TERRY MOSHER
Ron Mosher (top) celebrating with his Cuba =(NY) football team an undefeated season
After 64 years, my second oldest brother, Ron Mosher, will be inducted into the Portville Central School Hall of Fame on Sept. 9. This is not only exciting for me, but will mean there is just one more Mosher – brother David, who is three years older than me – to get his rightful place in the school’s hall of fame;
Portville Central School is located in the Southern Tier of New York State in the quaint village of Portville that sits along the meandering Allegheny River and is nestled in one of the many valleys of the Allegheny foot hills about a mile from the northern Pennsylvania border.
It is there in Portville where I spent my first 14 years and where my oldest brother Ray, then Ron followed by David reached star status in various high school sports. Ray played football and baseball and Ron and David did four sports – football, basketball, baseball and track and field.
David graduated from Portville in 1955 and his three years as a six-foot-two post player produced the top career scoring leader and 61 years later he’s still No. 11 on the all-time career scoring ladder at Portville.
Ron was a 5-10 point guard before they named the position point guard and led his team in scoring for three of the four years he played and started on the varsity. He was named all-county four years. He also was the team’s quarterback in football three years, was a top-notch pitcher for three years on the baseball team, throwing two no-hitters, and ran the 100-yard dash in 10 seconds flat for the track and field team.
He coached football for 25 years at Cuba, N.Y., was the school’s athletic director and also coached golf. He continued to coach basketball and football at various other schools until two years ago and still golfs, bowls and if you ask will throw horseshoes good enough to be again a state champion he once was.
I’m proud that they finally took Ron in. He belongs there, as does David, who is on the short list to be inducted.
Ron is one of the most extreme competitors I have known. He will compete in anything and beat you. I was unbeaten in Ping Pong in college and one summer when I was back in New York State I agreed to play Ron a game (instead of horseshoes which he wanted me to play), figuring I was still good enough to beat him.
Wrong.
But I should have known better. I have yet to beat him in anything. Another year when I was back there and he was still the football coach at Cuba, I helped him get the football gear out that was stored in a storage space just off the school gym. I figured now was the chance to beat him in a game of H-O-R-S-E because I had been practicing for years at the Bremerton Family YMCA and had gotten pretty good at hitting threes and he had gotten older and was more occupied with horseshoes and football and I figured I had the edge.
Wrong again.
He still had his old two-hand set shot that he employed in high school in the late 1940s and early 50s and he was deadly with it. He easily beat me after two games and I wisely rejected a third game.
As a side note, I did the same thing to David once when I visited him at his home in Maryland. We went out to his hoop in his driveway and he started hitting shots that traveled between branches of a tree and clipped leaves, leaving me dumbfounded and beaten once again.
So it goes. I guess I can’t win for losing.
Maybe I can whip up a good sandwich. I’m off to try that.
Be well pal.
Be careful out there.
Have a good day.
You are loved.