In the fall of 1966, Kenmore High School senior quarterback Don Plusquellic turned his single season as a starter into an aerial showcase like no one had seen. He set school records. He dominated City Series games. He attracted college recruiters like bees to the golden pollen from which victory blossoms. The following is from Chapter One: “Football: A Plan for a Lifetime.”
With less than a week to prepare his team for its championship rematch with East, [coach] Dick Fortner faced an unexpected and unpleasant distraction, and from it his star quarterback was about to learn his first political lesson.
There is only one story about what happened when the City Series coaches voted for the players who would be named All-City 1966: they omitted Don Plusquellic, despite Kenmore’s success, Plusquellic’s statistics, and the fact that colleges from all over the country had made him Akron’s hottest prospect. There is, however, more than one story explaining why they did this.
When the coaches got together to vote prior to the team being announced, as it traditionally was by the Beacon Journal on Thanksgiving morning before the Turkey Day Game, they picked Garfield’s Tim Flossie as first team All-City quarterback and placed East’s Chuck Shuman on the second team. That consigned Plusquellic to honorable mention.
Fortner was apoplectic. He walked out of the coaches meeting and into one with his team to tell the players and his assistants what had happened.
The story Fortner told his players held [Garfield coach] Babe Flossie responsible. The gist of it was that Flossie lobbied at least some of the coaches to vote for his quarterback son, believing Plusquellic would get the majority of votes and would be first team All-City.
Tim Flossie doubts this is what happened, but he knows one certainty about the vote and the All-City team: “That was a mess.”
“The way I understand it,” said Tim Flossie, a longtime championship coach, “[is that there was] apparently a lot of coaching rivalry. Not so much [from] my dad but from other guys toward Kenmore. They laid it on a lot of teams and a lot of guys resented that.”
Flossie doubted the majority of the other coaches would accede to politicking for votes by his late father because Babe also evoked strong feelings among his fellow coaches.
Fortner’s Year of the Cards campaign partially backfired. While it thrust his team into the spotlight, it created hostility among some of the coaches and they responded by not voting for Plusquellic.
“I think a lot of it was pointed at Fortner,” Flossie said.
When the Kenmore community got wind that the coaches had snubbed Plusquellic for All-City — and the news traveled fast in tight-knit Kenmore — some of Cardinals football boosters decided on a preemptive attack against the messenger — the Beacon Journal.
It did not matter that the newspaper had yet to publish the team. They flooded the Beacon Journal with calls. All complained of the injustice. Some also cancelled subscriptions.
“That was the warm and fuzzy part for me,” Plusquellic remembered. His community thought enough of him to fight for him. He would never forget this.
“It didn’t sink in about the importance of being first team,” he said, voice cracking. “It was all these people ... doing something for me. It was just unbelievable.”
Kenmore, once a city of its own, had long felt slighted by Akron, which annexed it in 1929. Kenmore never thought it was getting a fair shake from Akron. And here, it was happening again.
What those protesting to the Beacon Journal did not realize is that they had an ally on the inside.
When prep sportswriter Scott Bosley invited the coaches to a meeting to discuss the All-City team and cast their votes, he reminded them that the final decision on All-City belonged to the Beacon Journal. Even so, the newspaper rarely overturned the coaches’ choice.
This was different. Bosley knew something was wrong.
“It became clear that the coaches, either out of their loyalty to Babe Flossie or honest beliefs, were strongly supporting Tim Flossie over Don Plusquellic,” said Bosley, who did not know of a campaign on behalf of Tim or any vote swapping orchestrated by Babe.
Bosley did know something the coaches did not. As a member of the Associated Press sportswriters group that chose the All-State team, he had supported Plusquellic, whom he knew had been chosen over Rex Kern, the future Ohio State University All-America quarterback.
“Don Plusquellic had a phenomenal senior year,” Bosley said. “It was clear to me it would be wrong for Don not to be an All-City quarterback.”
Wrong and stupid.
It would have embarrassed the Beacon Journal and it should have embarrassed the coaches. Even taking into account differing opinions, it is illogical that the All-State quarterback can do no better than honorable mention All-City. So Bosley left the coaches’ vote intact. Shuman remained second team All-City quarterback, but Bosley added Don Plusquellic to the first team with Tim Flossie.
The outcry was loud, immediate, and nasty — this time outside of Kenmore.
Babe Flossie was angry. When he discussed the situation with Tim, his son told him that he did not care whether he was second team All-City or co-first team.
“I think Don was outstanding,” Tim Flossie said. “I think I was just as good in another way — in leadership, in what I meant to my team. If you go on talent and on throwing the ball, Don was better.”
The football-loving public proved less understanding and agreeable than Tim Flossie. They called Bosley at home to object to his decision, and they did not stop. Finally, Bosley disconnected his phone for a week.
Coaches and others also called Bosley’s bosses to complain, but the Beacon Journal backed Bosley’s decision and stood its ground, and Don Plusquellic has never forgotten.
Often a harsh critic of the media in general and the Beacon Journal in particular, Plusquellic appreciates the irony of this important moment in his life, one made more lasting by the fact that whether on the field or in city hall he has remained the quarterback, influenced always by what he learned as an athlete. The lesson here was that “the newspaper righted a wrong.”
Years later when the newspaper was sold and its future was uncertain, Plusquellic attended a rally outside its building and nearly broke down in tears from the memory of that All-City team near fiasco.
“The Beacon,” he said, “saved me.”