Memory Lane: Remembering Ross Kershey
It is with great sadness that the Fayette County Sports Hall of Fame reports the death of Fayette County Sports Hall of Famer Ross Kershey on Nov. 16 at the age of 90.
Kershey was born on May 11, 1933 in Wendell, West Virginia, to John and Donice Kershey. He was a graduate of Dunbar Township High in 1950.
He played basketball at Dunbar High School in the late 1940s and by his own admission was just a fair player during his high school days. Kershey didn’t make the varsity squad until his senior season in 1949-50 and posted modest numbers on a team that didn’t win a game in section play and posted three victories in exhibition play.
“We were not very good,” Kershey opined in a Memory Lane article in 2010. “I was a starter most of the year and I was a very young 16-year-old. I went to my senior prom at age 16. I didn’t really become a decent basketball player until I went to college. That is unfortunate, but that’s the truth.”
Kershey wound up going to Temple University on a senatorial academic scholarship.
“My intent on going to college at Temple was not to become a teacher,” Kershey offered. “My major at Temple was called communications and it included journalism, radio, and television and actually I’ve used all of those. I wrote a sports column for the Coatesville, Pa. paper for 25-years and I was an announcer at all the football games and if you come down to it – what is teaching if it isn’t communication?”
Kershey excelled in the classroom at Temple and was unanimously elected president of the Inter-Fraternity Sports Council. He was awarded the Pete Leaness trophy, presented annually to the Phi Alphan making the outstanding contribution to fraternity athletics. As a junior he was voted most valuable player in the inter-fraternity basketball league, which he led with a scoring average of 27 ppg. He was co-captain of the basketball team, which did not lose a game in three years. For two consecutive years he led the inter-fraternity football league in scoring and as a junior led the Phi Alphas to the championship.
“I became a decent basketball player in college by mainly playing against better competition,” Kershey said years later. “The people I played against knew how to play the game and you were forced to learn how to keep up with them. We were very successful in inter-fraternity league sports. I was good enough to go out for the Temple varsity basketball team, which I made my senior year.
“Toward the end of my senior year I suddenly decided what I wanted to do with my life was teach and coach. I knew in order to get a teaching and coaching job somewhere I had to have college basketball in my background. So I went out for the team and I made the squad and I saw action in a few games. I was never a great player in college, but I was on the team and I benefited from Harry Litwack’s coaching and coaching philosophy.
“Regardless of being a star player or not I learned a lot about the game from Coach Litwack. He was the basis for my wanting to be a coach. In addition to being a great basketball tactician and strategist he was a gentleman. You never heard anybody say anything bad about him and I don’t know that I ever heard him utter a curse word.”
Kershey played on a Temple team that finished 11-10, but was on the cusp of greatness.
“The year after I graduated Temple went to the Final Four in 1955-56,” Kershey explained. “I played with Hal Lear, and Guy Rodgers was a red-shirt when I was a senior along with the big center Tink Van Patton. The next year with Van Patton, Rodgers, Lear and Jay Norman they went to the Final Four with Iowa, SMU and San Francisco with Bill Russell.”
After graduating from Temple, Kershey needed teaching certification and went to Indiana University of Pennsylvania and then student taught at Greensburg High School. He started his teaching and coaching career at Coatesville High in September of 1956. He taught American History for the next 42 years, retiring in June of 1998. He continued teaching senior citizen programs, first at Widener University and then at Immaculata University until 2020, stopping at the age of 87.
News of Kershey’s passing was met with great sadness.
“He was a great coach in basketball and track and field,” longtime friend and veteran Philadelphia talk show host Bill Werndl stated. “He really built the track program up as he did the basketball program. He was just a quality guy, I got to know him when I moved back from California and he knew who I was. We taught at Immaculata and Widener together, he taught history and I taught and I taught the ever-changing world of sports and he was just a very positive person.
“Let me say one thing and I hope you incorporate this in the right way. He told me a story and he said a white man came up to him and said are you going to have the same kind of players again this year, meaning are you going to have a predominately black team? He said I play the best players regardless of race or religion. I don’t care who they are as long as they can play basketball and be good citizens. That’s what I put on the basketball court.”
Kershey’s overall basketball coaching record was 455-125. His teams won 12 Ches-Mont titles and one District 1 title. He coached many great players, including La Salle University All-American Hubie Marshall, as well as NBA star and Hall of Famer Richard “Rip” Hamilton. He was the head track coach for 14 years. His team’s dual meet record was 104-1. His teams won 12 Ches-Mont titles, two District 1 titles and one state championship in 1974.
One of Kershey’s main rivals in the Ches-Mont League was West Chester Henderson in the late 1960s. The star of those teams was longtime West Chester Henderson head coach Leon Bell, who talked about the rivalry.
“Ross was certainly a coach of coaches,” Bell told the Daily Local News in Coatesville. “We had so many big games with his teams. That is when the Ches-Mont League was split into a first half and second half of the season champion. In 1970, we played Coatesville and there was so much interest and so many people wanted to see the game we had to play at the Spectrum in Philadelphia.
“Ross and our coach, Jack McClellen, were friends but they were fierce rivals on the court. Ross was a great teacher and coach and he did so much for the young people of Coatesville. He had a lot of great players and great teams and he was a very good man.”
The Coatesville Red Raiders’ gym is named for Kershey. He was inducted into nine halls of fame, including the Chester County Hall of Fame and the Fayette County Sports Hall of Fame, and in 1981 he was named Educator of the Year.
“He was a guy that was very, very pro education,” Werndl said. “He was a Hall of Fame coach, but he was also a Hall of Fame man.”