EDITOR’S NOTE: This week marks the 100th anniversary of the opening of Old Mountaineer Field down on the Mon and we celebrate it with a look back at its history from the beginnings to the players who played there, those who worked there, the games that were played there. TODAY: Playing in Old Mountaineer Field.
MORGANTOWN — Many players — from West Virginia’s Mountaineers to such opponents as Jim Brown, Ernie Davis, Dan Marino, Tony Dorsett, and others — have left their mark on Old Mountaineer Field since it opened on Sept. 27, 1924, but perhaps the biggest legacy belongs to Ken Juskowich.
The word itself is symbolic of what Juskowich did that October 7 in 1967 when he established his LEGacy with five field goals to account for all the scoring in WVU’s classic 15-0 victory over arch-rival Pitt in the Backyard Brawl.
“It changed my life in a lot of ways,” he admitted the other day as he was led back into his past, to that day and beyond it.
Juskowich was asked to recall his first game at Old Mountaineer Field. He wore neither a football uniform nor a helmet.
“I had a date that day and we were playing Pitt,” he said. “I got there late for the game and there were already three touchdowns scored.”
That, of course, was his freshman year in 1965, a game that went down in history just as did his 15-0 game for it was the highest-scoring game in the series — WVU won 63-48.
Freshmen weren’t eligible to play then, so Juskowich attended that game just like all the other students, which meant he was wearing a coat and tie and a beanie.
“We had to wear beanies as freshmen. You had the blue and gold beanie,” Juskowitch said. “I remember Norman Hill, when he was a freshman, and he took his beanie off and a fraternity guy came up to him and said ‘Where’s your beanie, freshman?’ Norman was a big guy and the guy had a paddle in his hand, and Norman said, ‘If you touch me with that paddle you’re going to be wearing it.’”
The beanie remained off.
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Playing on the field that day for WVU was an offensive tackle named Jim Fisher from Charleston while his younger brother, Charlie, was in the stands. Like Juskowitz, it was his first Mountaineer game.
“My first memory of Mountaineer Field was when I was a junior in high school and my brother was a sophomore at West Virginia playing defensive tackle and he was making his first start that day. Garrett Ford was a sophomore and on the field and it was kind of his breakout game,” Charlie Fisher said.
It was one of the greatest performances ever by a Mountaineer against Pitt, Ford rushed for 192 yards and two touchdowns to ignite his WVU Hall of Fame career.
WVU had a great offense that season with Dick Leftridge there as a sophomore and Allen McCune at quarterback. Leftridge rushed for 129 yards that day and McCune threw for 320 yards and 5 touchdowns.
“Funny story, Coach (Gene) Corum had been quoted before the game that it would be a low scoring,” Fisher laughed.
Yeah, 111 points.
“It was my first college game,” Fisher said. “Up to that point I had not even given much thought about playing college football. Then when I went back to Charleston I just started taking my football more seriously. That’s what I wanted.
“There were probably 36,000 fans in that stadium that went crazy that day. It motivated me and there was no other school at that point that I wanted to go play for, although there wasn’t much defense those days.”
As it worked out, the Fisher brothers would become a huge part of WVU football history.
“My dad always said his two sons had played in the most memorable Backyard Brawls up to that time, that high-scoring game, and then I was part of that 1970, 36-35, the debacle in Pittsburgh when we were winning 35-8 at halftime. That wasn’t anything I wanted to remember.”
To the fans who came on Saturdays, Old Mountaineer Field was the Roman Coliseum, Madison Square Garden, Yankee Stadium all rolled up into one.
To the players, though, it was a second home. It was what fans didn’t see that built the teams that played there.
“I had to run in the early morning one time because I missed a class,” Juskowich said, “and Bobby Bowden had us running up and down the stairs at the old stadium, so I got to know the place well. Afterward, Bowden said, ‘OK, we’re all going to run a lap around that track. He said whoever wins, they’re done for the day.”
So off they went, but not without a team plan. If the winner got the rest of the day off, why not make every one of them winners?
“We all came in in a dead heat. He was so mad at us that he had us run another lap, but that was good for team building because we all decided we weren’t going to beat each other running around that track,” Juskowich said, adding that Bowden was the “nicest guy in practice, but at his practices, in the early mornings he wasn’t.”
A soccer All-America in high school whose soccer career ended when he broke both his ankles, Juskowich spent a lot of time on the Old Mountaineer Field turf kicking.
“Before practice, Jim Braxton (an NFL-bound tight end/fullback who was a Mountaineer legend and also a placekicker) and I would kick against each other to see who could kick the longest field goal,’ Juskowich said.
“I remember our head coach Jim Carlen sitting down with me in the end zone before or after practice and talking to me about scouts coming in to watch me and giving me encouragement,” Juskowich continued. “When I signed with the Steelers, my wife, Judy, who was my girlfriend then, we’d go down there on the field and she would hold for me while I kicked field goals getting ready to go to the Steelers camp up in Latrobe.”
And while Juskowich took part in several historic WVU games, there’s a game that isn’t included in the record books that stands tall in his memory of Old Mountaineer Field.
“The last alumni game we had, Sam Huff was our coach,” he said. “We were in the visitors’ locker room. We didn’t have the best uniforms and the guys we had weren’t the best players. They were beating us up pretty good.”
Sam Huff, of course, played on the great teams of the mid-1950s on that field and went on to become an NFL Hall of Famer defining the role of middle linebacker in the game.
“At half time, Sam came in and said ‘Let me read the injury report.’ Now our guys didn’t look good. They were bleeding and pretty beat up. I looked at him and the veins in his neck were popping. He said, ‘We don’t have any injuries.’”
That, Juskowich believes, was the last Alumni game.
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Sometimes the memories aren’t good, as Fisher would relate.
Penn State had come into Mountaineer Field and that was never good news for the Mountaineers. They had the likes of Lydell Mitchell and Charlie Pittman and Ted Kwalick, a rough, tough tight end who would become an All-Pro with the San Francisco 49ers, and were No. 3 in the nation; a tough, fast, hard-hitting challenger for a national championship.
“I remember, I was at left defensive tackle and was chasing the runner down the sideline and we got out of bounds and all of a sudden Kwalick just laid me out. Of course, he got flagged for it but I remember I just went flying through the air,” Fisher said.
“The first thing I remember was our defensive end, Bobby Starford was leaning over me and he was going “Fish, are you OK? Are you OK?’ I jumped up and went back out there and never went off the field, but I remember seeing stars the rest of the series. That was the hardest lick I ever had on me, but it was out of bounds and he got flagged for it.”
No hard feelings, though.
“That’s why Kwalick was an All-American. Not for the cheap shots, but because he was such a hard player. I don’t think there was any way he could stop because his momentum was going so hard, so he probably thought I might as well get all I can out of it if I can’t stop.”
Source: https://www.timeswv.com/sports/wvu_mountaineers/wvu-players-recount-glory-days-in-old-mountaineer-field/article_28f7d170-7c44-11ef-a180-efb32d8cbdba.html
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