BCC TEAMS: We’ve been writing recently about outstanding
Bradford football teams, and today we hear about Bradford Central
teams from the 1960s.
John McCoy of Arlington, Va., writes us, “I would think that any
list of outstanding Bradford football teams would have to include
the 1963 and 1964 BCCHS teams which lost one game over two
seasons.”
“The 1963 team, which was quarterbacked by Gary Grassi (who died
in Vietnam) and featured Rick Warham as the primary running back,
was probably the better of the two teams, but incurred the loss
against Bishop McQuaid (an all male school which I believe was the
largest private high school in Rochester) 7-6 in the last game of
the season. (BCCHS was co-ed and had fewer than 250 students.)
“The McQuaid game was played in a snow storm on a BAHS field
that was badly torn up, because the Owls had played in heavy rain
the previous evening.
“As I recall, the story (and I’m sticking to it) was that the
Ramblers would have won except that the snow was too heavy for
Grassi to see Joe Young break open (for a relatively short pass) in
the end zone late in the fourth quarter.
“I believe the following individuals started or saw significant
playing time on both teams: Tom Arrowsmith; Bob Feraci; Jim
Gleason; Tim Harris; Jim Manning (I’m not certain Jim played much
on the ’63 team); Tom Moore; John Murphy; Fred Peace; Brian Smith;
and Frank South. Moore, Smith and, I believe, Murphy also started
some games for the undefeated 1961 St. Bernard HS Ramblers. (1962
was an off year.)
“The 1964 team was quarterbacked by Jim Sposato and had Bill
Wilson as the primary running back.
“Arrowsmith (Lock Haven), Feraci (Alfred) and Moore (Alfred)
went on to play in college. Arrowsmith’s college career was
successful enough that he received a few NFL invitations to try out
as a free agent (albeit at a time when there were a lot more rounds
in the NFL draft than there are today). He once told me he would
have tried it had one of the invitations been from a team with its
training camp within 1,500 miles.”
John also passes along scores for the 1964 team: Smethport 13-7;
Elk County Christian 27-0; Port Allegany 14-0; Venango Christian
49-25; Archbishop Walsh 40-0; St. Michael (Greenville, PA) 41-6;
Cardinal Mooney (Rochester?) 32-7; St. Mark Seminary 47-0.
