City League had great athletes, teams from the start

Frani Washington BLADE PHOTO Enlarge

Chuck Webb Enlarge

When asked to contemplate a City League that will basically be a shell of its former self after the 2010-11 school year - after the closing of Libbey High School and the departure of seven other schools headed for a new league - longtime CL commissioner Ed Scrutchins got right to the heart of the matter.

"When you say 'league,' you're talking about people," said Scrutchins, who will turn 69 on July 28, began with Toledo Public Schools in 1969, and has been the league's athletic commissioner for more than 20 years. "What has been so great about the City League is working with so many of these great people, and we won't be working with them in the future.

"I used to be able to brag about us having one of the few leagues like this in the country, where public and parochial schools were in the same league and got along, and it worked. Not being able to say that anymore, that's going to be difficult."

Indeed, the City League has been about people, and plenty of them.

Players and coaches, officials and fans, cheerleaders and moms and dads. Marching bands and ticket takers, concession workers and booster members, police officers and paramedics and public-address announcers.

From the earliest days of the City League, greatness abounded.

The Waite boys basketball team coached by Willis Zorn reached the state championship game at the Columbus Fairgrounds in that very first full CL season in 1927. A few years later, a 12-0 Waite football team coached by Don McCallister staked claim to a mythical national championship by outscoring its opposition - including teams from Flint (Mich.), Iowa, Kentucky and Miami (Fla.) - 401-15. A 13-6 win over Miami brought the title by popular acclaim.

The Waite football team of Jack Mollenkopf became the mythical state champion in 1946 after its 40-6 win at powerhouse Massillon, but the Indians had to take a backseat to the Cowboys in the City League, as Libbey claimed an 8-6 win for Waite's lone loss.

There were the state runner-up basketball teams from Central Catholic (1942 and 1949), and coach Homer Hanham's Woodward teams of 1944 and 1946 which were state runner-up and semifinalists, respectively.

Also in the early 1940s, the Libbey football team was declared Ohio's best by popular acclaim in the days preceding media polls and playoffs.

In the 1950s, who from that era could forget the great DeVilbiss football teams coached to six City titles by Hilton Murphy and Dave Hardy? Or the Macomber basketball team led by Bunk Adams that lost a state-semifinal heartbreaker to Middletown and the legendary Jerry Lucas? Or the Ray Wolford-led Scott basketball teams, which reached the state tournament in consecutive years (1959 and 1960) coached by Andy Kandik?

Was CL football ever any better than in the early 1960s, when eventual 10-0 state champion Central Catholic, led by the John Ginter-Phil Hoag backfield, edged a Jim Detwiler-led DeVilbiss squad? Not if you consider that era also included great backs like Scott's Sam Price and Allen Smith, and Bill "Thunder" Thornton of Libbey.

Also from that era, did any City League player ever have a finer shooting touch than Woodward's Howard "Butch" Komives, who later led the nation in scoring at Bowling Green State University and played in the NBA?

What about Chet Trail and Joe Cooke and Abe Steward and the great Libbey basketball teams coached by Burt Spice in the 1960s, including the heartbreaking losses in the 1965 state final and the last-second semifinal loss to powerhouse Columbus East in 1969?

Was the basketball in Toledo ever any better than the mid-1970s when stars like Scott's Truman Claytor and Donald Collins, Macomber's Kelvin Ransey and John Flowers, Rogers' Kim Leonard and Kenny Cunningham, and DeVilbiss' Terry Crosby and Farley Bell all competed against one another?

All played Division I college basketball except Bell, who played football at Ohio State. Claytor started on Kentucky's NCAA championship team of 1978, Ransey was an All-American at Ohio State, and Collins the Pac-10 player of the year in 1980 at Washington State.

Speaking of Crosby, few could argue his status as the league's best two-sport athlete, especially after his magnificent 328-yard, three TD Shoe Bowl effort versus St. John's followed five days later by a 38-point basketball effort against powerhouse Scott in 1974.

Who can forget Bob Lawson of Libbey?

Lawson won back-to-back state titles in the 100 and 220-yard dashes and led the Cowboys to the 1972 Class AAA state track crown. His 9.4 in the 100 is still listed as a state meet record for that distance (races soon after were changed to meters).

Was there ever a swifter female runner than Scott's Brenda Morehead? Since she went to the 1976 Olympics as a U.S. sprinter not long after she left for

college, that answer is no.

Was there ever a more dominant basketball program than the Scott squads of coaches Bunk Adams and Ben Williams from the mid 1970s to the early 1990s? Adams got to state in 1974, and Williams made it there five times, winning it all in 1990.

If there is a rival there, it would be Ed Heintschel's St. John's teams of the 1990s and 2000s. These Titans reached state six times, three times ending as runners-up.

When Val Glinka's St. Francis 27-1 team, led by Todd Mitchell, won the Class AAA state title in 1983, that broke a 60-year Ohio drought for Toledo boys basketball teams. But it took future Ohio State star Frani Washington and Woodward just one year to accomplish that feat, winning the first girls state basketball tournament in 1976.

St. Francis' lone defeat loss in 1983 was an upset loss to Bowsher and its star, Dennis Hopson, who later became an All-American at Ohio State and an NBA champion with the Chicago Bulls.

Who was better in baseball than the Start Spartans of legendary coach Rich Arbinger, who after excelling in baseball and basketball as a player at Central, became one of Ohio's top-5 winningest coaches? His 34-year career (1976-2009) included 15 districts titles and two state championships (1994 and 2000) in seven state tourney appearances.

There is little argument that Jim Jackson, who led Macomber to the 1989 state championship, was the CL's greatest basketball player, and that was before he became a hall of famer at Ohio State and a 14-year NBA veteran.

Likewise, if we're talking "greatest," Scott's Jim Parker (1950s) was ultimately regarded highly enough to twice earn All-American status as an Ohio State lineman, and later a spot on the all-time NFL team for his work blocking for Johnny Unitas with the Baltimore Colts. Thus, it's safe to say he was the top football talent the CL ever produced.

If you're talking running backs, who could forget the speed, power and elusiveness of Macomber's 200-yards-per-game rusher Chuck Webb in the late 1980s? And, who did more for state-championship teams than two-way stars Rodney Gamby of St. Francis in 2001 and Dane Sanzenbacher of Central Catholic in 2005?

Did any basketball coach ever beat the odds to success better than Libbey's Leroy Bates, whose Cowboys, led by players like Eyuless Palmer and Marques Fobbs, William Buford and Julius Wells, reached eight CL finals in 14 years? At a school with ever-declining enrollment, one that could barely win a game in any other sport, Bates' boys won three City crowns, went 25-1 in reaching the state semis in 2000, and lost in heart-breaking fashion to Chillicothe on a last-second overtime shot in the 2008 state final.

More recently, no athletes ever commanded more attention in their sports in the CL than St. Ursula's Sarah Florian in volleyball, Rogers' Erik Kynard in the track (high jump), or Waite's Natasha Howard in girls basketball.

With apologies to all the great City League athletes, coaches and teams not mentioned above, these are just some of the people Scrutchins is talking about.

"We'll be OK," the commissioner said of the CL's daunting future. "We'll have to work and do the best we can with what we have left and those student-athletes we have left. We have to serve that population and do the best we can for them."