200 Memories Central

WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. – Welcome back to our celebration of 200 moments, memories, coaches and student-athletes from the history of Lycoming College athletics. In this sixth series of moments, we meet two coaches that left an impact a half-century later and we are introduced to the corps of the beginning of the first great dynasty in the school’s history as the Warrior wrestling squad won its first MAC title in 1962.

Meanwhile, the athletic department solidified, with the baseball, basketball, football, golf, soccer, swimming, tennis and wrestling teams giving the school eight sports since 1957, the largest the department had ever been.

With no more ado, here are moments 51-60 in our series of 200:

51. Shirley Curtis, 1959 – Started two years after the Tomahawk Award, the Pocahontas Award was begun as the female counterpart to the award given to the outstanding male athlete. Despite varsity sports still 13 years away from their first appearance at the College, the Pocahontas Award was given to the best athlete that competed in the Women’s Athletic Association. Shirley Curtis, a chemistry major from Olean, N.Y., was a four-year member of the association, serving as the intramural manager as a junior before becoming the president as a senior. She also served as president of the Outing Club and was a two-year member of the A Capella Choir. Curtis helped the Warriors win a “Playday” with Mansfield, Susquehanna and Bloomsburg on Valentine’s Day in 1959, with women from the college competing in basketball, swimming, volleyball and table tennis. The playdays continued throughout the ’60s before varsity sports began to appear at the College.

52. Bowman Field, 1958-61 – By the late 1950s, it had become clear that the old College Field wasn’t a great venue for football. The stands were small and hadn’t been replaced in 30 years. The school began to look for a replacement and in 1958, the school bought land on the corner of Union and Packer Avenue. As the school planned what to do with the field and build it, it looked for a new home for its outdoor sports teams. It was found down Fourth Street at Bowman Field. To accommodate the football team, the right field wall was moved back at the field and 5,000 fans could fit into the field. For four years, the team used the field as it primary home, posting an 8-7 mark. Bowman Field, which was built in 1925, also served as the home of the baseball team during that period and continued to host the team until the program was discontinued in 1972. Today, Bowman Field is still used by the Crosscutters, a New York-Penn League minor league team.

53. Mort Rauff, 1960-73 – A 1941 graduate of Williamsport Dickinson Seminary and Junior College, Rauff took a rather circuitous route to his later contributions as the school’s all-time winningest men’s swimming coach. A football player at Dickinson Junior College and at Cornell University, where he graduated in 1942, Rauff enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserves and following his graduation at Cornell, he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant. After World War II, he moved back to Williamsport and began a career as an insurance agent while still serving in the Marine Reserves. When a Marine Corps major, Ben Leffler, began to volunteer and started a swimming team at the YWCA, Rauff struck up a friendship with Leffler, who also took on the duties as head swim coach at Lycoming in 1959. When Leffler was reassigned the next year, Rauff took over the team. In the next 13 years, his teams recorded eight straight winning seasons from 1961-69 and mentored five MAC champions. He posted an 81-69-2 (.539) all-time record, still the record for the men’s team at the school. After he stepped down as coach in 1973, Rauff still taught in the business department. After his death in 1985, many swim program alumni joined together to start the Mort Rauff Memorial Scholarship.

54. Harry Romig, 1960 – One of the first stars in Budd Whitehill’s wrestling team, Harry Romig broke onto the national scene in 1960 when he won the first national title in school history, taking the 137-pound title at the NAIA Championships in Lock Haven, Pa. A part of the first full recruiting class under Whitehill, Romig won two Middle Atlantic Conference titles and two Most Outstanding Wrestler awards at the MACs in his three-year career.

55. Luke Kauffman, 1959-62 – While the Lycoming College baseball team struggled to gain traction at the school during the late ‘50s due to a myriad of problems, including a lack of practice space and uncooperative spring weather, the team did have several very good players, led by Luke Kauffman. As a freshman, he helped the team to an 8-5 record and the team also finished .500 during his junior season. A solid hitter as a first baseman, Kauffman solidified the heart of the lineup, posting a .312 career average and he earned All-MAC honors as a senior. He was inducted into the athletics hall of fame in 1993.

56. David Person Field, 1962 – As much a part of Williamsport’s athletic history as any stadium in Lycoming County, David Person Field has been the setting for Lycoming College football for the past 50 years at the corner of Union Avenue and Packer Street. During Lycoming’s stay inside the friendly confines of Person Field, the team has won 12 conference football titles and hosted 14 NCAA playoff football games. Lycoming College purchased eight acres of land from the Scottish Rite in 1958 for $60,000 for use as the school’s athletic complex. Officially opened in 1961 and used by the soccer and track and field teams, College Field became the home of the football team in 1962, giving the Warriors a permanent home. The field takes its name from the Person family, who lives across the field on Lincoln Avenue. Their generosity to the College through the years was recognized in 1991 when the field was named Person Field.  When their son and brother, David Person, lost his battle with cancer at the age of 38 in 1995, the family requested that the field be renamed in memory of him. David Person was fond of a Thanksgiving Day family tradition when the Persons would gather on the football field for a lively game of touch football. On the west side of the visitors’ stands, you can see a gate in the fence to which the Person family has its own key to carry on that tradition of family football games on Thanksgiving Day.

57. Dutch Burch, 1962-94 – A graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, where he remains in the record books as one of the best scorers in school history, Clarence “Dutch” Burch came to Lycoming in 1962 and began one of the longest, most colorful and most successful careers in the annals of the College. After a 5-15 season in his first year at the helm, he quickly went about rebuilding the Warriors and he led the team to its first Middle Atlantic Conference regular-season championship in 1965-66, just three years later. He added two more titles in 1983-84 and 1984-85 and Lycoming made 11 appearances in the postseason during Burch's tenure. Lycoming enjoyed one of its finest seasons in 1984-85, compiling a then-school record 19 wins en route to a berth in the NCAA Division III Tournament. The Warriors lost in the first round of the tournament, 54-52, to a Widener team that reached the final four. Burch's Warriors never backed down from a challenge during his tenure, routinely facing Division I programs such as Bucknell, Lehigh, Navy and Army. Burch, who was MAC Coach of the Year in 1983-84, coached 17 first-team all-conference picks and two league most valuable players during his career. He also coached 11 of the program's 25 1,000-point scorers, including the all-time leading scorer, Rich Henninger, who posted 2,184 points in his four-year career from 1970-74. He also coached five of the program's top 10 all-time leading rebounders. Known as one of the true gentlemen of college basketball, Burch guided the Warriors to four Sam Schoenfeld Sportsmanship Awards, given annually by the Collegiate Basketball Officials Association. In addition to coaching basketball, Burch served as athletic director at Lycoming from 1976-83. He was inducted into the College's Athletics Hall of Fame in 1994.

58. First MAC Champions, 1962 – Just five years after he had started the program, head coach Budd Whitehill lifted the Warriors to one of the greatest accomplishments in the school’s history after helping the Warriors post an 11-1 dual meet record. Facing off against Wilkes, which had won four straight conference titles, along with future Division I programs such as Bucknell and Hofstra, the wrestling team won the first MAC title in school history. Along the way, the team won three individual MAC Championships. The Warriors entered the finals with the title almost in hand, with Bill Kehrig clinching the team title with a fall in his title bout at 137 pounds. The team also got a huge lift from freshman Dave Fortin, who entered the tournament with a 3-2 record, before rolling through four wins to take the 177-pound title at the tournament. Joe Confer wrapped up the Warriors’ individual titles, taking it at heavyweight. The team went on to place third at the NAIA National Tournament behind only Bloomsburg and Lock Haven, as Bill Guttermuth won the national title at 147 pounds, Bill Kehrig second at 137 pounds and Confer (heavyweight) and Lee Wolfe (123 pounds) each took fourth.  The tournament was the only small college national tournament until the NCAA College Division was established in 1963. Gutermuth was inducted into the College's Athletics Hall of Fame in its inaugural class of 1986, Kehrig was inducted in 1988, Wolfe in 1989 and Confer in 1991.

59. Bill Kehrig, 1958-62 – From the first time he stepped on the mat, mathematics major Bill Kehrig solidified the Warriors’ lineup, immediately helping the team to become a contender in the Middle Atlantic Conference. The Rochester, N.Y., native placed at the MAC Championships four times, including posting titles at 130 pounds as a junior and 137 pounds as a senior. He helped the team win the school’s first MAC title in 1962 and then went on to earn All-American honors when he took second at the NAIA Championships in Winona, Minn. He went on to the NCAA Championships, falling in the quarterfinals, but he still finished his career with a 42-1-1 dual meet record. A two-time team captain, Kehrig was inducted into the Iruska Honor Society and he was also the Student Government president. He was inducted into the College's Athletics Hall of Fame in 1988.

60. Gary Reed, April 1963 – A right-hander from Trevorton, Pa., Gary Reed was a history major who left his mark in the school’s record book when he tossed a seven-inning no-hitter in the first game of a doubleheader at Dickinson. The sophomore was untouchable for the Warriors, striking out six and walking just two. Meanwhile, the Warriors scored its lone run in the sixth inning of the contest when Gary Scranton singled home Brad Malone. Reed continued to pitch well for the Warriors before graduating in 1965 and he set a tone for the Dutch Burch-coached baseball teams of the later part of the decade, with several star pitchers keeping the team’s ERA low.

We hope you enjoyed our sixth look at 200 Memories. Stay tuned on Friday, Nov. 11, as moments 61-70 will be released, with moments capturing the period from 1963-1970, including the reemergence of the men’s basketball team.

As always, if you feel we missed an event or two that can be deemed a memorable moment or a memorable student-athlete, please share them. Tell us why they are special and any information you may have about that moment or person by contacting Sports Information Director Joe Guistina at guistina@lycoming.edu. Special addendums with your feedback will be released following the conclusion of the list in 2012.