If the adage “it takes one to know one” is true, the burgeoning Centre County Sports Hall of Fame has the right man doing its PR.
Or, to be more exact, The Write Man.
Ron Bracken is a county legend himself, having covered high school and Penn State sports for over four decades for the local newspaper.
Save for a short stint at an ill-fated magazine covering PSU sports, Bracken was a sportswriter, columnist, book author and sometimes-sports editor for the Centre Daily Times from December 1967 to June 2008.
That’s 487 months of writing and directing coverage of the five county schools and not-always Dear Old State. He covered thousands of sporting contests and wrote about hundreds of athletes, interviewing scores of coaches along the way.
Initially hired by Doug MacDonald – a legend himself – Bracken was equally at home at a Bald Eagle-Bellefonte wrestling match in a January deep-freeze as he was covering the Nittany Lion football in the 1987 Fiesta Bowl in Arizona. And he most likely enjoyed the former as much as the latter.
He mentored and tutored a never-ending stream of young journalists (including yours truly in the mid-1980s) while seamlessly making the decade-by-decade transition from linotype to Radio Shack TRS 80 to today’s laptop. Bracken had RB Eyes that were rarely clouded by BS coach-speak or JVP push-back. For decades, he produced honest and lively prose heightened by the enviable combination of fast writing and quick wit.
The result was a style that was distinctly Brackwater. He was the CDT sports editor through three separate stints, the final one coming with an “interim” tag that lasted from 1997 to the day in 2008 when he exited the Seedy-Tee newsroom next to the old Corning plant and drove off in a limo into the sunset.
(OK, he went home to Philipsburg.)
And that’s where he’s stayed, mostly, save for some occasional stringing for the CDT. He’s now 72 – but looks like he did when he was 52, I swear to God – and meets a group of buddies every morning for some laps around the local high school track and then some lies and coffee at a buddy’s nearby home.
Bracken is the perfect point person for the Centre County Sports Hall of Fame. A Port Matilda native and Bald Eagle High School grad, he has covered county high school athletes and coaches through six decades – the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, ’00s and right on into the ‘10s. He still keeps on top of the local sports scene by continuing to write the CDT’s traditional weekly local collegiate athlete wrap-up, a paper hallmark started by “Big D” McDonald years ago.
Bracken knows his stuff. Of course, so do his fellow board members. The board is comprised of many equally-legendary types, several of whom have their roots in wrestling. Which suits Bracken just fine.
“Wrestling guys are the ones who get off their butt and get things done,” cracked Bracken.
FAME’S END GAME
In this case that’s the establishment of the Centre County Sports HOF, which is the newest chapter of the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame. The group already has 80 dues-paying members in its quest to induct its first class of 10 or so in 2017. Part of the drive to establish the hall is a fundraising golf tournament at Nittany Country Club planned for October. (Dues-payers get to nominate and vote folks into the Centre County HOF, and also get to vote on the state hall as well.) Interested in contributing – and voting? Contact Lloyd Rhoades at LAR2@psu.edu or (814) 933-0121.
Bracken had proposed the Hall in print twice in the past, three decades ago and then around the turn of the century. The idea finally took last November, when brothers and wrestling legends – there’s that word again – Dick and Lloyd Rhoades decided the hall had enough riding time and it was time to pin some folks down on getting it started.
So they reached out to Bracken and McDonald and a number of others – all names if you’re over 40 and know Centre County sports that you would easily recognize. They met and hashed out the details.
“To be eligible, someone must either be a native of Centre County or have spent the majority of their lives here,” explained Bracken, his native tongue and palate reinforced by his choice of The Waffle Shop by Blue Course Drive as a place to meet, eat and talk HOF earlier this week. “For a county with this kind of sports history and heritage, a hall of fame is appropriate.
“This is for Centre County, not Penn State. Penn State will not overshadow what we’re looking to accomplish. We have a lot of knowledgeable people helping to make the selections. There’s a concerted effort to have representatives from the Philipsburg, Bellefonte, Penns Valley, Bald Eagle and State College schools represented. Character will be important.”
BOARD MEMBERS
The board of directors includes Keith Bierly, former Centre County commissioner; Bracken; Don Burris, former BEA assistant wrestling coach; McDonald; Bud Meredith, former Penn State ticket manager; Bud O’Brien, former P-O football coach and radio announcer; Norm Palovcsik, former PIAA champion and Penn State wrestler from Clearfield; Ron Pavlechko, former State College football coach and athletic director; Ron Pifer, a former two-time PIAA wrestling champion at Bellefonte, NCAA runner-up and three-time All-American at Penn State; Bucky Quici, former Bellefonte girls’ basketball and softball coach; Lloyd (BEA youth wrestling coach) and Dick (former BEA wrestling coach) Rhoades; Scott Vogt, former Penns Valley athlete; and John Wetzler, a former football and softball coach at Bellefonte.
The quintessential first-ballot selections are Centre County natives like Matt Suhey and John Montgomery Ward. Suhey, the State High running back whose brothers Paul and Larry were great athletes as well, was a stalwart at Penn State and with the Chicago Bears. “I’ve never seen anyone like Matt,” said Bracken. “He’s the best high school running back I ever covered.”
Ward, born in 1860, was known as Monte Ward, and attended Bellefonte Academy. A baseball infielder and pitcher, he helped create the first professional sports players’ union. A member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, Ward played for the Providence Grays, Brooklyn Grooms and New York Giants. He threw the second perfect game in pro baseball history and pitched the longest complete game shutout in history, defeating the Detroit Wolverines 1-0 in 18 innings.
And no, Bracken did not cover that game.
But the former CDT sports editor knows a good thing when he sees it. The Centre County Sports HOF won’t be limited to those who were successful at the scholastic and collegiate levels.
“We have a rich history with county league baseball in Centre County,” Bracken said. “We’ll consider those folks, plus fast-pitch and slow-pitch softball players, and golfers and bowlers, too. Don’t forget Bruce Parkhill was from State College and an All-American soccer goalie at Lock Haven, in addition to coaching basketball at Penn State. And his brother Barry was some kind of basketball player at Virginia.”
NO MIT FOR MATT
Bracken has a soft spot for softball. He played competitively until his mid-50s and once put together a CDT team that featured the likes of one Matt Suhey.
“Matt was a vastly under-appreciated athlete,” Bracken said. “The things he could do in softball were amazing. He could hit a ball to the shortstop and beat the throw to first.
“There was this one game where Matt was playing rover in the outfield, between a guy in left and me in center. There was a shot that was coming between us, and as the guy in left and I started running to the ball, Matt reached out with his bare hand and plucked the softball out of the sky.”
It was, added Bracken, a Hall of Fame catch.
