Thanks Blaine Bierley!
You and Jack H Plymale are excellent PHS athletic archivists. Jim fout, Doc Yeagle, and Jack H Plymale let me share the seat that Paul Walker normally shared with them, courtesy of Jim Fout, Ex PHS QB (43-45?) and OSU FB player. They played fb for Paul Walker at Portsmouth and remained close with Coach Walker throughout his remaining years.
Coach shared with his named PHS friends above that he also had parental pressures. A lady pestered him that her son could provide the same leadership as Jerry L, used in his place in the Middie offense. Coach yielded in the semi-final game with Columbus North coached by Frank Truitt, a friend of ours. The angry lady was proven quite wrong as the Middies lost that semi-final game.
Coach regretted his mistake but he didn't make many in coaching.
----- Original Message -----
From: Blaine Bierley
To: Sam Kegley
Sent: Tuesday, January 18, 2011 06:23
Subject: Remembering Jerry Lucas
“Jerry Lucas”
In my senior year at Portsmouth High School (1954-1955) the
Trojans had an outstanding basketball team. During the regular season
we won 15 games and lost only 3. Our tournament record ended at 5 and 1
when we lost to Cincinnati Hughes. Overall, Coach George Heller’s
miraculous “Six Shooters” posted a fine record of 20 wins and
4 losses.
One of the things that made that 54-55 season great was that the Trojans made a clean sweep of Ohio’s perennial cage powers. We defeated Middletown, Hamilton, and Springfield each twice--both in Grant Gym and on their home floors.
In the seventh game of the season the Trojans beat Middletown 81 to 60 at Middletown. Billy Clifford was the Trojan’s high scorer with 28 points with Curt Gentry close behind with 24 points. In the twelfth game of the season, at U.S. Grant gymnasium, PHS beat the Middies 56 to 41. This time Curt Gentry led the Trojans with 18 points and Milt Parker was close on his heels with 14 points.
I’m sure that you recall all the names of those “Six Shooters”:
senior Curt Gentry, senior Milton Parker, senior Billy Clifford, junior Jerry
Higgins, junior Don “Duck” Frazier, and junior Bruce Johnson. Coach Heller
was assisted that season by Charles Lorentz and Richard Hopkins, Jr.
Also, I wouldn’t want to fail to mention our two fine senior basketball managers: Kenny Amick and Charlie McKelvey.
However, the next year a young sophomore from Middletown by the name of Jerry Lucas burst upon the Ohio basketball scene and everything changed. The Trojan 1955-1956 basketball season was still a good one. The Trojans went 16 and 7. But, they lost to Middletown three times that season, and it was all Jerry Lucas’ fault! In fact, PHS couldn’t defeat Middletown for as long as Jerry Lucas was on the team. We lost to the Middies twice during the 1956-1957 season and twice again during the 1957-1958 season. Unfortunately, the Trojans stood 0-7 against Middletown during the Lucas reign. It was not unusual for Lucas to score 30 to 40 points in games against Portsmouth--as he did with most other rivals.
Lucas was a six foot-eight inch phenomenon from a working class family (his father was a pressman in a paper mill and his mother worked on an assembly line in a box factory) who only lost one game in the three years that he played varsity basketball for Middletown.
Lucas became the most dominating high school basketball player that the State of Ohio had seen to that point in time.
Fifty years ago (1956) Lucas, a sophomore, led Middletown to the big school (Class A) championship by scoring 97 points in the Middies’ two state-tournament games in Cleveland.
In the semi-final game undefeated Middletown faced undefeated Cleveland East Tech. Middletown won easily, 99 to 78, and Lucas scored 53 points, a state tournament record.
In the final game undefeated Middletown played Canton McKinley for the state crown. Again, Middletown easily topped Canton McKinley, 91 to 69, with Lucas scoring 44 points while holding his counterpoint to a single point.
Middletown repeated as state champions the next year (1957) and extended its winning streak to 76 games before losing to Columbus North in the state semi-finals in 1958. The Middies’ streak remains the longest in Ohio boys basketball history. Lucas twice earned Ohio Player of the Year and Parade magazine’s All-American honor. He scored a state record of 2,466 points in his varsity career.
Middletown, a booming town in the 1950s (much like Portsmouth) always embraced its Middies. It is said that managers would have to shut down factories on basketball Friday nights because the workers would not show up for work, electing either to go to the games or stay home and listen to them on the radio.
Lucas would go on to win a national NCAA title at The Ohio State University, an Olympic gold medal in the 1960 games at Rome, and an NBA championship with the New York Knicks . He became the first player to win championships at all four levels (high school, college, Olympic, and professional).
After Lucas graduated, Middletown’s basketball program began a long decline, as did the city itself when the steel industry began to crumble. But for three years beginning some fifty years ago, Middletown was the center of the Ohio high school basketball universe--thanks to Jerry Lucas.
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