Memory Lane
Redstone’s Lou DeSimone was tough as nails Lou DeSimone wasn’t big by football standards, but he was tough as nails, and that toughness served the former Redstone High School standout well. DeSimone was a mere 5-foot-8 and 145 pounds during his high school days and never got over 165 pounds when he was in college.
He excelled at football, but also played basketball, baseball and ran track for the Hawks.
“I never came out of the game when I was in high school,” DeSimone recalled. “They took me out the last minute of the last game I played in high school, but I never was on the sidelines.”
DeSimone was a part of some competitive teams at Redstone.
In his sophomore season the Hawks posted a 3-5-1 record, including an improbable upset of powerhouse Charleroi 13-12. His junior year Redstone was 5-5 and the Hawks, with only two seniors in the lineup, slipped to 2-9 in 1957, DeSimone’s senior campaign.
“I played for Coach Joe Bosnic,” DeSimone said. “The thing I remember is that no matter who we were playing, we wouldn’t quit. We were hitting just as hard with two minutes to go as we were in the first minutes of the game. That was instilled in me … you never, never let up. Most teams, when they left Redstone Stadium, they might have been ahead with the score, but they were beat up pretty good. We really came after people.
Redstone had tiny squads numbers-wise during that period.
“When Coach Bosnic came in, we had about 60 guys going out for football,” DeSimone remembered. “At the end we took about 18 to 20 to camp. We would do 40 to 45 minutes of calisthenics and then he’d start practice – no water and you never took your helmet off. Coach was a tough man. He weeded out a lot of players. You had to love football to play for him. My senior year we only had two seniors on the team, Ralph Groomes and me.”
DeSimone has a great deal of respect for coach Bosnic.
“I went to college, and this is the truth … they never taught me one thing,” DeSimone opined. “That’s how far Coach Bosnic was ahead of the game. He was excellent on technique, an excellent football coach. Blocking, blocking – the basics. You either loved him or you hated him. I loved him and my brother John didn’t like him at all. I loved him, and if he told me to run through a wall I’d try.”
Redstone may not have had winning records during that period, but they produced some talented football players.
“I think what people fail to realize, and I was looking at it recently,” DeSimone explained. “The number of Division One players that we had during the 1950’s. We had guys from Fayette County like Tom Sankovich, Charley Packan, Jake Olsavsky, Joe Novacheck, and Sandy Stephens from Uniontown. We had a bunch of guys every year go play Division One football.”
Looking back, the win over Charleroi in 1955 was one of the best memories that DeSimone had in high school.
“We beat Charleroi and they had a great team led by Myron Pottios,” DeSimone stated. “They came in and had only lost one game and we beat them 13-12 on a 70-yard touchdown pass from Charley Packan to Johnny Kolessar. No one gave us a chance. I was standing near there bus after the game and their Coach Rab Currie threw his shoes all the way to the back of the bus and hit somebody.”
During an otherwise dismal 2-9 season in 1957, DeSimone ran for 74-yards in a 33-6 loss to unbeaten Uniontown.
“There were two sophomores and one freshman on the line,” DeSimone said. “When I got the football, there was almost no blocking, but I had a good game against them.
“Ron Firmani was a good football player for Uniontown, and he did everything but take my clothes off that night. It was unreal what the guy did to me. Uniontown coach Bill Power recommended me to George Washington because of that game.”
DeSimone has vivid memories of some of the big Redstone rivalries.
“When we played Brownsville, we lived along the road in Grindstone, right along the main drag,” DeSimone recalled. “My dad used to sit out there sometimes all night because Brownsville people coming from Jefferson Township would come right by my home to go to Brownsville and they would be throwing rocks and everything else at our house. When we went to play there, we never dressed at Brownsville. We went dressed, and the upperclassmen wouldn’t sit near the windows because they would be throwing stuff at the bus. It was a bitter rivalry and German-Redstone was pretty intense. We had a great rivalry with them.
DeSimone garnered All-County honors as a senior, and along with Tom Sankovich and Sandy Stephens, was selected to play in JC West Penn-Allegheny All-Star Game at Duquesne, which ended in a 12-12 tie.
George Washington got DeSimone to commit to a football scholarship after he graduated from Redstone in 1958.
“Charley Packan and I were great friends at Redstone,” DeSimone offered. “Packan went to GW, and they came up. They were one of the first schools that recruited me. GW played at old Griffith Stadium at that time, and that impressed me.
“Coach Bo Sherman recruited me. He came to my house, and my mother and father were really impressed with him. I was considering GW, Army and Penn. I liked Coach Sherman and decided to attend GW.”
At George Washington DeSimone was one of 11 players in the history of the program that earned a letter all four years. His freshman year the Colonials went 3-5; in 1959 his junior season they posted a 1-8 mark. In 1960, when DeSimone was a junior, they finished 5-3-1, and in his senior season in 1961 the Colonials went 3-6.
In four seasons DeSimone had 192 carries for 932 rushing yards. He also snared 12 passes for 109 yards. He scored five touchdowns during his career and also returned punts and kickoffs.
“They moved me up to varsity as a freshman, and I played the rest of the way in my career,” DeSimone said. “Sherman was the head coach my freshman and sophomore years, and then Bill Elias came in. We were upset at William & Mary, 19-,9 in 1960 or we probably would have gotten a bid to the Gator Bowl. I always looked at my yards per carry at 4.8 and that is what I am most proud of.
“It was a great decision to go to GW. The guys that I met down there were great. Every two years we have a football reunion.”
After he graduated from George Washington, DeSimone decided to get into coaching.
“I worked building swimming pools,” DeSimone said. “Then I coached at Our Lady of Good Council in Washington. I majored in business, but I took all my electives in education.
“Tom Sankovich was coaching at Dunbar under Stan McLaughlin and got me to come back in 1966 to coach with McLaughlin after the Connellsville-Dunbar merger.”
DeSimone worked on the Connellsville staff before taking a job with his brother John DeSimone on the Brownsville staff. He became head coach at Brownsville from 1983 to 1991 and posted a record of 65-20.
He then took assistant coaching positions at Geibel and Uniontown. He spent two years as head coach at Connellsville before retiring at the end of last season.
During his football coaching career, he remained a teacher in the Connellsville Area School District and retired from teaching five years ago.
He and his wife of 39-years, Sandy, reside in Connellsville. They have a daughter, Danielle, who is 33.
“I’ve got strong ties to Fayette County,” DeSimone said. “You can’t really say much against Fayette County around me. I can’t say enough good things about Fayette County.”
George Von Benko’s “Memory Lane” columns appear in the Sunday editions of the Herald-Standard. He also hosts a sports talk show on WMBS-AM radio from 10 a.m. to noon on Saturdays.