Eldred Township's All-Around Player

      Next month (January 2023) will mark 53 years since I saw one of the best high school basketball games I ever witnessed. I don't remember it simply because Otto-Eldred, in a home game, defeated Emporium High School. That in itself made it an upset in that Emporium had dominated the North Tier League for several years and would continue to for many more.

     There are several reasons why a 12-year-old watched the entire game from the permanent seats and saw a basketball clinic and remembers it so fondly. It wasn't a one point game that was won at the buzzer, had a star player score 30 points or was a game of a handful of slam dunks.

     One of the central reasons I have vivid memories of the game is that the Terrors, at least twice if not three times, worked the ball around at the end of several quarters setting up for the period's final attempt. The ball ended up in the hands of O-E guard, Tom Sherwood, who calmly and confidently drained 16-17 foot jumpers that helped break the spirit of a very good Red Raiders' team.

Tommy Sherwood was my neighbor. Well, not exactly my next-door neighbor, but he lived along that mile and a half stretch of highway south of Eldred that in 1968 housed a host of families that had Eldred postal addresses, but was known as Larabee. Tom's home was almost across from the Ethan Allen Factory (Viko) that employed 250 people before it was shut down in 2009.

I'm not sure where the Eldred Township line began and where it ended, but I think I knew every house from the Eldred Legion to the Larabee Y- bear right and you could go to Coryville and on to Smethport and if you stayed to the left, Turtlepoint and Port Allegany were on the way. 

The Eldred Township Elementary School

     Just that Larabee section of our trip half-filled our yellow bus each school day. We never drove more than a hundred yards without stopping and picking up kids who were headed to the Township grade school or the high school. The Lathrop brothers, the Jackson kids, Bruce Cordner, John Holleran, Randy Stebbins -nearly every youngster along that route boarded the bus on that ride to and from school.

     

The basketball court that my father put in for me and all my buddies. We had to duck just a little on the right baseline because of the apple tree. When I was shooting by myself, I just pretended it was a defender.

     

The box score of O-E's 64-51 win over Emporium. Tom Sherwood and sophomore John Oszustowicz both had 18 points and Randy Nuhfer hit for 13. NOTE: Olson scored 34 in Smethport's win over Austin.

Tom was three years older than me and most of my closest buddies, but the older guys were never too rough with us (at least, I don't remember that). 

The ball games didn't slow down much when we went to school because we had a giant playground at the grade school and a beautiful, shiny and perfectly maintained gymnasium that doubled as an auditorium. Those cold winter days, waiting for the bus to take us home, saw us in the gym playing basketball and the warm days allowed us to play basketball on the outdoor court, baseball or touch football. 

     Below: O-E's win that evening was Emporium's first loss in 44 regular season games and their first defeat in 43 North Tier games. It was the Terrors' first victory over Emporium in 23 games- 11 and a half years. 

Jim Kinsler was in his first year as the head coach at O-E. He was an Emporium graduate and also a basketball player at Mansfield University. He was my junior high math instructor and I'll always remember that he walked into our first period class and encouraged all of us to come to the game and watch O-E beat Emporium. We may have not known everything about eighth grade mathematics, but most of us knew that Emporium didn't lose basketball games.

The coach wasn't bragging-he was just that confident and evidently that rubbed off on his players. The team played a flawless game with each player contributing, doing what they did best. The guards did not turn the ball over, Nuhfer and Oszustowicz were inside scoring threats and along with Tut Hanks controlled the boards. It was a textbook performance. 

     It wasn't any surprise to me when Tommy made those shots against Emporium. I had seen him make those same jumpers in our playground games, over and over again.

     

This win over Allegany was Kinsler's first win as a varsity coach. Sherwood led the way with 27, Nuhfer and Oszustowicz were also in double figures.

     

Hal Hansen had been the previous Terrors' coach and like Kinsler, was a Mansfield graduate. He recommended Kinsler for the O-E head coaching position.

The pre-season look at the 67-68 season with Nuhfer, Sherwood and Denny Bickford returning regulars.

     In the 90's and early 2000's, if I was working in Buffalo, Windsor (Ontario) or Toronto, I would drive south down to see my folks, who now were living in Eldred. Many stays would see my dad and I pick an afternoon and just go driving, almost copying my old bus route. 

     I know we didn't hit every township locale, but we made the rounds for an hour or two: Indian Creek, Newell Creek, Slack Hollow, Barden Brook, Moody Hollow, Fowler Brook, the Loop Road, Canfield Hollow and, of course, up to Larabee. I know I missed some spots here and maybe added one that doesn't belong, but we always had a good time. Sometimes we stretched it to get up to Mina, Sartwell Creek, Fishing Creek, Bells Run and some of our other fishing holes.

I'm not sure what the Emporium-O-E matchup is like now, but in my era a win over Emporium was a thrill and quite rare. This is the game ball from our 1973 win, 54-53 over Cameron County. It was not as well-played as that '68 game, but it was exciting. Jerome Wolcott, Kerry Snow and Steve Barrett ked the way for O-E.

     

This was our backyard and made a great baseball field for us. We also had a plastic ball golf course, but the divots were not real popular with my parents.

     

     Otto-Eldred High School

     

     

     BELOW: This is the headline in the Times Herald the day after that '68 win. The last word is "Villain." It was the third league game of the season and left a six-way tie for the league lead (2-1). Emporium won the league-again.

     I can't remember many summer or other good weather days when we didn't have some sort of ball game going on in our neighborhood. The McGonnells' had a large field beside their house and they even constructed their own goal posts so we could kick extra points and field goals. We could play catch at anybody's house. My folks had a large backyard which was perfect for baseball. My father even put in a 20x20 basketball court which along with our backyard caught plenty of action. 

     The Portville Holiday Tournament with O-E losing to Alfred-Almond in the title game. Randy Nuhfer and Tom Sherwood were named to the All-Tourney squad.

     

     I knew Tom was a good basketball player because I saw most of his varsity home games. I played touch football against him, but I didn't realize he had quite a bit of success at the upper high school level. I was probably playing little little baseball and missed most of the town's teener league games. Until I started doing some research I didn't realize baseball was another game where he competed well, even coaching after his youth leagues were complete.

     

O-E loses to Bolivar, 13-6. Sherwood catches a touchdown pass from Nuhfer in the final quarter.

     

     

     Smethport edges Otto-Eldred in this '67 thriller, 32-26. Sherwood had 129 yards rushing in 14 carries. It was the opening game in the Allegany Mountain League. O-E scored 19 points in the fourth quarter.

     

     Sherwood has a touchdown run.  Nuhfer had a TD pass and a scoring run and Ken Kio and Roy Wilbur lead the defense. 1966 

     

A pre-season look at the '67 football squad. Ed Schwab is the lineman in the photo. Nuhfer is the highlighted QB with Mike York, Don Close, Bob Krall and George Palmer  mentioned as the running backs.

      

Sherwood and Denny Bickford were the returning receivers with Johnny Oszustowicz, a sophomore joining the varsity. Rick Schwab and Jim Lasher were also receivers.

     

Tom was not a race car driver, but this is a photo of him at our yearly McKean County Fair. That's a midget car driver explaining the workings of his car. Tom was 13 years old and had just finished pitching for Coryville in little league.

     

Tom and Ken Kio were the Coryville representatives on the LL All-Star Team. Steve Faes and Terry Johnson were the Crosby players and Smethport's were Dennis Bango, Tom Daniels, Brian Quick and John Thomas. 1963 team. Jim Anderson and Rod Peterson represented Mt. Jewett.
     

Tom pitches and hits Eldred to a win in Teener League ball.

Tom goes 2-3 in Teener League Ball and raises his average to .580. Don Close is the winning pitcher for Eldred. Mike Fowler's sixth inning homer leads Austin to a 5-4 win.

1976- Tom is part of the State King team that wins the slow-pitch title over Kamerys in Olean.

     

     It sure was a good place to grow up. We were in a rural community, but only two miles from Eldred. Especially, as an athlete, it seemed like we sure were on the bus a lot- to and from school, from Duke Center to Eldred after practice and, of course, to all the road games through freshman, junior varsity and varsity ball.

 While I was thinking about this essay, it came to me how difficult it must have been to drive the school bus every day. Snowy and icy conditions, narrow roads, some gravel roads and dead-end hollows where we had to make five or six point turns to head back to where we started.

All those bus rides and maybe I'm forgetting an occasion, but I never remember a bus being more than a minute or two late at any time. Obviously, as a kid you just take it all for granted, but geez, there's no way I could do all that as efficiently as those drivers did.

 

     It was a good place to grow up.

     

      1972- Tom coached the Eldred Babe Ruth team. Jim Thomas was the East Smethport manager and Fella Wright managed the Smethport team. Carl Booth led the Otto squad.