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Mount Union 49 Muskingum 3 by Dick Ross |
GOIN' HOME Although I wasn't born or raised in Alliance, I've always considered it as my hometown, since Mom is from there and we had lots of family in town. I've been making the trip down Routes 14 and 183 since before there was a Turnpike or Interstates. Regardless of the starting point, it always seemed as if Streetsboro was the beginning of the home stretch. We joked, back then, that the town must have got its name from the fact that it was only a wide spot in the road, the turn off for Windham and Kent. Streetsboro grew slowly through the years, accelerating only recently with the coming of Sea World, industrial parks and outlet malls to the north, and the growth of Kent State, to the south. Going through today, we counted at least 10 of those "cookie cutter" three-story mini-motels, like the Holiday Inn on West State St., in Alliance. Although the town has had the
foresight to push its city limits out to the reservoir, almost half way to
Ravenna, most of the visible growth has been along the original four lane
stretch of Route 14: a WalMart,
The day in Alliance started, for me, with the "Celebration of Stadium Renovations," acknowledging the major donors and rededicating the facility. As most of you know, during the off season, both refreshment stands and the press box were demolished and replaced, and a new artificial surface was installed. Counting from the date of the original
dedication, 1915, as the Advancement Dept. prefers, our stadium is the
oldest NCAA college football stadium in Ohio. Apparently it's possible
to make that claim without Following the president of the
College, the Chaplain and the President of the Board of Trustees, Sr. QB Rob
Adamson of Akron/Manchester stepped up and accepted the remodeled
facilities, on behalf of the students. Unfortunately, that concluded
Rob's duties for the day, as he's still nursing a hand injury suffered in
the second half of the Whitewater game. He did manage to appear, in
uniform, representing the team, in the "Touchdown Illustrated" color insert
section - distributed throughout the country. Departing the stadium, I caught the
end of the homecoming parade, led smartly by our cheerleaders, in black, and
our still growing band in blue and white. I stopped by the Alpha Phi
Omega booth, and showed
This year, since I was no longer
"working" the Alumni Association tent, I was able to attend the "Special
Gifts" reception at the Campus Center, missing the "Brunch" in the main
dinning room. I got the invitation by virtue of having sent a few
dollars to the annual fund - nothing approaching even a portion of the
amount that a student's parent would be parting with. You know that
you're getting old when your freshman roommate, Dr. E. Karl Schnieder '66,
speaks on behalf of the board of Trustees. E. Karl managed to subtly
remind the guests that the way to keep getting invited back was to be sure
to answer your mail from the college. As we made the short walk back to the
stadium the sun broke through the overcast, making the upper 60's
temperatures feel even warmer. The flags hung limp in the north end
zone, where the "Muskie" men were warming up, the sunshine eliminating any
need for the windbreaker I brought. The Muskingum Muskingum College, the only Presbyterian school on our schedule, since our old rivals refuse to play us anymore, is located in New Concord, Ohio - just west of I-77 on US 40 and I-70. New Concord was founded by refugees from Cambridge, eight miles east, in 1828. The College dates from 1837, and shares its name with the county and the river which runs from Zanesville to Marietta. New Concord, in spite of the name, is
one of those towns where not much is ever new. Memorial Day weekend,
this year, the "John and Annie Glenn Museum and Exploration Center" opened
in the old Glenn House. The house, built in 1923, is owned by the
college and was moved, a second time to West Main
As the squads warmed up, I sat with
Steve Stone '70, Bill Morris '67 and their wives, above the south tunnel.
On a perfect day, like this, it was great to watch the Mount men, in solid
purple, pass underneath, with the local kids reaching out to slap their
hands, like they were NFL, NBA or rock stars. Mount Union has been playing Muskingum
since 1906, they are one of only two conference members who still own an
overall winning record against us. Muskingum was so tough that, in
1962, Mount hired Ken Wable away from New Concord, in an effort to finally
beat them. We lost five more times and stopped playing
them for 15 years before finally winning one in 1982. Though there was
a tie game, homecoming 1988, we now have not lost to them since 1984. Today was to be one of those days where Muskingum lost the coin toss and then it was pretty much downhill, for them, after that. #31 Sr. RB Dan Pugh from Norwalk/St Paul returned the opening kickoff to mid field, then 30 more, on three runs. #8 So. QB Zac Bruney of Martins Ferry, added two passes, one to #5 Sr. TE Josh Liddell of Bemus Point, NY and one to #6 Sr. WR Derrick Leach of Summerfield/Shenadoah, before adding two runs of his own - the second, for two yards and six points, into the north end zone. Muskingum's first attempt of the day ended quickly when #44 Jr. LB Shaun Spisak of Sagamore Hills/Nordonia teamed with last week's hero, #17 Sr. CB Chris Kern of Fairbault, MN to stop a third down completed pass just shy of the first down marker, forcing the first of eight Muskingum punts, on the afternoon. On the next series Mount Union managed
to provide Muskingum with its first offense of the day. A pass
interception put the ball at the south end 24-yard line. Muskingum ran
three plays that netted a loss of one yard, but produced a 42-yard field
goal, the visitors first and final points of the day. Mount came back with #12 Jr. QB/P
Jesse Burghardt of Uniontown/Lake calling the signals and #34 So. RB Rick
Ciccone of Coshocton, running and receiving. I'd been wondering when
we'd see him, since he ran wild in the Washington & Jefferson scrimmage back
in August. Pugh went in for the final two yards, and #11 So. PK Chad
Teague of Orrville added the conversion which brought Mount's total to 14
and ended the scoring for the quarter. With Bruney back in at quarterback,
Ciccone started the second quarter with a nine-yard run for a touchdown,
only eight seconds into the quarter. Mount scored again, 28 seconds
later after Chris Kern picked off a Muskie pass, on its first play, and
handed the ball back to the offense at the visitors 10-yard Bruney then took his turn and produced
an 81-yard drive that ran out of time and downs at the south end two-yard
line. The 19-yard field goal attempt twanged off the left upright and
bounced back towards the homeside crowd. The Mount Marchers put on a great show for the homecoming/community day/visitation day crowd which, with the pleasant day, was reported as 6,232. There was a bit of difficulty with the PA system to introduce the Homecoming Court. The system was apparently turned off, when the band began to play and frantic signals to the new pressbox failed to attract attention. I can't claim credit for the fix, since it could have come from many sources but I suggested to a fan with a cell phone, that he call the press box phone listed in the program, and things were corrected in short order.
Among various changes, the girls now seemed to be on their own: no
longer
escorted by their Dads. The Queen was Meredith Walker a business major
representing Alpha Xi Delta and the King was Thomas Jefferson, a physical
education major representing the Black Student Union. Both are affiliated
with Alpha Phi Omega, which now admits both men and women. After the half, Dan Pugh came back out without his shoulder pads. I don't know if he'd been injured or was just being rested after his yeoman efforts in Berea. If that was the case, the signal was not quite as clear as the white caps of the Ballard/Borchert eras. Burghardt led two more 55 and 65-yard drives in the third period which led to Strauch and Ciccone each picking up a
second touchdown on runs of 27 and 2 yards, respectively. Freshman Kicker Edward
Dick of Brunswick had to borrow a lower numbered jersey in order to kick the
extra points. I wish that I had time to list all who got their "firsts" today, but just a
few names that popped out of the stats sheet were #2 Jr. WR Aaron Bubonics
of
Willoughby/Eastlake North, younger brother of Ed Bubonics from the '93
championship team, who was at the game, #19 So. QB Robert McDavid of
Pickerington, who managed to make the final quarter go quickly and #4 So. WR
Jason Cavell of Concord/Painesville Riverside who gained 61 yards on four
"sure handed" punt returns. After Friday's rains, it didn't take much to imagine what an immediate
quagmire, our natural grass field would have been, with or without a Friday
night high school game. Instead, the Homecoming game was just the opening round of a
day that included a women's soccer match against Washington & Jefferson at 5:30 and a
men's
match
at 7:30. The Purple Raiders lost a real friend, last week, when Larry Faith, 55,
of Alliance succumbed after a
It's not often that a fan is memorialized on the sports pages, but Mike
Brown of the Alliance Review paid him great tribute in his column on
Thursday,
September 26th. We will all miss him. Paraphrasing one more line from the Eagles,
it's good to remember "We may lose, we may win - we may never be here again." Next Saturday, October 5th, Mount Union travels to Otterbein in
Westerville, a town that looks a lot like Main Street in Disneyworld.
The next
home game is the following week vs. Heidelberg, followed by John Carroll October 19th, a
game that promises to be a real "tussle."
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Lowe's, Home Depot, strip malls, about a
dozen "sit down" restaurants, at least as many more fast food
places and, of late, almost always the area of the lowest gasoline prices
along the route. Saving enough, we tell ourselves, to pay for the
trip, or at least the game tickets. The trip southeast started under
overcast skies, left over from the tail end of tropical storm "Isadore" that
had drained its last remnants on our area on Friday, just about the first
decent rain we'd had since before Memorial Day.
even mentioning that the game programs show that
the facility was first used Nov. 1, 1913 in a game vs. Case Tech and that
there are panoramic photos of the 1914 game with Case, showing the
grandstand, on E-Bay. (An image of the same photo is also posted on
this site and you can see it by clicking
them
my membership card from the original incarnation of the group, yellowed
inside the vinyl, like something from the Civil War. Back then, we met
in northwest corner of the dank old basement of the pre-reconstruction
Chapman Hall. 
cheerleaders were cute and quite peppy in tyraditional outfits, mostly
white, trimmed in their school's colors of magenta and black. The
players wore white jerseys, with bright red numerals and black trousers and
helmets. Mount's ladies wore black, while MUCaw, the purple parrot,
appeared wearing a bright yellow crown, like the old Cleveland Browns
Brownie, who wore a crown, the years after championship seasons. Our
big purple flag made it's first appearance of the season.
Street,
Route 40. The first move, in 1930 , was necessitated by the widening
of US 40, and the elimination of "S" bridges, east and west of town. 
brief battle with cancer. Larry was a lifetime
resident of Alliance, he went to Kent State, but he was in the stands on Hartshorn Street, since the days when there were very few.