WARM-UP TEAM FOR MASSILLON

When I came to Holy Name High School as principal in June 1960, I soon realized that the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati who staffed this coeducational school were excellent teachers. Having been educated in an all male high school (Cathedral Latin), I was under the mistaken impression that only male teachers could control and educate young men and women in a coeducational school. How wrong I was. However, I did find that one of the biggest problems at Holy Name was that football was the tail wagging the dog. This was confirmed some time later when I got a call from George Kozak, who asked if I could come to a luncheon meeting at Shaker Square the next day.

Kozak, an alumnus of Notre Dame University and an outstanding All American football player, was the supervisor of all East and West Senate athletic team programs. Holy Name belonged to the West Senate along with St. Ignatius, Lincoln, Rhodes, John Marshall, West Tech, and West High schools. Each school had a coaching staff, an athletic director, and a faculty manager.

At the luncheon Kozak revealed that the faculty manager of Holy Name had scheduled a game with John Adams on the same night that the athletic director of Holy Name had scheduled a game with Benedictine at the same field. There was a simple solution to the problem. Holy Name could play Benedictine the last game of the schedule instead of the first game. However, the athletic director of Benedictine strenuously objected. “We want our first game to be against Holy Name. Our second game is against Massillon. The Holy Name game is to be our warm-up game for Massillon.” (Massillon, a perennial powerhouse, had been state champs almost every year.)

Dr. Mike Effron, principal of John Adams, resolved the dispute when he said that John Adams would play Holy Name the last game of the regular season. He truly impressed me with his sensitivity to the issue.

I thanked him for his generosity and then I told him and Kozak that beginning in 1962 and every season thereafter during my tenure as principal, Holy Name’s first game of the season would be against John Adams and not Benedictine. The only time we would play Benedictine would be in the Charity Game if Benedictine won the East Senate and Holy Name won the West Senate. That never happened in my tenure as principal.

After the Kozak luncheon I drove to Garfield Heights practice field and told our coaches that our first game would be against Benedictine because their coaches regarded the Holy Name game as a “warm-up game” for Massillon.

It was anything but that for Benedictine because Holy Name, led by seniors Frank Solich and Mike Worley, trounced Benedictine 40 to 0. The Holy Name team also beat St. Ignatius, which had tied it in the regular season, and then went on to beat Cathedral Latin at the Charity Game and win the city championship.

Carl Falivene, our head football coach at Holy Name, told me that he and his coaches motivated the squad for the Benedictine game by referring to them as “just a warm-up team for Massillon.” This infuriated the Namers and they resolved to prove to their coaches that they were not a warm-up team for anyone.

The record proved they weren’t. In fact, the Holy Name team of 1961 were not only city champs but state champs as well. Both Worley and Solich went on to the University of Nebraska, and after Tom Osborne resigned as head coach there, Solich succeeded him.

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