Chuck relishes Ringgold memories
Chuck Smith went from being a Ringgold standout (Class of 1973) to a West Virginia Mountaineer.
That was fitting for a strong, imposing mountain of a man who would set a school record by ramming 170 runners into the ground with bone jarring tackles in 1975, the year WVU stood No. 20 in the final college rankings. An honorable mention All-American, Smith made WVU’s all-decade team for the 1970s and still ranks 13th in school history for lifetime tackles.
Smith was a 6-foot-3, 240-pound high school tackle who has many memories of playing in the Joe Montana era. For instance, Ringgold’s first two-time All-Mon Valley Conference selection recalled that the transition from having separate football squads for Donora and Monongahela High to one Ringgold team was not smooth.
“Back then Ringgold was one of those schools that was segregated, having separate campuses, as if it were still Donora High School and Monongahela High School,” Smith said. “The Donora kids didn’t want to play with the kids from Monongahela, and vice versa when we merged. And I remember there were only about 28 kids who came out for the team. These were teams that formerly had 40, 50 kids on a team.
“There were so few people most of us played both ways, like Paul Timko, who was the quarterback before Montana, Dave Osleger and Dave O’Brien. When our tight end broke his collar bone in practice, Coach Chuck Abramski moved Timko there, beside me. Paul could catch the ball like no one else. He, Mike Brantley and Don Miller were a Godsend for Joe because he’d throw the ball out there and they would just go up and grab it.”
No longer a quarterback after the team’s loss of their original starting tight end, Timko needed a tutor to learn how to play the position. Smith worked with Timko.
“I showed him who to block, what to do on this play, that play,” Smith said. “I had to give Paul a crash course, but he was just a natural, just a big, strong, fast kid with so much talent.
“For his [initial] lack of technique at tight end, he still could control and handle opponents in blocking. His hands were bigger than mine, he could just go up and catch a ball with ease. He could block, he could catch, he could run. Paul is a fascinating person who has taken a hind seat to Joe, and understandably. But Paul was quite an athlete.”
As for the stellar Montana, Smith said, “Joe is an introvert. Joe has a heart bigger than he is, but Joe is a private persona and he always was. He loved the competition, but he was a private person. And he was never one to boast about how good he was, and this is important because Joe’s got a bad rap in some parts of the Valley. People say, ‘Oh, he should have done more.’ Joe has done so much for youth football and the Rams Club.
“Anything that we’ve ever asked him to do, he’s done in a second, but he doesn’t talk about it. He’s been back in the Valley dozens of times and done things without fanfare. He’s basically said, ‘I’m going to do this, but don’t make a big deal out of it.'”
One side of Montana wasn’t often seen by outsiders.
“He was a character, a little bit of a practical joker,” Smith said. “He was always pulling stuff, putting rabbit ears on people, little things.”
Smith also recalled the early Ringgold head football coaches.
“John Kosh was our coach my sophomore year, then Abramski came in for my junior year,” Smith said. “I think Chuck was a little bit ahead of his time on the idea of bigger, stronger, faster — he had the insight for developing kids. In the 70s they didn’t have a lot of that [conditioning].”
The Rams program must have done things right. Smith stated that of all the players on his team, “all but about three went on to college playing football.” Four of them played for Division I schools: Montana at Notre Dame, Smith at WVU, Timko at Maryland and Keith Bassi who attended Yale.
Smith also considered offers from Pitt, Georgia and Notre Dame, but he and WVU coach Bobby Bowden clicked.
“If I would have gone to Pitt or Georgia, I would have played in the National Championship,” Smith said.
He would have, in fact, spent his New Year’s Day of 1977 playing on college football’s biggest stage. Depending on which school he might have chosen, he could have been a member of the winning or the losing team. That day a Tony Dorsett-led Pitt squad defeated Georgia, 27-3, in the Sugar Bowl to claim the NCAA title.
To this day, Smith cherishes the camaraderie that existed among his Ringgold teammates. Friendship, like his golden memories, endures forever.