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September 28, 2005 Roughrider Retrospective
Roughriders v. Van Wert Cougars, Series
ROUGHRIDER RETROSPECTIVE - by Buz Howard
This is the 12th installment of a series of articles reminiscing St. Marys football history. Two installments will be appearing in Ridertown each week during the season.
 St. Marys and Van Wert first met on the football field in 1913, and have played yearly since 1923. The two schools were charter members of the Western Buckeye League in 1937, and before that were rivals in the Midwest Ohio League.
The series to date has consisted of 84 games, with St. Marys leading, 46-34-4. Van Wert dominated the series through the 1950’s, but St. Marys has controlled it ever since.
The 1924 game ended in a 6-6 tie. Van Wert’s lone score was just one of three touchdowns allowed all year by Coach Roy Wisecup’s powerful St. Marys team that outscored its opponents, 359-18, on its way to an 8-0-1 record, the school’s first undefeated season.
In 1929, Cowboy Bob Reed’s third year as coach, the Roughriders knocked off the Cougers, 20-0, on their way to another unbeaten season. It would not be a notable game, except that the Van Wert coach was Weeb Eubank. It was the only year that Eubank coached the Cougars, and his record was 0-8-2. Eubank eventually coached in the AFL and the NFL, and was the coach of the New York Jets’ 1969 Superbowl champions (the Superbowl in which New York quarterback Joe Namath brashly guaranteed a Jet victory). It is part of Van Wert football lore, as any Cougar fan can tell you, that Weeb Eubank won the Superbowl, but never could win a single game at Van Wert.
The season of 1937 saw St. Marys inaugurate a new stadium. The stadium, now the visitors’ side of Skip Baughman field, was a project of the WPA (Works Progress Administration), one of the “New Deal” agencies created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to put Americans back to work during the depression. It cost $14,701, with 80% of the funding supplied by the Federal Government.
Though the stadium was given a shakedown cruise in the season opener against Liberty (the Roughriders winning, 7-0, over the team from Logan County), the official dedication was saved for the Van Wert game in the third week of the season. Superintendent C. C. McBroom spoke at half-time before a packed house, but the Cougars spoiled the festivities with a 27-0 win.
From the years of 1935 to 1944 Van Wert ran off a string of nine straight wins over the Roughriders, six of them shutouts. The 1944 St. Marys team, in Lyle Barber’s first season as coach, finally snapped the streak, overcoming a 19-7 deficit to post a 21-19 victory. Hank Steinecker ran for the winning touchdown in the waning minutes on a fourth-and-three play.
In 1945, the Riders won again, 33-0, with Chuck Huwer scoring three touchdowns, and Jim Widner adding another.
Accounts of the much ballyhooed games of 1952 and 1953 can be found in the previous installment of this series.
Spanning the years from 1953 to 1958, Van Wert Coach Gil Smith orchestrated a 46-game winning streak, five of the victories coming at the expense of the Roughriders.
Though Bryan High School was the school that finally broke the streak with a 12-7 win over Van Wert in the opening game of the 1959 season, St. Marys later beat the Cougars that season, 14-0, to end an eight-year losing streak against them.
The highly controversial game of 1960 is still one that sticks in the craw of many St. Marys fans. It was an undefeated season, the first of 11 such campaigns in Skip Baughman’s 36-year tenure as coach. The only blemish was a 14-14 tie with Van Wert. On the final play of the game, Roughrider halfback Terry Hollman, who would later play for Florida State, carried the ball to the Cougar one-yard line. Though there seemed to be plenty of time for another play, the Van Wert players would not unpile, and the referees, despite urging from the St. Marys sideline, refused to stop the clock.
Long-time Roughrider ends-and-tackles coach Roger Duncan, playing in his senior year for the Cougars, was in the middle of the melee. “I just lay there, on top of the ball carrier,” said Duncan, “and watched the clock tick down to zero.”
In the 1974 game, a 28-20 St. Marys victory, fullback Dana Etter ran for 131 yards, and halfback Carl Fortman, who later played for Toledo University, ran for 122.
The 1976 game saw the Cougars hand the Roughriders their only loss of the season, preventing them from going to the playoffs. The Riders’ loss of halfback Ron Keith was certainly a factor, but the running of Van Wert’s John Gamble was not to be denied. Gamble, who would play his college ball at Ohio University, gained 116 yards and scored three touchdowns.
The 1978 game was a 63-0 blowout for the Roughriders. Rocky Clark had a 97-yard run in the game. It was the school’s largest victory margin since a 67-0 win over Bellefontaine in 1945.
In a 28-13 victory in 1984, defensive back Jay Henschen intercepted four Van Wert passes, still a St. Marys single-game record.
The 1991 Roughrider squad, undefeated in the regular season, set a new record for margin of victory with a 70-0 whitewashing of the Cougars. Ten different St. Marys running backs carried the ball, led by Chet Knous’s 155 yards in only 5 carries.
The last three games in the series have all produced narrow Roughrider wins.
In 2002, the Riders scored twice in the last six minutes to win, 9-7, the points coming from a halfback pass from Nick Yahl to Brandt Huttis, and a 19-yard field-goal by Nick Pfeffenberger with only 12 seconds left.
The Riders then posted a 14-7 win in ’03, and followed that with another white-knuckler last year when Corey Vossler intercepted a pass in the Van Wert end-zone on the last play of the game to cement a 13-12 victory for a team that would eventually go 13-2 and advance to the State finals.
Next week: Shawnee.
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