 points in high school, was a top-flight rebounder. “I remember trying to get a double-double each game,” she said.

By her sophomore year at Geneva, Skipper had decided she wanted to play college basketball.

“Then (college) coaches started showing up to watch me play,” she said. “It was cool having college coaches watch our games.”

Did that make her more nervous?

“Once you get in the game, you don’t pay much attention to that,” she said.

She and her parents, Louis and Jeannette, discussed what college offer she should take.

“I had a conversation with my parents whether to play Division III or Division II,” she said. “I visited Wooster and fell in love with the college. I knew I could come in and make an impact as a freshman. I wanted to play from the start. It’s a smaller school, Division III.”

Skipper was told she needed to put on weight and get stronger, so she started weightlifting. Though short for a college forward, she was a good leaper. Getting stronger made her an even better rebounder.

The Fighting Scots weren’t very good when Skipper arrived on campus, but improved rapidly. By her senior year, she had high expectations.

Then it happened.

“Before the first game I went for the ball and tore my ACL,” Skipper said. “That was a big blow. I thought at first I tweaked it, but I found out I was finished for the season. It hurt. We were supposed to have a great year and I had to sit on the sideline and watch.”

By that time Skipper had reached one of her main goals, though — scoring 1,000 points.

“I was on track to set (school) records,” she said. “But I could at least be proud of that.”

During college, Skipper was NCAC Newcomer of the Year as a freshman, was a three-time All-NCAC selection and totaled 1,061 points and 794 rebounds, averaging a double-double each year.

At Wooster, Skipper majored in English with a minor in childhood education. After graduation, she went on to John Carroll to get her master’s and started teaching first grade in Charlotte, N.C. for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School System.

“I really liked young kids,” she said. “The English part was because I wanted to write children’s books.”

Meanwhile, her sister Rhea introduced Nara to her husband Jeff, who was working in Charlotte but coaching volleyball on the side with Rhea’s college coach.

“We went on a blind date, got married in 2008 and are very happily married,” she said.

When the Skippers started having children, Nara quit teaching to raise the family. Since then, she has started working with her father and brother in a custom packaging company called CompanyBox.

The Skippers have three children: Ayla, 7; Lincoln, 4; and Calvin, 2.

Brian Turner

By CHRIS LARICK

Baseball players like Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera and Andy Pettitte became household-name multi-millionaires. New York Yankee farm club teammates like Brian Turner rode old buses across the countryside, made perhaps $1,500 a month and ate soup for lunch.

The path to a professional baseball career wasn’t always obvious for Turner, a three-sport standout at Grand Valley. Turner, a 1989 graduate, will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame at the Conneaut Human Resources Center on Sunday.

He was the Mustangs’ quarterback in football, a shooting guard in basketball, and a hard-hitting outfielder in baseball. In football, Turner didn’t get to play much as a freshman, a season when Grand Valley made the playoffs for the first time before being beaten by a Hawken team led by future NFL wide receiver O.J. McDuffie.

During Turner’s years with the Mustangs, he was coached by Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Famer Jim Henson and played with standouts like his brother, Dale, Jimmy Henson, Jeff Takacs, Brian Snowberger and Tom Boiarski, in addition to classmates Chad Fernandez and Kevin White.

“My class had a real good year, going 8-2 and losing only to Canton Central Catholic and Steubenville Central Catholic,” Turner said. “I got hurt my senior year and played only four games. I still feel that a little today in my right shoulder.”

In basketball, Turner, the son of Perry and Virginia Turner, was coached by Tom Henson, Jim’s brother, and a future Ashtabula County Touchdown Club and ACBF Hall of Famer.

Teammates included Steve Oman, Bobby Winield, Dominic DeLucca, Carl McElroy and David Christ. When Turner was a senior, the Mustangs made it to the district finals, before falling to Warren JFK at Warren Western Reserve.

“We jumped out to a 12-2 lead, but they chipped away,” Turner said. “I thought we were the better team.”

As a senior, Turner averaged about 20 points and nine rebounds per game. His best sport, however, was baseball. He was named Ashtabula County Player of the Year as a junior and senior, batting around .450 to .480.

Turner may have been able to play basketball in college at the Division III or possibly Division II level. But his height (6-foot-2) pretty much ruled out playing shooting guard at the Division I level. He did, however, receive a scholarship offer from Ohio State, making that discussion moot. And, when the New York Yankees drafted him in the baseball draft, Turner jumped at the chance.

“I regret (not going to college) somewhat, for the education,” he said. “But I got to play with all those great teammates and other great players who were bitter rivals. It was an awesome experience.”

Turner was on Yankee farm teams with Jeter, Rivera and Pettitte. He even roomed with Pettitte for a year. But minor league baseball was no dream job. He was always on the move, starting with rookie ball in Sarasota, Florida, in 1990.

From there it was on to Greensboro, North Carolina; Oneonta, New York; Fort Lauderdale, Florida; San Bernardino, California; Albany, New York; Tampa, Florida and Norwich, Connecticut.

“The money was terrible,” Turner said. “I lived with four guys, trying to ball bills. But the dream (of making the Major Leagues) is what it’s all about.”

The “perks” of playing in the minor leagues could be nightmarish, however.

“I got drafted at $850 a month,” Turner said. “Later, it was $1,000-$1,500 a month. They paid for dinner, but it wasn’t much. At lunch you ate soup and crackers in Florida, where it was hot. Later we got a per diem (per day) for food, of $12 to $15.”

Then there were the long, boring bus rides during which players amused themselves playing cards. At times some of them found themselves losing their per diem money while playing.

“We never flew,” Turner said. “I think our longest trip was from Portland, Maine, to Akron. (Professional baseball) was not as glamorous as it seems.”

Turner met his wife, Christy, while playing at Greensboro, North Carolina, in his fourth year. After seven years in the Yankees’ farm system, the last at Norwich, the Yankees cut him.

He signed with the Mets and played for a while with the Binghamton, New York team. After being released by the Mets, Turner gave it a final shot with the Minnesota Twins, but he was cut.

“I had had enough,” he said. “It was getting pretty tough on our finances. I was kind of lost, with no education. I started in construction and did a couple of other things. After a while, I started working for the postal service (in Champion, Ohio, near Warren) and have done that for 16 years.”

The Turners have two children at Champion High School — Michael, a senior, and Megan, a junior. Both have earned scholarships at Kent State — Michael for baseball and Megan for softball.

“My whole life I’ve coached them in baseball and softball, from the age of 5 up,” Turner said. “I still love to coach. I tried to be the head coach (at Champion), but they didn’t want fathers involved in it.”

Jim "Congo" Adams

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 12½ 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.

Shelly Burns

By CHRIS LARICK

Not much was expected of the Walsh Cavaliers when they made it to the Women’s NAIA National Championship Tournament in 1997 (Shelly Burns’s junior year) under Coach Karl Smesko.

The Cavaliers hadn’t even won their conference tournament. They scraped into the field as the final at-large selection. And they didn't have a starting player who stood taller than 5-foot-9.

“Our starting team was all guards,” said Shelly Burns, the shooting guard on that squad. “Since we were the lowest-ranked team, we had to play everybody.”

The Cavaliers did play everybody. And they beat everybody, to become national champions.

“That was the most exciting thing ever,” Burns said.

Burns, the former Jefferson standout and 1995 graduate, will be one of 13 to be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame on Apr. 2.

She first started playing basketball in the fifth grade in physical education class, stealing the ball every time another schoolmate would try to bring it up.

“The teacher, Jeannette Bartlett, would say, ‘Don't go after the ball 'til they are inside of the three-point line, so they have a chance to dribble it up the floor.”

She spoke to Burns' parents about putting her into camps because she picked up the sport quickly.

“Immediately, I decided I wanted to take the game up," Burns said.

She played on one of Rod Holmes’ early teams, though not his first. “He definitely built (your skills) in areas you were not quite comfortable in,” Burns said of Holmes. “He made you a better player. He was always willing to open the gym for us.”

Burns was the best player on the Falcon squads of her time, but she got help from players like Jody Springer, Candy Williams, Ryan Rebel, and in her senior year, Kiki McNair.

“I played point guard,” Burns said. “I liked to drive and pull up for an outside shot or drive the middle and dish it. I always liked to shoot three-pointers.”

Like most athletes at Jefferson, Burns took part in more than one sport. “I was always very athletic,” she said. “I played volleyball when I was a freshman and sophomore, then ran cross country and track — the high jump, long jump and a lot of relays — wherever I could get a lot of points. But I ran cross country and track to make me better in basketball.”

A three-year letter winner at Jefferson, Burns totaled 342 steals, 331 assists and 921 points (360 field goals made). Through 67 games she averaged 13.6 points per contest. An outstanding foul shooter, she converted 78 percent of her attempts over her career and 86 percent her top season. She once connected on 20 straight free throws.

In both her junior and senior seasons (1993-1994 and 1994-1995) Burns was named Star Beacon All-Ashtabula County Player of the Year. She was also Northeastern Conference Player of the Year as a senior. In state voting, she was Honorable Mention her junior year and Special Mention her senior season.

“It came easily to me, but I put a lot of work into it, too,” she said of the game.

After graduation she was heavily recruited by Mount Union and Walsh. “I visited Walsh and as soon as I walked onto the court with the girls, I felt an instant connection,” she said. “Walsh was an NAIA school, too, so they could give you a scholarship for half the tuition. Division III schools (like Mount Union) don’t pay. It was not too far from home, either.”

Burns began at Walsh as a point guard, but was switched to shooting guard as a sophomore. “The shooting guard got hurt,” she said. “I had a really good ability to read screens and pull up to shoot threes, so I did that the rest of my career.”

Burns, the oldest of Don and Debi’s three children, enjoyed quite a career at Walsh. During her freshman year, running the point, she averaged 4.8 points a game in 30 games, including 17 off the bench in a playoff loss to Shawnee State. Demonstrating again her ability from the foul line, she connected on 16 straight free throws to end the season.

Her sophomore season she led the Cavs in scoring with 380 points, a 13.6 average, scoring 20 points or more in six games and leading the team in scoring 10 times, earning Second Team All-Mid-American Conference honors.

In 1997, she was again a second-teamer on the all-conference team. That year she averaged 12.1 points a game and led the Cavs with 76 three-pointers. She scored in double figures 20 times. In one three-game stretch she scored 78 points (26.0 per contest). She was named tournament MVP in the Express Sports/Papa Bears Tournament and scored 27 in a win over NAIA Division I power Central State.

Named a tri-captain before her senior season, she was red-shirted after three games following season-ending knee surgery.

Burns is a member of Walsh’s Wall of Fame. In her three-plus seasons, she scored 1,016 points and added 213 steals and 183 assists.

“I blew out my ACL my senior year after three games but came back the next year. I got compartment syndrome. They wanted to do surgery, but I didn’t want it,” she said.

Still, the seven games she played that season allowed her to reach the 1,000-point mark.

At Walsh, Burns earned a degree in biology with the intention of becoming a chiropractor. As soon as she graduated, she began the four years of graduate school required to become a chiropractor, studying at New York Chiropractic College and later at Cleveland Chiropractic College in Los Angeles.

She now owns a chiropractic clinic in Hendersonville, N.C. In the meantime, she has obtained a franchise in her own CrossFit gym, CrossFit HLV in Hendersonville.

“There are no machines,” she said. “It’s functional fitness, with things like medicine balls and barbells.”

Burns spends time with her parents, siblings, nephews and three dogs.

Recently Burns has become involved in Elite Spartan races, a strenuous form of endurance racing with obstacles and penalties. She also competes in CrossFit competitions and runs endurance trail races.

Burns says of Spartan races, “It’s a 3–14-mile course with a lot of obstacles. It’s like a triathlon except you stop (after running a while) and do something ridiculous like carry heavy buckets over things or swing from a rope. It takes three to five hours and you’re just dying afterward. I don’t do contact sports now that I’m older. And basketball is a contact sport.”

Alan Miller

By CHRIS LARICK

Back in the late fall of 1979, Pymatuning boys basketball coach Denny Smith had an eye on the prizes — a Grand River Conference championship and a long run in the tournament.

Six-foot-eight Laker center Alan Miller dreamed of a Division I college scholarship.

All of those hopes came crashing down during a preseason press-breaking practice.

“I just came to the middle like I’m supposed to do and they lobbed the ball to me,” Miller told then-sports editor Darrell Lowe after the season had ended on May 1, 1980. “I went up in the air and came down. I landed on the side of (my foot) … heard some ripping and tearing. I went down and within 20 seconds it was huge.”

Miller, who had averaged double figures in scoring and rebounding and was a first-team All-Grand River Conference and All-Ashtabula County selection as a junior, had surgery the following day but missed his entire senior season. Anticipated Division I offers never came. He took his basketball talents to Hiram College, where he fashioned a nice career.

Miller, who will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation’s Hall of Fame on Apr. 2, had only taken up playing basketball in the seventh grade.

“I had no interest in it, but my buddies convinced me to go out,” said Miller, the son of Peggy Ernst and Bob Miller. “In the seventh grade I was horrible, only played in two or three games. In the eighth grade I played every game and scored some points.”

The Laker coaching staff moved Miller up to JV as a freshman. He was only 6-foot-1 at that time, but shot up to 6-5 as a sophomore and to 6-6½ or 6-7 as a junior.

He started as a sophomore, and was “pretty much something to be reckoned with,” as he puts it, by his junior season.

“I did well,” he said. “I might have made honorable mention (all-league) as a sophomore, and played pretty well as a junior.”

The following fall he got as far as two scrimmages before his accident.

“I was looking forward to my senior season with great anticipation,” he said. “Then it happened. The highlight of my senior year was climbing hills and going to pep rallies with a cast on my leg.”

Miller’s downfall was also difficult for the Laker team, which would have teamed Miller with a talented and improving junior, Maurice McDonald, and a sharpshooting senior guard, John Lipani.

“John and I spent a lot of time together,” Miller said of Lipani. “We played a lot of basketball together, enjoyed the sport and the competition. We took it to each other. I was going to be the inside force and he had an excellent jump shot. We had big anticipations. Denny Smith might have shed a tear or two (when I got injured).”

By spring sports season, Miller was pretty much healed and took part in track.

“My buddies talked me into that,” he said. “I did the high jump and threw the shot put. I had no form, but had a lot of leverage. I whipped (the shot) out there.”

Miller did get a few college nibbles from schools like Cleveland State and Kent State. Bobby Huggins, then coaching Walsh, expressed a little interest. But eventually, it came down to Hiram.

“When all is said and done, I have no regrets,” Miller said. “I was a four-year starter at center on the varsity squad every game of my career. I pretty much played all the time. I couldn’t have done that at a Division I school.”

During Miller’s freshman year, he played alongside Brad Ellis, the Geneva sharpshooter who went on to become coach of the Eagles for several successful seasons and is in the ACBF Hall of Fame while also serving as president of the ACBF.

“He was at the heyday of his career,” Miller said of Ellis. “He was a good shooter and a good teammate and player.”

For his own part, Miller figures he averaged about 13 points a game for his career, winding up with either 983 or 987 points for the Terriers.

Playing center, Miller contributed — especially on the offensive end of the court — from his freshman season.

“I got a good share of rebounds, too, and was always a pretty good shot-blocker,” he said. “I had a pretty good leap for my height. I got my first dunk in competition as a sophomore in high school. I hung on the rim and got a technical.”

Miller majored in business management at Hiram. He was a President’s Athletic Conference honorable-mention pick as a freshman, moved up to the second team by his junior year and won third-team honors as a senior.

In 2000 he was inducted into the Hiram College Athletic Hall of Fame.

“We won the league my senior season and made the Division III playoffs,” he said. “We went to Norwich, Connecticut. There were four teams there. We lost the first game, but the second night we won the consolation game. It was a wonderful experience.”

After graduation he went into the Electrolux Vacuum Cleaner trainee program before beginning a career in the lumber industry with 84 Lumber. He spent 19 years there, before moving to Carter Lumber, where he has worked for the past 10 years, currently in Burton, Michigan, near Flint. His wife, Laura, works for the City of Flint water department.

Alan and Laura have two sons: Warren, 22; and Andrew, 20. Both have inherited Alan’s height. Warren is 6-10 and Andrew 6-7 or 6-9. Andrew played basketball at Mott Junior College for a year.

Alan has a brother, David, two years younger than he is, who is retired from the military and now works at Wright-Patterson.

“There are a lot of good basketball players in (the Flint) area,” Miller said. “I have an opportunity to see a lot of great basketball. I don’t play much anymore.

“I played pretty hard for three or four years in a men’s league, but I have arthritis in my joints, really bad in my shoulders.”

Ron Weaver

By CHRIS LARICK

Ninth inning of the seventh game of the 2016 World Series, score Chicago Cubs 6, Cleveland Indians 6:

Ron Weaver and some of his co-workers at the Cleveland Indians shop at Progressive Field are poised with razor blades over the 150 boxes containing caps, t-shirts and sweatshirts. Lonnie Chisenall hits a long drive.

THIS COULD BE IT!

But no, the ball sails foul by inches and the Indians eventually lose the game and the World Series. The valuable Major League World Championship paraphernalia with the Indians’ logos will never be worn, will never actually be seen by anyone except the manufacturers.

“They buried them somewhere,” Weaver said. “Sometimes (in the past) they sent them to Third World Countries. But now they’re all rotting somewhere.”

That the Indians entrusted Weaver with such a serious responsibility is hardly surprising. Weaver, who will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame on Apr. 2 as a contributor, has a lengthy resume of service in high school sports in the community.

In basketball, Weaver served as Sectional/District Girls Basketball Manager for more than 35 years. Before that, he actually served as coach for the freshmen at Pymatuning Valley in basketball, a sport he didn't know all that well going in.

“Bob Hitchcock (head basketball coach at PV at the time and a charter member of the ACBF Hall of Fame) said he needed a freshman basketball coach,” Weaver said. “He gave me a lot of help and the players didn’t need much coaching. I did that for two or three years. When I got the athletic director job I had to give it up.”

Weaver had actually grown up in Mahoning County at North Lima High School, where he played football, ran track and played a little bit of basketball. After graduation in 1962, he went to Mount Union, where he ran track and cross country.

“My sophomore year I broke the school record for the two-mile at Baldwin Wallace,” he said. “A freshman came in and broke it. I knew it was time to leave.”

His first job after college graduation was at Black River, where he spent five years, coaching football and track.

In 1971 he got a job at Pymatuning Valley, in the process of building a new high school, one with outstanding athletic facilities for its time, including a nice basketball court and an all-weather track.

In 2 1/2 years he became athletic director, a job he held from 1974 or 1975 to 2001.

“We had the first all-weather track in the NEC (Northeastern Conference),” Weaver said of his early days as AD at Pymatuning Valley. “We could not compete with Harbor, St. John and Ashtabula in football. In basketball, we held our own. In track we were very young, but we won anyway. We got our boys to the district finals in Euclid.”

Because of the all-weather track, PV got many tournaments, including some previously held as far away as Austintown Fitch. It also got basketball tournaments, including sectionals and districts. Weaver directed most of those events, hiring officials and doing the many other tasks that job required.

“Ron Richards and Frank Roskovics always helped me,” Weaver said. “We had a lot of people helping. We had to take all the results down. We ran through a lot of carbon paper.”

In basketball, Weaver received invaluable assistance from Ross Boggs, Mel Nowakowski, Al Goodwin and Bob Callahan. Nowadays the basketball tournament has moved to Grand Valley and Weaver, retired, helps Michelle Boiarski run the tournament.

Over the years, Weaver has claimed many accomplishments:

• Athletic administrator and OWA coordinator for 26 years
• Registered track official for the past 48 years
• Past president of the Mahoning Valley Track Officials Association and current Rules Interpreter for the past six years
• Seven years coaching football, three years basketball, eight years track and cross country
• Sectional/district girls basketball manager for 35 years
• District boys and girls track manager for over 30 years
• Worked district and regional track meets as well as the Ohio State track meet for more than 30 years

Among the many citations he has received are:

• Ashtabula County Outstanding Track Award, 1991
• Perry Public Schools Athletic Department Community Service Award, 1992
• Distinguished Service Award from the Ohio Track and Cross Country Coaches Association, 1998
• Northeast District Athletic Director of the Year, 1998
• Election to the State Athletic Administrators Hall of Fame, 2015
• Recipient of the OHSAA State Sportsmanship, Ethics and Integrity Award, 2007
• Chairman of the Ashtabula County Track and Cross Country Hall of Fame Committee (ongoing)

Though Weaver has had plenty of help along the way, he frets that that might not be the case for those who follow in his footsteps.

“In a lot of our sports, the officials are getting older,” he said. “It’s hard to get young guys in it.”

For the past 20 years, Weaver has held the job mentioned at the beginning with the Cleveland Indians. When he started, there were several Cleveland Indians shops and he had to travel at times from Erie to Sandusky. Now there’s only the one at the Stadium. Paid by the hour, he has voluntarily cut down on his hours in deference to younger workers.

“A lot of kids need the money,” he said. “During the World Series we worked 12-14 hours a day. A lot of the kids had to go to college.”

The Indians gave their off-the-field employees a big treat during the World Series. They flew 150 of them, including Weaver, first class to Chicago for Game 4. They all got to see the 7-2 victory pitched largely by Cory Kluber.

“It was great,” Weaver said.

That gave the Indians a 3-1 lead in the Series. It was also their last victory.

Now, of course, it is the off-season, but it won’t be long until Weaver is back in the shop.

“Right now I’d start Opening Day in April,” he said. “But they could call me up and say, ‘Can you work on Thursday?’”

Weaver’s family consists of a son, Brian, who has two children with his wife Diane (Alexis and Jeremy), and a daughter, Brenda, who has children Jaden and Makenna with her husband, Tomas. Ron enjoys visiting his children and grandchildren every chance he gets.