Flyers celebrating 50 years of Booster Stadium

Last Friday evening, the Marion Local community toasted the 1965 football season as members of the team and coaching staff were honored prior to the Flyers' game with St. Henry, all sharing stories with one another of their remarkable season 50 years ago when they kicked off play at their new football field - a vast upgrade from their previous home behind the old St. John high school. As former Flyer quarterback Nick Mescher stood near midfield, he was flooded with a half-century's worth of memories.

"That was a really nice evening," Mescher said. "We had eight seniors on the team that season in 1965 and all of them are still alive and six of us, as well as coach Judy, all made it back. As we were out on the field, I could envision exactly where I used to stand during pre-game warm ups. It was really neat. I looked around and saw all the old guys and could just picture all of us on that same field long ago. It's just scary to think that 50 years have passed!"

The Flyers, who in head coach Jim Judy's first two seasons finished 2-7 and 5-4, opened their much-anticipated 1965 campaign on the road with a victory over Waynesfield and followed that up with a triumph over the Coldwater Cavaliers, a squad they hadn't beaten in a decade.

"I always like to tell the story, and I may exaggerate it a little more as the years go by, but we were playing Coldwater and they were always one of the tougher games on our schedule," recalled Jim Moeller, who led the team in rushing and scoring in 1964 and 1965. "I scored four times against them in the first half that season and every one of them ran right through Stan Wilker, who played for Coldwater and later became Marion Local's long-time athletic director. I was told that he took a lot of grief for that from the coaches at halftime, so that may be one of the stories from that season he would like to forget!"

Week Three marked an evening in which everyone in the community and the Marion Local football family had been waiting - the inauguration of their new football field. The Lima Perry Commodores came to Mercer County and found themselves down 7-0 at intermission. During the break, Marion Local booster club president Dennis Link joined school board president Alphonse Kremer at midfield for a formal dedication of the new facility.

"Our old field was behind the old St. John High School just down the road and it was nothing more than a cow pasture," Link explained. "Myself and Paul Brunswick, who was the booster club president before me, got the ball rolling to build a new stadium. It took a couple of years before we played that first game, but it was well worth the wait. We initiated several fundraisers and borrowed some money, but most of the labor and materials were donated by local supporters and businesses. If it wasn't for their help, the project would have never been successful."

The Flyers came out of the locker room and thanks to a third-quarter touchdown by Mescher, Marion Local iced their first battle on their new field with a 14-0 victory.

"The old place we played was something else," Mescher laughed. "The visitor's stands were just two or three rows of portable bleachers and the home side wasn't a whole lot better. There was a farm right next to the field, so you can imagine the smell out there. It really got interesting when some of the cows escaped and ended up on the football field. Part of the baseball diamond was also on the football field, so it was definitely time for a new place to play, and to get a win in our first game at the new field was a great way to get things started."

Judy's crew followed that victory up with a home win the next week over Piqua Catholic before falling to Parkway in Week Five by a final of 28-8. Sitting at 4-1 overall, the Flyers rattled off victories over Bradford and Minster before suffering their first and only defeat of the season at home - a 38-14 setback to Versailles.

"We knew going into the season that Versailles would be very strong. They were dominant every year back then sort of like Marion Local is today," Moeller recalled. "That was one of our two losses that year, but it didn't take away from a very special season for all of us. We had all the ingredients - strong skill players, a very good offensive line, and a coaching staff that did a remarkable job strategizing and putting together the game plan. Plus, playing at the new stadium topped it all off."

Marion Local concluded the year with a 7-2 mark - the best record and most wins in school history at that point - a seemingly perfect way to christen a new facility which over the past 50 years has hosted hundreds of varsity, junior varsity and junior high football games for a program that has evolved into one of the premier small-school football dynasties in Ohio history.

"I haven't missed many games over the course of the past 50 years and there have certainly been some great ones at Booster Stadium," Link commented. "My kids and grandkids have all played there and every time I am there, it's hard not to think back to all the work that went into the facility and to that special 1965 season that kicked it all off."