Powerhouses of Ohio High School Football by Tim Raab

Author:Tim Raab
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Published: 2019-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Ten players from the 1962 Toledo Central Catholic team went on to play Division I football, including all four members of their offensive backfield.

Wyoming High School: A Singular 1960s Story

Wyoming High School is in Wyoming, Ohio, down in Hamilton County in the southwestern corner of the state. Wyoming began as a kind of a “bedroom” community for workers in neighboring areas, and it wasn’t until the railroad went through that businesses began to call Wyoming proper their home. Right before the Civil War, the village was named Wyoming, and it wasn’t until 1949 that it officially became a town.

The Wyoming school system is outstanding and usually ranked among the best in the state and nationwide. Five students from the class of 1885 were the first to graduate from Wyoming High School, and many thousands have since done the same. The school started playing football in 1919, and up through the 1940s, it did not suffer a losing season, its worst season coming in at 5-4-1 in 1939. The 1940s started off similarly, going 5-2-1, and then, in an amazing show of football prowess, the team went undefeated, untied and unscored on (182–0 in points) in 1941! That season set them in a class by themselves, for just a handful of teams in Ohio and America have achieved such perfection.

The years following that record book season were tough ones. The war was on, and the nucleus for good teams was sometimes hard to come by. The Cowboys had consecutive losing seasons up until 1948, when they got back on track to the tune of 6-2 and then went 8-1 in 1949. The first half of the 1950s were mediocre ones, 7-1-1 in 1950, 5-2-1 in 1952 and 6-3 in 1954. It was not until 1956 that the Cowboys would start to put together a string of winning seasons lasting twenty-three years that would be due, primarily, to one man: Coach Bob Lewis.

Lewis was a Portsmouth High grad and a graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, Ohio, served in the navy and then coached at Marysville High School before moving on to Wyoming. Reportedly, he was on his way to a Cincinnati Reds baseball game when he stopped by the school for an interview! Lewis brought with him a penchant for hard work, paying attention to details and discipline. With those traits well in hand, he took the Cowboys to new heights of achievement. Having gone 1-6-2 in 1955, Lewis got an 8-2 season out of them his first year in 1956, a significant turnaround. The next few years in the Lewis stimulation package looked like this:

1957 7-1-1

1958 9-0

1959 9-0

1960 8-0-2

1961 8-1-1

Coach Lewis entered the 1962 season with a strong bunch of young men and high expectations. Wyoming at this time in history was a small but affluent town that reflected all the good things about those types of communities. People knew everyone, everyone knew them and all of them felt safe. It was a prosperous, happy place that seemed somewhat unaffected by the major ebbs and flows that history tells us shaped kids at the time.

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