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September 26, 2005 Roughrider Retrospective
Roughriders v. Van Wert Cougars, 1952-53
1952 MHS Roughriders -- L-R, Row 1: LaVern Pax, Pete Dieringer, Jim Holtzhauer, Tom Durbin, Bob Maher, Tom Brodbeck, Bob Vogel, Norman Chiles, Don Burger, Jim Davis, Jack Sullivan. -- Row 2: Mr. Vincent, Quentin Clark, Warren Hoenie, Bud Solomon, Tom McEvoy, Bob Selby, Lanny Neiferd, John Kuenzel, Don Walter, Mr. Stuckey. -- Row 3: Mr. Schnarre, Bob Dicke, Ted Bricker, Jim Koch, Gene Rohrbach, Jim Knous, Galen Cisco, Ken Lutz, Jerry Walter, Jim Boehmer, Harry Schwarch. -- Row 4: Alan Cook, Ronald Corrigan, Jim Glass, Robert Koons, John Schnarre, Tom Steva, Louis Lininger, Burton Goens, Bob Darnell, John Lengerich. photo courtesy Andrews Photography. Click for larger image. |
ROUGHRIDER RETROSPECTIVE - by Buz Howard
This is the 11th installment in a series on St. Marys football history published on Mondays and Wednesdays in Ridertown during the season.
Any discussion of the 1952 Roughrider football season will automatically also become a discussion of the ’53 season. The two seasons—each with a climactic Van Wert game—will always be intertwined in the chronicles of St. Marys football.
The 1952 squad, under Coach Jack Bickel, seemed unbeatable through most of the season, averaging 39 points per game and shutting out six of their first seven opponents. Only Carey High School, in the fifth game, was able to dent the Roughrider goal line.
 However, looming on the schedule was Van Wert High School, who would be hosting the Riders in game number eight. The Cougars, under Coach Gil Smith, were also enjoying an easy season, and fans from both communities knew that the St. Marys-Van Wert match-up would likely decide the Western Buckeye League race.
The game went Van Wert’s way from the beginning. Two St. Marys turnovers, deep in their own territory, set up an early 14-O Cougar lead, both scores coming on short sweeps by halfback Jim Young.
But the Van Wert runner that night that most St. Marians remember was the flashy Willie Hernandez, a dynamo of a player made for the single wing, who could pass and punt, as well as bite off big chunks of yardage on rushing plays. On defense, in those pre-platoon days, Hernandez routinely ran down ball carriers who were not used to being caught in the open field.
Hernandez’s 94-yard return of Cruiser Holtzhauer’s second half kickoff was the backbreaker for the Roughriders in the 33-7 Van Wert victory.
A succession of key injuries in the game further added to the misery of the visiting St. Marys contingent. Starting quarterback Pete Dieringer and his back-up Bob Dicke were both carried from the field, leaving freshman quarterback John Kuenzel at the helm for most of the contest. Defensive stalwart Jim Knous was knocked unconscious, something that seemed to occur often in those pre-facemask days, and, along with Dicke, was removed to the Van Wert hospital. All in all, it was one of the truly woeful nights in St. Marys football. The following week, the Riders beat Wapak, 45-13, but had to settle for second place in the 1952 WBL standings.
The 1953 season followed a similar pattern, almost a déjà vu of the previous year. Again St. Marys waltzed through the early schedule, destroying their league opponents by lop-sided scores. Bellefontaine was the team that came closest, losing to the Roughriders, 60-27, but the Riders had coasted in that one after running up a 60-7 lead. In the two non-league games, St. Marys had topped Greenville, 38-7, and Troy, 45-7.
Again the season’s eighth game was with Van Wert. Two factors that gave Roughrider fans a sense of optimism about the game were that the Cougars already been beaten by Bellefontaine, and the satisfaction that Willie Hernandez had graduated. A St. Marys victory would be the key step towards the school’s first League championship since 1944, and perhaps put to rest some of the ghosts of the past, particularly some of the bitter feelings about the previous season’s loss.
But it was still not safe to consider the Roughriders a clear favorite. After all, this was Van Wert, a football program that, in the ‘40’s and the ‘50’s, not only consistently had the talent, but also the mystique to put them over the top in big games. The team still had Jim Young and many other seasoned players from their victory over the Riders the year before.
The St. Marys squad featured its own collection of star players. The Roughriders boasted what had to be one of the most talented backfields in the State—fullback Galen Cisco, sophomore quarterback John Kuenzel, and halfbacks Norm Chiles and Jim Davis. All four of the backs would be WBL first-teamers at season’s end.
There was a bone-numbing chill on the night the two teams came together at Memorial Field. The Roughriders scored first, taking advantage of a shanked punt that put the ball on the Van Wert nineteen. Three plays later Norm Chiles ran it in from the ten. Bob Dicke’s kick split the uprights but was nullified by a penalty. Coach Bickel then chose to pass for the PAT, but Kuenzel, under a rush, failed to connect.
A twenty-yard pass play put the visiting Cougars on the board early in the second quarter, but they also failed on the extra-point try, and the score stood at 6-6.
Before the half Van Wert managed a second touchdown on a ten-yard run by McConahay. This time the kick was good, and the Cougars led, 13-7, at intermission.
Following the second-half kickoff, the Roughriders put together a 70-yard drive, a balanced attack that involved all three of their star running backs. A one-yard plunge by Cisco and the kick by Dicke knotted the score, 13-13.
St. Marys took the lead early in the fourth quarter. An 84-yard drive featured a 40-yard sweep by Kuenzel and a 20-yard run by Burt Goens. The touchdown came on a 24-yard pass from Kuenzel to Don Walter. Dicke’s kick gave the home team a 20-13 lead.
Van Wert launched a 66-yard scoring march to tie the game once again, the key play an 18-yard pass from Fellers to Richey that moved the ball to the St. Marys four-yard line. Jim Davis, when recently asked his recollection of the game, said that this was the play he remembered most vividly. “We had three guys covering that receiver, but he somehow managed to make the catch.” Jim Young then slammed it over from the four. Young followed with the extra-point kick to tie the game, 20-20.
Later in the fourth quarter, St. Marys mounted a drive that promised to be the game-winner, eventually moving to a first-and-goal situation on the five-yard line. Here Van Wert staged a legendary goal-line stand. Coach Jack Bickel threw all three of his running backs at the Cougars as the Roughriders staged a fierce assault on the south end-zone of Memorial Field, but Van Wert stood rock-solid, and the ball never got past the three. The tie stood, and it would be six more years before the Roughriders would finally beat the Cougars, not achieving the task until a 14-0 win in 1959.
Galen Cisco was recently asked his memories of the Van Wert rivalry. “They always came at you with that single-wing, and I’m afraid that sometimes befuddled us. But,” added Cisco, “they were just a good team.” Coach Jack Bickel agrees with his former fullback’s assessment. “Those guys and Celina were the toughest teams for us to deal with in those days."
Jim Davis theorizes that the 1953 team just couldn’t shake loose from the specter of the 1952 drubbing by Van Wert. “Going into that game, you just couldn’t avoid the image of Willie Hernandez running all over us the year before. I really think it had some effect on our performance.”
A week after the Van Wert tie, the Roughriders traveled to Wapakoneta and shut out the Redskins, 33-0, to nail down the league title. In spite of the tie, it was still an undefeated season, the schools first such season since 1929.
According to a front-page article in the Evening Leader, the title-clincher against Wapak triggered a spontaneous late-night celebration. Fans who didn’t take the trip to Wapak received news of the victory by phone calls from friends and relatives before they started back to St. Marys (Remember there was no radio coverage in those days, and no cell phones). When the team bus arrived back home, people had lined Spring Street to greet the new League champions. A fire truck and two ambulances, sirens sounding, escorted the team into town, followed by a caravan of cars loaded with returning fans. The MHS Band stepped from their bus and marched down Spring Street, playing the fight song.
Amid such a celebration, maybe the ghost of Willie Hernandez was, at least temporarily, put to rest.
NOTES:
Galen Cisco, as St. Marys sports fans well know, went on to Ohio State to become a stellar two-way performer for the Buckeyes, playing both fullback and linebacker. Cisco was the captain of the Buckeyes 1958 National Championship team.
It was a condition of his signing with Ohio State that Galen would be permitted to pitch for the Buckeye baseball team in the spring, thus missing spring football—a rare concession by Coach Woody Hayes.
Cisco then went on to a long major-league baseball career, first as a pitcher for the Red Sox and the Mets, and then as a pitching coach for several different teams, including the World Champion Toronto Blue Jays in 1992 and 1993.
There can’t be many other athletes, if any, who can boast both a NCAA National Football Championship ring and a World Series ring.
Jack Bickel coached in St. Marys for just four seasons, before moving on to a pay raise in Piqua in 1954. Bickel, now living in Newark, Ohio, stated in a recent phone interview that leaving St. Marys was the “worst decision” he ever made. “Those are still my favorite years of coaching.”
An avid story-teller, Bickel can still relate tales from his Army experience as a paratrooper in the Pacific in World War II, and from his experience as a player at Miami University under coaches Sid Gillman and Woody Hayes.
But his favorite stories still go back to St. Marys. “I was asked at a coaching clinic to step up to a chalk-board and write down my three most successful plays. I wrote: ‘Number one: Give the ball to Galen. Number two: Give the ball to Galen. Number three—oh, you get the idea.’”
Earlier this year a delegation of eight of Bickel’s former St. Marys players surprised him in Newark for his 80th birthday. The event was arranged by Bill Machenbach, who actually was a basketball player under Bickel, who assisted Coach Bill Brinkmeyer in that sport. Football players present for the occasion were Don Burger, Norm Chiles, Jim Glass, Cruiser Holtzhauer, Lavern Pax, Harry Schwarck, and Galen Cisco.
John Kuenzel, one of the best all-around athletes to ever play for Memorial High School, went on to the Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs, where he quarterbacked the Falcons to a Cotton Bowl victory in 1959, and also was a standout on the basketball and baseball teams.
Kuenzel became a career man in the Air Force, serving as a pilot in fighter jets.
At the conclusion of that 1953 season, St. Marys dominated the All-League selections. Along with the All-WBL backfield of Kuenzel, Cisco, Chiles, and Davis, also named for first-team honors were tackle Jim Glass, and ends Jim Koch and Don Walter. Picked for the second team were end Don Burger, halfback Burt Goens, and tackle Bob Selby. Offensive guard Gene Rohrbach was honorable mention.
Cisco, for his work on both sides of the line of scrimmage, was named “Outstanding Player” of the League, and Jack Bickel was named “Coach of the Year.”
Jim Young, the workhorse Van Wert halfback in the ’52 and ’53 games, embarked on a long and successful coaching career that took him from Shawnee High School all the way to head coaching positions at Arizona, Purdue, and Army.
1953 MHS Roughriders -- L-R, Row 1: Bob Koons, Ted Bricker, Jim Glass, Bob Selby, Galen Cisco, Norman Chiles, Don Burger, Jim Davis, Lanny Neiferd. -- Row 2: Jim Lawler, Ted Crusie, John Lengerich, Ken Lutz, Bob Dicke, Jerry Walter, Paul Macke, Ed Lewis, Julius Broerman. -- Row 3: Tom Steva, Walter Vogel, Tom Fortman, William Keith, Terry Moots, Burton Goens, Gene Rohrbach, Jim Koch, Don Walter. -- Row 4: Neil Cook, John Koch, John Schnarre, John Bowers, Steve Anderson, Ronnie Anderson, John Kuenzel, Charles Makley, Phil Pfeffenburger, Leonard Sanford, John Springer, Coach Stuckey, Coach Bickel. photo courtesy Andrews Photography. Click for larger image. |
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