Tradition of excellence: Findlay to honor 1971 baseball team

Findlay High School baseball coach Ron Ammons loves weaving building blocks like tradition, history and legacy into his program. All of those factors will be center stage Thursday when the high school, in recognition of the 50th anniversary of the school winning the 1971 Class AAA state baseball championship, will honor the coaches, the team and the accomplishment they achieved in a ceremony at the school's baseball field. "We're always preaching about tradition, and this is an opportunity for our guys to see some of the elites who represented our program," Ammons said. "We want to reestablish some of that tradition, and the guys who were on that team and are coming back for this, they epitomize that." Woody Curlis, who compiled a 174-50 record in 10 seasons as head coach and a 209-72 overall record, had guided a young Findlay team to the Class AA state semifinals in 1970. Hopes were running high heading into the 1971 season, but the Trojans' start did not live up to expectations. "We took a spring trip to Cincinnati and played some of those good teams down there," said Dale Swiger, a junior first baseman on that team. "We started out terrible. We only won one of our first four, five games. We stunk it up." Curlis had confidence in his team, though. And soon enough, it paid off. "The turning point in our season — and Terry Moore will tell you this, too, because it's one of his favorite moments — was the game we played at Toledo Whitmer," Swiger said. "Whitmer was undefeated, 10-0 I believe, and ranked pretty high (in the state polls). We went up there and beat them at their place. That turned the tide for our season right then and there. We kind of got our P's and Q's straightened out. We started hitting the ball and we started scoring runs." Findlay didn't win the Buckeye Conference regular season title, and lost in the semifinals of the league playoffs. When the OHSAA tournament rolled around, though, the Trojans were another team. Led by the stellar play of 6-foot-6 junior pitcher Chuck Rogers — who went on to lead Michigan to a pair of Big Ten baseball championship before embarking on a nine-year career in professional baseball — the Trojans won sectional, district and regional titles for the second straight year. In the inaugural Class AAA state tournament in Columbus, the Trojans got a three-run home run from Randy Hamlin and blanked Warren Western Reserve 4-0 in the semifinals. A day later, and sparked by a pinch-hit three-run triple by sophomore Joe Benjamin in the top of the seventh inning, the Trojans beat Kettering Fairmont 10-8 in eight innings for the championship. "We caught fire in 1971 like every season at tournament time, but this time we won it all," Rogers said. "It seemed as though we had two schedules, the regular season and then the tournament. For some reason we were a different team when the tournament came around. "That year in particular, Woody made some incredible decisions and moves that made a huge difference in our success. Woody was loose and he knew we had great talent, so he let us do our thing. We had great pitching and defense — that's what won games — but Woody was a great student of the game, provided great leadership, and he made it fun to play. Of course, winning always makes it easy to have fun, and we did that very effectively over the years." Curlis would guide Findlay to five Buckeye Conference championships, along with seven sectional, six district and five regional titles. In addition to the 1971 state championship, the Trojans were state runners-up in 1972 and a state semifinalist in 1970, 1976 and 1977. "Woody's style was unique," Swiger said. "Sometimes you might question what in the world he was doing, but he knew the game, he knew his players, and he had a way of getting the best out of them." Thursday's activities are set to begin at 5 p.m. Following the ceremony, Findlay will play Toledo St. John's in a key Three Rivers Athletic Conference contest. St. John's and Oregon Clay sit atop the TRAC standings at 9-2; Findlay is 9-3 in the league. Hanneman: 419-427-8408