10th of a Series...



The term “impact player” is thrown around a great deal. It can carry a variety of connotations.

In football, it often means a player who just loves to hit people. It can also imply one who can make a difference either offensively or defensively with his skills.

At Pymatuning Valley, players such as Tony Barnes helped make the Lakers a respectable enterprise, even though it was in the initial year of the program. That one season made enough of an impression that Barnes was the PV athlete chosen its initial inductee into the Ashtabula County Football Hall of Fame in 2004.

But when Barnes graduated after the 1963 season, coach Ernie Simpson had to find another player or players to help fill the role Barnes had vacated. Fortunately, there were a couple players who stepped up and assumed the job.

One was Larry Lattimer, who manned the quarterback role, and handled it well, although he went on to even greater notoriety as a basketball player, eventually earning selection to the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame.

The other was Clint Schertzer, who had already established himself as Lattimer’s favorite target during his junior year. He didn’t disappoint as a senior, either, playing well enough to eventually earn second-team Class A All-Ohio honors at end. He was also one of the key pillars of the PV defense. Together, he and Lattimer even improved the 4-4 record the 1963 Lakers had produced by going 5-4.

But those two years of gridiron glory were the only ones Schertzer ever enjoyed. The 5-foot-11, 170-pounder never seriously considered trying to play collegiately, but a conversation his father, Richard, had with a college coach confirmed his thoughts.

“My dad knew a Coach Stang at Kent State when he was down there,” Schertzer said. “He told him I wasn’t big enough. We talked about other schools, but it didn’t go far.”

Two years doesn’t seem like a lot of time to make an impression on people, so when Schertzer was informed that he had been chosen for the 2009 class of the Ashtabula County Football Hall of Fame by longtime PV basketball coach Bob Hitchcock, a member of the county basketball hall of fame, and his father, he was quite surprised. He will be inducted Dec. 7 at the Ashtabula County Touchdown Club Awards Banquet at Mount Carmel Community Center.

“I figured they had run through just about everyone else,” he said with a laugh. “I’m really honored to have been chosen when you consider I only played football my junior and senior years.”

Schertzer also finds his selection amazing considering he never played beyond the high school level.

“It’s a real honor to be included when you consider most of the people that are in the hall of fame at least played college ball,” he said. “It’s an extra honor to be chosen with a group like that.”

But ask his former coaches, and they attest to Schertzer’s capabilities without hesitation.

“He was a hardworking kid,” Simpson, who is still coaching high school football in his 48th season at age 72 in north central Ohio at Division VI Ridgemont High School. “He was a decent student and he had a good parental background. He had great attitude and work habits.

“He was good for us on both sides of the ball. I think Clint definitely deserves to be in the hall of fame.”

Schertzer made quite an impression on Barnes in their limited time together.

“He was a good, reliable player,” he said. “He was a hard hitter. He ran good routes and had good hands. If I had to pick a wide receiver or defensive end for my team, I’d have picked Clint. He was a great player.”

Lattimer, who made many a connection with Schertzer, agrees.

“Clint was a great teammate,” he said. “He was quick and had good speed. Our senior year, I threw to him a lot. We ran a lot of patterns with him. He was a good blocker, too. We used to run a lot of sweeps, student body left and right, around his end.”

Schertzer also provided a lot of intangibles for the Lakers, according to Lattimer, who is one of Simpson’s assistant coaches at Ridgemont.

“Clint kept everyone on the team up,” he said. “He was always trying to pump the other players up.”

Even though it was only for one season, Barnes benefited from Schertzer’s blocking ability and admired how he played defense, too.

“Clint was a good, reliable player,” the 63-year-old Barnes, who now lives in Bedford Heights, said. “He had good hands. He was a hard hitter, too.

“If I had to pick a wide receiver or defensive end, he’d be my choice.”

The thing Simpson finds most impressive about Schertzer is what he has done with his life after football. Schertzer has been a professor in the marketing department at Xavier University in Cincinnati since 1974.

“It’s always good to see that the kids I coached have done well in their lives,” he said.



The early years

Schertzer was born in Upper Sandusky, the oldest of four children of Jeanne and Richard Schertzer. He also has two brothers — David, who lives in Youngstown, and Rod, who resides in Cincinnati — and a sister, Sheila Michael, who still lives in Andover. Their parents also still call Andover home.

The Schertzer family moved to Medina for a time while he was still a child before settling in the Andover area when he was in the sixth grade.

“My introduction to football came while we still lived in Medina,” Schertzer said. “We lived next to the stadium.”

He finished up elementary school at Richmond Elementary, which was probably one of the key schools in developing basketball talent in what became the Pymatuning Valley Local School system. As he grew, that seemed the sport to which he would gravitate as well.

“We had a gas station in town and we put up a hoop there,” Schertzer said. “I played with the Hitchcock brothers, Paul Freeman and a lot of the other guys who became great players at PV.”



The player

Even once he arrived at PV High School, it seemed his future success would indeed rest with basketball. He went on to play with some of the great players from the latter stages of Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Fame coach Joe Shantz’s career.

“I played with Jerry Hitchcock and George Williams (not to mention Lattimer),” he said. “My senior year, we were (sectional) champions (finishing 17-5 and winning the Great Lakes Athletic Conference title).”

But when Simpson came around looking for players to help form the school’s first football team, Schertzer was willing to listen.

“Ernie Simpson recruited us,” he said. “All the coaches at PV knew they had to share athletes. (Andover) was pretty much a basketball town, but we had kids from all over the district playing football. Tony Barnes was from New Lyme Deming.”

That first football squad almost became a kind of science project for Simpson and his coaching staff. He couldn’t get too fancy about it.

“Ernie tried to teach us the basics,” Schertzer said. “It was all about blocking and tackling and figuring out who was going to play where. Every practice was an experiment.”

Schertzer and Lattimer were key elements in those experiments.

“They thought I could play quarterback for some reason,” Schertzer said. “They tried me at quarterback, but that didn’t last long, so they moved Larry to quarterback. I really wanted to play end. I ended up playing defensive end, too. I enjoyed that.”

Actually, Schertzer and Lattimer switched positions.

“I was at end for the first three games,” Lattimer said. “Then they moved me to quarterback.”

They quickly developed a solid connection. Eventually, according to information supplied by Lattimer, Schertzer finished the 1963 season with 14 catches covering 381 yards. That included three touchdown receptions. He also rushed for 173 yards on 50 carries.

Leaning as heavily as they did on the passing game, at least for that era, was just fine with the fledgling Laker squad. Actually, it was born of necessity, even though they were blessed with several fine players.

“We played a straight T formation, and we had some good players like (Barnes) and Al and Moe Cooper,” Schertzer said. “We realized we had to do a lot of passing because our opponents usually had so much bigger squads. We probably ended up throwing 10-20 passes a game.

“I ended up doing a lot of blocking on sweeps, too. I loved the physical aspect of that. We had a pretty balanced offense. We mixed it up quite a bit.”

It’s always strange, but athletes often seem to remember situations that didn’t end very well the best. Schertzer is no different.

“I remember playing Mineral Ridge my junior year,” he said. “It was their homecoming game and they came out of their locker room with 60 guys. We lost something like 60-6.

“The first time they had a scoring opportunity, I came to hit their running back and he shoved me right through the back of the end zone. That was our introduction to the other kind of football.”



Moving along

It didn’t take long for the meetings between Grand Valley and PV to take on real meaning. Much of that was because players on both sides were so familiar with each other, many having attended the same facilities in elementary and junior high schools. That was the case, for instance, with Barnes and the Hensons, who had all attended New Lyme-Deming when they were little.

The Mustangs gained the upper hand in 1963, winning both games against the Lakers, winning the first encounter at PV, 18-12, in October, then thrashing them again at GV, 36-14, in November.

It had to be a motivational factor for Schertzer and the other members of the 1964 PV squad. They produced a 22-0 victory at PV.

Schertzer remembers those games well.

“It was always cold and snowy when we played Grand Valley,” he said. “Jerry Bean (ironically, the uncle of Schertzer’s fellow 2009 Hall of Fame inductee Mike Adams of Jefferson) was their running back, and he was a good one. I played against Jim and Tom Henson, too. They were hardnosed players.”

Simpson had a unique way of getting his gridders ready to play, particularly in games contested in inclement weather.

“He had us lay down in the cold water before the game,” Schertzer said. “He told us, ‘Get used to it.’”

Schertzer had another productive season. According to stats supplied by Lattimer, he caught 14 passes for 223 yards, but improved his scoring output to five touchdowns and four conversion catches. He rushed for 110 yards on 50 carries. He earned second-team Class A All-Ohio honors as a senior.

“I think I was one of the leading scorers in the county,” Schertzer said.

Perhaps his defensive statistics were even more of a selling point. Lattimer’s information has Schertzer credited with 135 total tackles as a senior.

He definitely took pride in that assignment.

“I probably liked playing defensive end as much,” Schertzer said. “We were told not to let anyone get around us. We were supposed to contain. I think I was pretty decent at that. Nobody was going to get around me.”

Still, one of Schertzer’s biggest memories of his senior season was the one that got away.

“I remember dropping a pass in the end zone against Maplewood,” he said. “My mother’s brother had come up to see that game. It was kind of embarrassing.”



The next step

Despite his accomplishments, the verbal rejection slip he got from the Kent State coach pretty much settled Schertzer on the notion that his football career was finished.

“We talked a bit about going to other schools, but at that time I was more focused on getting my education anyway,” he said.

Boy, did he ever take that seriously. It took a while, going to school at night and holding down a job at the same time, Schertzer earned his bachelor’s degree from Youngstown State University in 1971.

He stuck right to pursuing his education, earning his MBA in finance from the University of Cincinnati in 1974.

“I got that through the National Defense Education Act after I finished my undergraduate studies,” Schertzer said. “It was a four-year grant that allowed me three years and I was able to use the last year to do my dissertation. The funds dried up under (President) Nixon.”

But, with his masters degree in his pocket, Schertzer was able to get into the marketing department at Xavier. Even during the early portion of his career there, though, he was able to find time to complete his doctoral studies in marketing at UC, earning it in 1981.

Over the years, Schertzer has become an increasingly important member of the faculty at Xavier, twice serving as marketing department chairman. He still maintains a full teaching load.

“I’ll quit when I don’t enjoy it anymore,” the 62-year-old said. “I still do a lot of outside consulting and I still teach fulltime, working mostly with MBA and executive MBA students. I have two classes this semester, but normally I have three.”

His profession has also allowed Schertzer to become a bit of a globetrotter.

“I really try to push international marketing programs,” he said. “I’ve taken students to China, The Netherlands and Singapore before. This year, I was in Australia for three months teaching at Bond University, which is outside Brisbane.”

He shared in that experience with his wife, Susan, to whom he has been married since 1991. She owns a doctorate from Ohio Northern University, also in marketing.

“One of our goals this year was to do a visiting team teaching class,” Schertzer said.

As already noted, education is a priority for Schertzer and his family. His two children from a previous marriage, son Tod, 43, and daughter London, 40, followed that pattern.

Tod is an Xavier alumnus and is the vice president for sales for Kreller Business Information Group in Cincinnati. London teaches at Colorado Mountain College, located about 75 miles west of Denver, and also operates her own portable espresso cart.



Good sport

Schertzer may have left football behind a long time ago, but he still maintains a keen interest. It’s just that he found other sporting interests.

“When my son was 6, he started playing soccer and I got involved,” he said. “I got into an over-30 league and kept playing until I was 58.”

The truths he learned in football still hold true for Schertzer.

“I still enjoy the camaraderie of team sports,” he said. “Football taught me discipline. I learned with practice, you can achieve almost anything you want.”

Schertzer also ran track at PV, competing in the high jump and running on relays, so he learned to differentiate between the feelings team and individual sports provide.

“Often in team sports, you find you can do things you thought you couldn’t,” he said. “Unlike individual sports, you have to rely on other people to be successful in sports like football.”