FR wins Buckeye basketball title

Editor’s note: With a void in sports, The Commercial Review will occasionally run past stories from key events in the area’s athletic history. This story, from March 27, 1971, recaps the Fort Recovery High School boys basketball team winning the OHSAA Class A state championship.

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COLUMBUS, Ohio — Fort Recovery’s Indians got out their war colors today and painted themselves victorious. The Tribe whipped Marion Pleasant, 70-57, thus claiming the school’s first state championship.

The first period saw a tense battle as the Spartans tried vainly to stay with the fast-riding Indians. The score at the end of the first frame stood at 15-14 with the Fort on top.

Al Souder’s crew then began ripping the nets and the Spartans were seemingly helpless against the scoring barrage. The Indians tallied 18 more points to head for the locker room at half, leading 33-24.

In the third stanza, Marion tried a full-court press which had limited success. Th Fort quickly worked its way around the press and, by the end of three, they extended their lead by two, 46-35.

The taste of the championship must have been felt by the Indians at the start of the fourth, because the Tribe blew the game apart. Led by 6-5 senior Don Jutte, the Indians romped as the Spartans stood by, watching.

The unofficial scoring for the Indians is: Jutte – 18, Ron May – 12, Jon Wendel – 6, Ed Snyder – 9, Kevin Dilworth – 15, Mike Wilson – 2, Steve Reinhard – 4, Don Eichenaur – 2 Fred Aisenbrey – 2, Mike Denney – 0, Steve Grieshop – 0 and Rick Wendel – 0.

Souder emptied his bench with about four minutes left in the game. That was when the celebration began, and it still is continuing. Fort Recovery is Number 1!

The Fort Recovery Indians’ trip to the championship game of the Ohio Class A basketball tournament today started a long time ago — like in the fall of 1966.

The Indians were getting ready for the 1966-67 basketball season then.

Nobody expected great things, least of all Fort coach Al Souder, who was going into his seventh season as a high school varsity basketball coach with six straight losing campaigns behind him. That included the previous 1965-66 season, during which the Indians had posted a 6-14 won-lost record.

It had been a while since the Fort had had a winning basketball team, and the boys on that team didn’t know what it felt like to win a lot.

Winning is what the Indians learned that season, taking 16 straight triumphs before dropping one and then advancing to the district tournament before being beaten again. The Indians finished that year with a 22-2 record. They haven’t had a losing season since then, and have brought home at least one tournament trophy in three of the four hardwood tours after that.

Success breeds success, it seems.

After at first big year the was a lot more interest in basketball at Fort Recovery High. No more than 28 boys had ever turned out to try for places on the team in Souder’s first three years at the Fort. When the 1966-67 campaign was nearly over 36 boys showed up for a basketball meeting.

All the players from that first outstanding season have graduated long since, but the Indians have still kept rolling along. None of the boys on this year’s Fort Recovery team were even in the high school yet when the Tribe took its first step toward becoming what we in this business call a “perennial powerhouse.”

Sometimes the Indians’ success has been a surprise. No one was too startled when the 1968-69 Indians, with three starters and some promising reserves back from what had been a good team the year before, won 19 games and lost just one during the regular season. The 1969 outfit’s advance to the semi-final round of the state tourney wasn’t a complete shock either.

But before the current season began it didn’t seem that the Indians would make it that far again, let alone one game farther. They had three starters back in forwards Don Jutte and Ron May and guard Ed Snyder, but the other two spots were real question marks. Ultimately getting the call were a senior who had spent most of his varsity career on the bench and an untried sophomore.

Both the senior, John Wendel, and the sophomore, Kevin Dilworth, had hard acts to follow. Wendel, at 6-3, had to fill the shoes of 6-7, two-year starter, All-Mercer County league Lyle Monroe at center. Dilworth, just 5-8, was called upon to make up the scoring slack left by the graduation of Wally Thien.

Things were changed around some in other ways, too. Monroe’s graduation put the primary responsibility of grabbing rebounds on the shoulders of Jutte, at 6-5 the only “big man” on the club.

The Fort cagers responded well to the challenge, needles to say. They had to shake off some very untimely defeats, such as a 78-77 loss early in the year to arch-rival Bryant, and a 64-60 setback handed out by Versailles in the last regular-season game.

The Indians have had their scoring averages trimmed a lot by the big floors and rugged competition they’ve faced in the tourney, but the attack still remains as balanced as it was during the regular season. All five starters averaged in double figures through the first seven tourney games. Snyder led with a 16.4 points per game mark, followed by Jutte at 12.7, Dilworth at 11.7, Wendel at 11.6, and May at 11.3.

One of the most surprising things about the Indians in this tourney, though, has been their free throw shooting. “I thought you said your boys couldn’t hit free throws,” one reporter said to Souder last week after the Indians hit 78 percent from the foul line to beat Sidney Lehman for the regional title at Dayton.

“Well, they didn’t before,” answered Souder, whose squad hit just .629 from the stripe for the regular season. In seven tourney games they’ve been connecting at a .691 clip, and all five Tribe starters have improved their individual percentages.

But then, the Indians have been coming up with surprises for a long time now. And maybe that has been the most fun of all.