Pics From The Past

Here are some pics from the past. Winter and spring sports teams at Russia Local High School. In the first photo the basketball team is proudly sitting behind the basketball trophy they won in the 1950-1951 season county basketball tournament. You can't gather from this photo how close to the school walls the basketball court was in that old gymnasium. I think it was just little over a foot from the court to the wall.


My brother Harold is sitting in the first row on the far right----#6. I remember that these guys spent a lot of time on our farm up in the hay mow above the milking parlor. Why? Because my Dad did the 1950 farm version of setting up an area for hoops play. Dad had oak flooring of all things installed in the hay mow, lights installed and a hoop set up so that the guys could play. I can still remember lots of cars lining our circle driveway on a Sunday afternoon and the hay bales being moved aside in the hayloft for a pick up basketball game. I guess the playing paid off for they won the county championship that year even though Russia was the smallest high school in the county. About 12 students in my brother's graduating class. I can't get over how short and snug the boys basketball shorts were back then compared to today. Today those big baggy shorts reach their kneecaps.

This is the Russia Local Basketball Team posing for their spring photo circa 1950-1951. This time my brother is the second one from the right sitting between Kenny Monnin and little Billy Groff. My brother was the team pitcher on the team. He used to practice all the time at home while we were milking the cows. I'm afraid to say that he used our bull as target practice with small stones from our gravel driveway. PETA would have been on Harold's case back then if they existed back then. All I can say is that this practice fired up our bull and made him extra mean. I stayed away from that bull! Some of the same fellas played on the baseball team as the basketball team. I think the coach might have been a Mr. Kavanaugh. Harold set up our big back yard (half acre or more) between the milk house and the woods as the baseball playing field. He created a visual infield by mowing that part of the lawn an inch shorter than the rest of the yard so the infield was a long oval with my brother pitching from the sandbag mound in the center. Stray balls would either bounce off the chicken coup to the right or land in the grassy lane leading to the woods. If someone hit a long one, it might actually land in the woods which insured a home run because you had to climb the fence to get to the woods. My dad encourged Harold's sports talents but he didn't baby him. No car to drive to school and to drive back home after sports practice or a game. Instead Harold had to do a quick walk home from Russia thru Floyd Monnin's farm to eat a quick supper and be ready to assist in milking all the cows at 5:00 P.M. sharp. After the war my Dad made good money milking cows. I wonder if milking is still as profitable today. At any rate I thought you just might enjoy these old sports photos from the fifties. And my how time flies! All these guys if they are still alive would be in their late seventies for sure.