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Now's the time to make it happen
Let's play the other Shenandoahs, home & away
by CHUCK OFFENBURGER
As you probably heard or read, the Iowa High School Athletic Association last week released the new districts for high school football for the next two seasons in the state. That's going to result in a total rescheduling of prep football games for 2012 and 2013.
Now, for purposes of this column, let's talk about the new Class 2A District No. 8, the one in which my alma mater's team, the Shenandoah Mustangs, have been assigned.
I love the new district because it includes the SHS traditional rivals, Clarinda and Red Oak, along with Clarinda Academy, Carroll Kuemper Catholic, OA-BCIG of Ida Grove, and JSPC of Jefferson. So, each of the schools will have six games in district play. In addition, they can also ask the IHSAA to assign them a couple more games against non-district competition to fill out their schedules.
So, here's my idea for Shenandoah: Let's ask that we be scheduled against one or both of the other Shenandoahs!
That would be Page County High School in Shenandoah, Virginia – and no kidding, it's Page County out there, too. And Shenandoah Valley High School in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania.
Yes, I've mentioned this idea before. It's been a longtime dream that Bill Hillman, a former Mustang football player who now owns the Depot Deli Restaurant in Shenandoah, and I have shared.
"I've thought about this for a long time," said Hillman. "It doesn't really have much to do with football, except that the fall of the year is a great time for people to travel, and it'd be fun to kind of center this around a football game. What it's really all about is exposing our kids to other places and other cultures, and actually it'd be just as good for the coaches, parents and other fans who'd travel, too.
"Some people know that in 1936 and '37, we had great football in Shenandoah," he continued. "In 1936, we were unbeaten. In 1937, we went all the way through the season unbeaten until Red Oak tied us in the Armistice Day game. And then we ended the season by the team taking sack lunches and riding a bus all the way to Miami, Florida, where they played the largest high school in that city. We got waxed (26-0), but that didn't really matter. The important thing is our players talked about that experience the rest of their lives. I'm sure that doing something like that when they were young changed their outlook on the world."
So now, when our popular football coach/athletic director P.J. Hedrington, continues the rebuilding of the Mustang football program after our three-victory season last fall, it seems like an excellent time to do something big again. Let's schedule the other Shenandoahs. Let's have home & away arrangements with both the Virginia school and the Pennsylvania school. We'd go into this realizing that with all the financial and logistical challenges, it will probably take several years to get two games played with each of those schools – one at their place, one at Mustang Field in our Shenandoah. And if one or both of those schools doesn't want to come all the way to Iowa to play, or can't afford it, then let's still ask if we can come play them in their communities.
"I think it'd be fantastic," Hillman said. "Of course, I'm sure we'd have to do a lot of fundraising to cover the costs of the trips. But I'd be all over that – I'd love to do that kind of thing. And yes, I think it's doable."
I'll join right in with Hillman on that. One more thing: When we send the football team on these trips, we want to send the band and cheerleaders, too.
I can hardly believe I've reached my grand old age without having visited either Shenandoah, Va., or Shenandoah, Pa., especially when I've been very close to both of them on several trips. Hillman visited the Shenandoah in Virginia in the 1970s. Another of our local pals, Howard Chesshire, was in the Virginia town in the last couple of years and has shared photos of the place with us.
"We think our Shenandoah is really a beautiful place," Mayor Clinton Lucas, who has headed the Virginia city of 2,200 people for nearly 22 years, told me this week. "We're in the famous Shenandoah Valley of northern Virginia. We've got the Blue Ridge Mountains on one side of us, with Skyline Drive going right along the top of that range. On the other side of us we've got Massanutten Mountain from another range. I guess we've been best-known during our history as a railroad town. Today, most of our people work in construction and other industries over this whole area, and it's been kind of a challenging time, with the economy like it's been."
Most famous Shenandoah, Virginians? "Probably the Comer brothers, who were great baseball players," Mayor Lucas said. "Wayne Comer had a pretty good career with the Detroit Tigers and a couple other teams," in the late 1960s and '70s.
Keith Cubbage, an alumnus and now the athletic director at Page County High there in Shenandoah, said there are about 600 students in grades 9-thru-12. When he heard that our Shenandoah football team in Iowa is now in recovery after going winless for more than three seasons, he said, "I know how that feels. Our Panthers haven't won a game in the last two seasons. But at the same time, we've still had a successful athletic program. We won the state baseball championship last spring, and we were state runner-up in basketball last year. I think over the years, we've won state team championships in six different sports."
I had more trouble scouting Shenandoah Valley High in the east-central Pennsylvania town of Shenandoah, which is located 100 miles northwest of Philadelphia, at the south end of the Pocono Mountains. When I was using email to try to set-up an interview with athletic director Jeff Maksimik, he thought I was confused. "Are you sure you have the correct Shenandoah?" he wrote back. "Our school is located in Pennsylvania, not Iowa."
But I had a good visit with Mary Luscavage, who is the manager of the Downtown Shenandoah, Inc., a group business leaders and boosters who are trying to renovate and restore the historic business district in the Pennsylvania town of 5,300.
"Our Shenandoah grew up as a coal mining and industrial town, and we've been a very ethnically diverse place ever since we were founded, and we still are today," Luscavage said. "First it was the English, Welsh, Irish and Germans who came to work the mines. Then later it was the Polish, the Lithuanians, Ukrainians and others. Today it's Latinos and others. But always very diverse. You can see it in our historic buildings. A lot of our businesses and many of our churches have elaborate styles that were typical of certain cultures. St. Michael's Ukrainian Catholic Church is our most famous church, and it's just beautiful. It's really a tourist attraction."
The population soared above 25,000 by 1920, but then strikes in the coal mines and other economic problems forced decline. Now a lot of the mining and all 18 garment factories that were once in the community are gone. "We've been a very depressed area in recent times, but we're working hard to turn it around," Luscavage said. The motto of her downtown redevelopment group is, "Return to Prominence and Prosperity."
Another historical note: This Shenandoah in Pennsylvania also produced a famous set of brothers – jazz band leaders Tommy & Jimmy Dorsey, who were leading America's hottest music from the 1920s into the '50s.
Shenandoah Valley High School "is probably known best as a football school," Luscavage said. Last falls's Blue Devils team went 8-4. They average about 100 students in each of the four high school classes.
So there you have it – three Shenandoahs, all rather hungry for prosperity and certainly for football victories, too. All three would probably benefit from doing something unusual and big. "We should probably all be sister cities," said Hillman. "If we get people traveling back and forth, exchanging ideas, maybe even doing some business, good things could happen."
P.S., for readers in Virginia and Pennsylvania, and we expect this column will have some: Our town of Shenandoah in Iowa produced a rather famous set of brothers, too. The Everly Brothers, Don & Phil, charter members of the national Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame. Let's all rock.
Now's the time to make it happen So, here is the link: http://www.kmaland.com/newsletter/jan2712/newsletter.asp
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