Growing up in a tiny house on Boland Avenue in Hanover Township, my backyard involved a large patch of woods and Hanover Area Memorial Stadium, where I played for nine years as a young lad with the Mini-Hawks through my senior year of high school.
As a history buff and in my research, Hanover Area Memorial Stadium is the oldest active athletic field in the Wyoming Valley.
I’m grateful my sweat, blood and tears is mixed with the DNA of thousands of other Hanover players who have played on that holy ground during the last century.
At a time when parents allowed their kids to play outside without supervision, I often trekked into the woods. As a 5-year-old, I was deathly afraid of King Kong and my mother in her attempt to keep me out of those woods would say King Kong lives back there.
If cell phones existed in 1978, the video would see 5-year-old me running into the woods only to run back out fearing King Kong. Whenever there was a high school football game at Memorial Stadium with the band playing and fans yelling and screaming, my mother said to 5-year-old me, “That’s people running from King Kong. Stay out of those woods.”
For the memories I have playing at Memorial Stadium and to celebrate a century of Hanover football, I wrote a book highlighting the field’s construction, the purpose of the wall to enclose the field, installation of lights, notable players and championship teams of 1944, 1983, 1984, 1990, 1991, 1996 and 2005. I donated the book to the Hanover Area Quarterback Club to sell as a fundraiser as the Hanover football program runs deep in my family.
My father, Walter Jr., helped reorganize the quarterback club in 1977 when my oldest brother, Walter III, began playing as a freshman. My other brother Michael was the team’s manager from 1977 until he was forced to retire in 2022. My varsity sting began in 1985 as a freshman (our freshman team went undefeated that year) until my senior year in 1988.
Our 1988 team had a HUGE offensive and defensive line.
The offensive line was anchored by myself and Glen Tinner as tackles, with Dan Malloy/Chris George and John Bleich as guards, Carl Bozinko as center and Mike Kosloski as tightend. Our head coach, Alex Kopacz, brought up a freshman, Jamie Proctor, as a running back to fill a void in the backfield.
During the many preseason practices under the hot sun of July and August, Proctor earned the starting role as tailback.
We were known as a running team that year and as a result, opposing defenses would crowd the box with 10 players keeping a safety or a cornerback to cover the wide-out.
Although we ended the 1988 season with a 4-5-1 record, Proctor earned the rushing title gaining 1,345 yards on 211 carries. Second place for the 1988 rushing title went to George Wolfe from Coughlin High School with 1,242 yards on 242 carries.
Proctor was the first freshman to rush for more than 1,000 yards in Pennsylvania high school football history.
When trees are bare of leaves late in the fall season and during winter, you could see the wall of Memorial Stadium from the back windows of my childhood house.
As my birthday is in November, the 6-year-old me climbed that wall looking for King Kong.
While researching and writing a Century of Hanover Area Memorial Stadium, I learned that wall I climbed as a 6-year-old is 14 feet high. And the wall was built not to keep King Kong inside an enclosed area but to keep free-onlookers from watching football games during the Great Depression.
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