Onondaga Central
Writing for the Onondaga alumni newspaper, Joyful Echoes, I had the opportunity to interview Don "Mort" Luchsinger, a graduate of the Class of 1966 for the “Alumni Spotlight.” By interviewing alumni and researching the past, I was able to learn about one controversial "loss" due to an error and who former Onondaga sports rivals were.
The controversial so-called "loss" is the 66-66 "loss" to Skaneateles basketball in February 1965. At the end of the game, the scoreboard showed Skaneateles winning 66-65. Per usual protocol, the referees went to the score table at the end of the game and the score in both team's scorebooks showed a 66-66 tie. The score in the book is known as the box score, which is a structured summary of the results from a sports competition, including a detailed record of points scored. As a result, Coach Fletcher, the Onondaga basketball coach at the time, ordered his team to stand by and to be ready for over-time, but the Lakers proceeded to exit the court quickly. The referees declared Skaneateles the winners. Following the game, Coach Fletcher, upset for his team, filed an official complaint with the Onondaga County Southern League, but the referee's ruling stood; Skaneateles's win was reaffirmed. This account was confirmed by a newspaper clipping written in the Syracuse-Herald Journal on Saturday, February 13, 1965. This is an unusual circumstance, where there are two different scores, one on the books and another on the scoreboard. We will never know who truly would have won in overtime. Fortunately, for athletes today, we now have video. On a side note, Mr. Luchsinger also remembers sportswriters during the 1960s writing in greater detail and more frequently about high school ports and athletes, for all sports and size schools. The Syracuse-Herald Journal, which covered Syracuse area high sports in depth, and from which I used old clippings to research this story, closed in 2001. Another interesting fact about sports in the 1960s at OCS was the teams we played and who our rivals were. Onondaga was in the Southern League for sports and played West Genesee, West Hill, Marcellus, and Skaneateles, along with Tully and Lafayette, who we currently play. Other schools that we compete against in football or basketball, among other sports, such as Weedsport, Port Byron, and Cato-Meridian, were not yet in the picture. Additionally, many OCS teams are in the Patriot League today and the Southern League is not in existence. In my interview with Mr. Luchsinger, he described West Hill, which was a newly formed school at the time, as a rival. Now they are a bigger school and we no longer play them, even at the Sectional or State level. In football in the 1960s, Onondaga played Marcellus. Mr. Luchinsger remembers losing to them, as even back then they were a bigger school than OCS, but enjoyed playing under the lights at their field because they were the only school at the time in the area to have lights on their football field. Overtime sports at OCS, in Section III, New York, and across the country may have changed, but in many ways, there are still similarities. At the core, regardless of the time, sports were composed of athletes who loved the sport, wanted to win, and put in the hard work to make winning a reality.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Tiger ProwlCurrent Editon Archives
October 2021
Categories |