Remembering Maurice Moon
Submitted photo
Connellsville graduate Maurice Moon was a versatile athlete on the West Virginia University track & field team.
Submitted photo
Connellsville graduate Maurice Moon is shown during his days as a member of the West Virginia University track & field team.
February is Black History month and a note in my mailbag informing me of the passing of Fayette County track pioneer Maurice “Little Red” Moon on Dec. 22, 2020 caught my eye.
Moon was a track star at Connellsville High School in the late 1950s and early 1960s. A versatile athlete, Moon also dabbled in football and sandlot baseball, but his star shown brightest in track.
Moon was a jack of all trades for Connellsville track coach Wilmer Burkholder. During his career with the Cokers, Moon participated in the 180-yard low hurdles, the 120-yard high hurdles and occasionally ran a leg on the 880 relay. The high jump was Moon’s specialty.
“He was a really good high jumper,” former Connellsville football and track star Bo Scott recalled. “He was tall and thin. When we first started out I was a high jumper too. He became very good at it and I stopped high jumping my junior year and I just concentrated on the dashes and the relays.”
Moon in 1961 tied with Clairton’s Emanuel Belland for first in the high jump at the WPIAL Championships with a mark of 6 feet, 2 inches. That was a new school record at Connellsville and at the time marked the third meet in succession that Moon set a new school standard.
“I recall my senior year he was the only one to qualify for the state championships,” Scott said. “He was able to get great lift over the bar. He had good technique and plus, when you looked at him, back in those days you could picture what a person did, and if you looked at him and he said he was on the track team, basically, the first thing you would think of was that he was a high jumper.”
Decorated distance runner Joe Thomas from Uniontown High School remembers the Red Raiders competing against Moon and Connellsville.
“He was the best high jumper in the county,” Thomas stated. “He was an outstanding athlete, he could do everything. Looking back, he had great spring, he could really jump up. Back in those days the Fosbury Flop wasn’t the thing back then. Back then we did the hitch kick where you almost dove over the bar. That’s the way he did it back then.”
At the PIAA championships in 1961 Moon won the high jump with a mark of 6-2. That was the first state title in track in four years at the time.
“He had great technique,” former Connellsville track teammate Joe Turek marveled. “He had great lift in his legs.”
“His technique was spot on,” Thomas recalled. “You had to go over the bar head first and roll to get that kick. You go over off your left foot and dive and roll and kick. That’s why they called it the hitch kick.”
Moon eventually went to West Virginia in 1962 and was one of WVU’s black track and field pioneers under coach Stan Romanoski.
“The late Fred Snell of Connellsville, who loved track, took an interest in Moon,” Turek said. “He told Stan Romanoski about Moon and that’s how he wound up at WVU.”
Moon was a versatile performer for the Mountaineers, at various times participating in the high jump, broad jump, triple jump, dashes and was a member of the record-setting 440-yard relay team. He could broad jump 23 feet, triple jump 44-plus feet and run a 100-yard dash in 9.9 seconds.
In 1965 Moon set the WVU high jump record with a mark of 6-4. In 1965 Moon along with Carl Bowman, John Campbell and Henry Armstrong, set the school record in the 440 relay at 42.4. In 1964 that group set the Southern Conference record in the event with a time of 43.1.
‘He’s a one-man show,” Romanoski said of Moon in 1965. “And I hurt his performances by not letting him concentrate. But he can pick up so many points.”
Moon’s presence in Morgantown also helped the WVU football program land one of the best players in Mountaineer history. As chronicled in the Beckley Post Herald, Oct. 21, 1969.
In an article about the late Jim Braxton this fact was revealed:
“One reason (Braxton) is at the school, an independent in football, is so his mother and stepfather, Mr. and Mrs. Elmer Turner, can see him play. Another reason is that his cousin, Maurice Moon, was on the Mountaineer track team when Jim was recruited.”
What a dividend that was for West Virginia.
After college, Moon started his career as a physical education teacher for the Washington, D.C., Public School System for many years before moving to the Boys Scouts of America and the Washington Post. Over time, he re-entered teaching until his retirement and was beloved by his students, teachers, and the community of Laurel, Maryland as an election board volunteer.
Moon, 77, formerly of Vanderbilt, Pa., passed away on Dec. 22, 2020, at the University of Laurel Medical Center from complications from COVID-19.
George Von Benko’s “Memory Lane” column appears 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.