Sep 28, 2009 8 min read

By George Von Benko For the Herald-Standard

They called Glenn Ellsworth the ?rabbit? during his high school days at Carmichaels High School. The stocky, fleet footed 5-8, 155-pound halfback cut a wide swath during his football and baseball career in the early 1960s.

Ellsworth played enough football at Carmichaels as a freshman to score seven points and then added 87 as a sophomore when he won his starting spurs. In his four years of scholastic play, Ellsworth is credited with 347 points, which would place him high on any state ranking.

?I played a lot my freshman year,? Ellsworth remembered. ?What coach Fred Stuvek saw in me was the name. My brother Henry played a few years before me, and when he was there he held the county scoring record for a couple of years. The name was what coach recognized. Sometimes it?s not what you know it?s whom you know. He recognized the name and the bloodline and gave me the opportunity and I ran with it.?

Carmichaels was a very competitive program during Ellsworth?s playing days. In 1961, Ellsworth?s sophomore season, the Mikes were 6-3.

Stuvek?s Mikes were one of the best around in 1962, going 9-0 during the regular season. The Greene County school met Rostraver in a mud battle at Uniontown High School Stadium for the WPIAL Class A championship and played to a scoreless deadlock.

In Ellsworth?s senior campaign the Mikes won the mythical Greene County championship by beating West Greene (41-26), Jefferson (24-20) and Waynesburg (41-6), but did not meet Mapletown. Overall, the Mikes were 5-2-1.

Ellsworth followed in his brother Henry?s footsteps and put up some remarkable records, including two straight district scoring titles with 22 touchdowns and 139 points as a junior and 108 points as a senior.

?Henry was seven years older, so I would go to his games when I was younger and watched him play,? Ellsworth said. ?At the beginning of my sophomore year, he came up to me and said ?I want that record back in our name again.? I said what are you talking about? I didn?t know he broke the county record and held it for a couple of years. He said, ?If you do nothing else, try to get that back in the family,? and it just happened that I had enough ballplayers in front of me that it worked out all right.?

Ellsworth was a much different player than his brother.

?He was smaller, he might have been 130 pounds,? Ellsworth offered. ?But he wrestled and he was a hardnosed little guy. I was the complete opposite. He ran over people and if I could I avoided people and I tried to run by them. That is why they called me the rabbit.?

Looking back Ellsworth feels the 1962 season was a highlight.

?There is no way that I could forget that year,? he said. ?I had some good players around me. Joe Taffoni, who went to West Virginia and Tennessee Martin, then there was Joe Lencewicz. He went to the University of Pennsylvania. Frank Menhart was on that team, along with Bob Atcheson, Jim Stewart, Arley Halterman, Jim Zalar, Joe Kuchinsky and Jim Boggio who played a lot my senior year.?

On Friday, November 16, 1962, more than 6,000 people watched the Mikes play Rostraver for the WPIAL Class A championship in the pouring rain on a field that turned to a sea of mud. The game ended in a tie as each team was unable to beat the opposing team?s defense, or the mud. The Mikes? best chance to score was on the opening kickoff of the second half. Ellsworth took the kickoff, found a seam and was heading for a touchdown. He was caught from the side at the Leopard 23-yard line. The drive stalled at the 15. The final score was Carmichaels 0, Rostraver 0.

?I stepped on the field and the mud went up over my ankles,? Ellsworth recalled. ?You just couldn?t run in that mud. The closest we came was on that kickoff return. You could hardly tell who was who because we were covered in mud.?

Ellsworth has great memories of Stuvek.

?He was crazy at times. He did his thing, and he made us do ours,? Ellsworth stated. ?He was a good X-and-O guy. If he new a play worked he stuck with it. We ran the 26 power play that was developed by Stuvek and named for me. My jersey number was 26. We had another play the Ellsworth Special and that was a pass play.?

Ellsworth ran low to the ground and was a big play back. In 1960, his first touchdown was for 23 yards. In 1961, he had touchdown runs of 52, 54, 70, 65 and 92 yards. In 1962, he had touchdown runs of 85, 87, 55, 70, 63, 60, 52, 51 and 70 yards. In 1963, he had touchdown runs of 85, 80, 66, 76 and 80 yards.

?We had two plays that really worked,? Ellsworth said. ?The 26 power and the 24 trap. I would just step up and cut through the four hole. We had Taffoni, Lencewicz and Menhart just cutting people down, and if you looked at the hole, I could have driven a truck through some of those holes. Teams tried to stop me and keyed on me, but you can?t stop someone when the people in front of you are knocking people down.?

Ellsworth was named to the Greene County All-Star football team for three straight years. In 1962 and 1963 Ellsworth was selected as the Most Outstanding Football Player in Greene County.

He also excelled at baseball.

?Baseball was the sport I liked,? Ellsworth revealed. ?I played football because I could, but baseball was the sport I loved.?

Ellsworth played on the Greene County All-Star team, assembled for the 1959 Pony League World Series.

By the time the 1959 Pony League World Series ended, the Greene County All-Stars had nearly done the unthinkable. The team finished second to Long Beach, Calif., a feat that has grown in importance as the years have passed.

Only a handful of local teams have even managed to reach the finals. Just two local teams ? Monongahela in 1954 and Washington in 1955 ? have won the Pony series title.

Carmichaels also fielded some very competitive high school baseball squads.

?We did well on that Pony League team.? Ellsworth stated. ?Then we had some pretty good teams in high school and I was on a legion team that went to Allentown.?

Ellsworth had limited scholarship opportunities when he graduated from Carmichaels in 1964.

?That didn?t pan out well,? Ellsworth lamented. ?My grades weren?t that great and neither were the SAT scores. If they were good, I probably would have been at California State, where my brother went. Fairmont State accepted the ACT scores. My scores were better there and I wound up going down there.?

Ellsworth lettered in baseball and football at Fairmont State in 1964 and 1965.

Fairmont State was on a roll in football, posting an 8-1 mark in 1964 and an 8-1 record in 1965. The Falcons, coached by Harold Duvall, ran up 235 points against its eight opponents and yielded 85. They were champions of the West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.

Ellsworth, a sophomore halfback, gained 357 yards rushing.

The 1965 team qualified for the NAIA playoffs and traveled to Minneapolis where it lost to St. John?s of Minnesota, 27-7.

?We were very good in football,? Ellsworth explained. ?I was on the baseball team my first year and played right field and I also played football. I was the starting tailback going into my junior year and I got hurt in spring practice when my knee went out on me. It was real bad. I was working in Cleveland, and I started working out to come back to Fairmont State, and the knee went out again on me. I told coach Duvall that I can?t play and he wasn?t happy. I never played football again, but I did play a little baseball for another year. I didn?t play after that because I was student teaching and I wanted to graduate.?

Ellsworth became a teacher after graduating from Fairmont State.

?I taught at Collinwood High School in the Cleveland area for 31 years,? Ellsworth said. ?I started out in phys-ed and health and then taught history. I was an assistant coach for over 25 years, working with wrestling, football and baseball. I retired in 1999.?

He lives in Cleveland with his wife of 39 years Marjorie. They have three children: Laurie, Stacey and Glenn Jr. and five grandsons.

Ellsworth, 64, still plays sandlot softball.

?I still play softball,? he stated. ?I either catch or play first base and I?m on a 50 and over team.?

Looking back, Ellsworth has no complaints.

?Everything turned out OK,? Ellsworth said. ?I?ve got no complaints and I?ve got a lot of great memories of Carmichaels.?

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.