The History of Tusky Valley Football

In 1955, the Tuscarawas County Board of Education passed a resolution creating the Tuscarawas Valley School District. It consolidated five local school districts; Bolivar-Lawrence, Zoar, Mineral City-Sandy, Fairfield and New Cumberland-Warren. This was a consolidation of basketball schools. No football was played by any of these schools.

To start a football program $3,500.00 was taken from the athletic fund of Bolivar and Mineral City, and the Tuscarawas Valley football program was born.

In 1956, Ed Baran the first football coach issued a call for candidates to play football. There were six weeks of practice and a few scrimmage games that first year.

In 1957, Tusky Valley played a seven game schedule. They won their very first game over Malvern, 20 to 12. Walt Deubner, a sophomore, scored Tusky Valley's first touchdown in the second quater. Tusky Valley went on to post a 4 - 3 record. A great feat for a first year team.

Tusky Valley's first Quaterback was Wayne Rouf, a senior, from Zoar. He ran the 100 yard dash in 10.1 seconds. The largest lineman was senior Scott Gordon, topping the scales at 180 pounds.

The Trojans suited up for games at the Bolivar School and were bussed to Strasburg for their games until 1962 when the new high school was opened.

Russ Scheideger of Zoar founded the Tusky Valley Booster Club in 1957. He served as it's president for the first ten years, the football program chairman for twenty years, athletic trainer for twenty-one years, football equipment manager for four years, and basketball score keeper for ten years.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Dennis McCartney for organizing the information and providing the web class with many of the statisitical records that are found on these pages.

A special thank you goes to Ron Scheideger for keeping a running record of the statistical data and the history of the Tusky Valley Football Program for so many years. Thanks Ron! We really appreciate everything that you've done for the Tusky Valley football program.

Also thanks goes to Gary Cornell for helping keep statical data for so many years. It takes a substantial amount of time and a commitment to the school to collect process the statistical data on a weekly basis. Thank you Gary!

We would also like to thank everyone else who has worked as a statistician or part-time statistician over the years. Thank you for all of your time spent for the Tusky Valley football program. Your efforts are also greatly appreciated.