Every now and again, I look up Eagles Pizza’s website. I miss the pizza and like to look at the photos. But it is not just the pizza photos I like to see, it is all the photos of New Albany I really like to see! I grew up there but have been in Texas since 1984. I worked at Dairy Cream as did my two sisters. Life was good. I rode the roads of New Albany with my 10 speed bicycle and then my red cutlass supreme. I miss it all! It was beautiful! None of my family lives there anymore. Our home was where Jonell Ct. is now. The builder was nice enough to name a street after my Mom.
By: Mary (Snider) Wineriter

Civil War Authors Book Signing

Join us on December 2, from 6-9 PM at Eagles Pizza for our first book signing and visit with authors Richard Baumgartner and Dennis Keesee. Rick has written and edited numerous books on the Civil War and other subjects. He will be signing assorted titles including Buckeye Blood-Ohio at Gettysburg during this 150th anniversary of the famed battle. Eagle Pizza owner and author Dennis Keesee will have copies of Too Young To Die – boy Soldiers of the Union Army as well. Within are stories of boys aged 5-17 who went away with the innocence of youth and soon were faced with the realities of war.

This year (2013) New Albany sports fans are enjoying another great football season as the Eagles are knee deep in play-off games and another chance to be State Champs. Not always was the case, 65-years ago a group of dedicated parents and students welded goal post, made a practice field and dressed the first team New Albany had in years. It was a brutal season as detailed by Brad Willson in this October 17, 1948 Columbus Sunday Dispatch Magazine article. Thank you to Sally Conrad for dropping off the article at Eagles, Dennis Keesee.

Six minutes left in the ball game and the score 74 to 0, Grove City.  New Albany had managed one first down, with the aid of a penalty. For the afternoon’s effort, the boys from Plain Township School had a bruising 45 yard deficit. On the New Albany bench, the reserve “strength” consisted of a scanty huddle of 11 lonely substitutes. The youngster at the far end could’ve passed for a mascot, except for his white jersey with the red numbers and a shiny marked helmet which kept slipping down over his eager eyes. He’d weigh maybe 86, in complete grid gear and after drinking four double malts.

In a thin, changing 14 year old boys voice he piped, “C’mon fellows, we still got nearly six minutes!”

Nobody on the New Albany side of the field figured his appeal was hilariously optimistic. Football, as played on the frayed shoestring at New Albany, is no joke.

The game ended at 74 – zero, but New Albany wasn’t glum.

“They’ll keep trying,” predicted coach Russ Salberg.”And they’ll get better.”

It’s tough to find a strong football squad in a school with only 50 boys.”In fact,” smiled Salberg, the young coach,” it’s tough to find a squad.”

But the boys and their parents were agreed that New Albany should try again. And “try” is something they know how to do at the intersection of Routes 62 and 161.

Before Russ, who looks like a high school senior himself, could start giving them plays there were other problems.

The boys built a partition for a locker room. The five showers didn’t work. The tract of ground between the cornfield and the playground had to be seeded, rolled and lined for a practice field. Somebody borrowed some 2 inch pipe and the players donned welders’ mask and came up with two goalpost. Lineman’s chains and down markers appeared from the school shops. Bravely the school went $1499.73 in debt for equipment and uniforms for the squad of 25. The same uniform served for practice and games. On the night before a game, the boys wash their jerseys to present a bright, if inexpert, front to the foe.

Stars and second-stringers (there are no third stringers) share the sweeping and cleaning of the locker rooms. Boys with the longest walk home or the heaviest list of farm chores usually are given first chance in the showers. Don Irvine, a tackle, Farms 125 acres. He milks eight Cows and feeds 25 hogs before it gets light. He’s lucky, though, because he has a car. Some of the boys bicycle or hike a couple of miles home after practice. Ray Morrow is another lineman who has cows to milk twice daily and faces a two-mile hike after practice. The coach knows about these things firsthand. He was a small-town boy and played four years at the Navarre, Ohio, High School, earning all-state mention his final season. Then he went to Bucknell to play some tackle and now keeps busy teaching math and science, coaching four sports and working on his degree at Ohio State. Of course he also takes care of the equipment and doubles as trainer. Superintendent S. J. Benedict is faculty manager, arranges schedules, hires officials, supervises tickets, plans and assigns the job of mimeographing programs and between times wonders whether they’ll be able to pay off that $1499.73 sent debt from their receipts.

Things should get better for the Plain Township school, with its 287 pupils and 12 teachers. Morgan” brute” Harlor, 5 feet tall, 95 pounds, substitute tailback, staggering under the weight of his shoulder pads, says,” wait till next year.”

More realistic, superintendent Benedict says, “at least we should have our own field.” This year New Albany played even its “home” games at opponent’s stadiums. The athletic boosters, a group of plain Township fans, have chipped in $1200 for a 4 acre piece of pasture adjoining the school. Right now New Albany’s forte is spirit and willingness. Football teams have been built on less.

White Fences

It was 1985 and i was 4 years old, we were moving from columbus to a little town called Homer.  This was before the 161 by-pass when it took what seemed like hours driving from columbus to the new house; it was alway a treat that became a tradition to stop at Eagles Pizza. We would wait in line for a seat to eat our favorite pizza it didnt matter if it was a friday or a saturday the place was always packed with families and high school kids just there to enjoy themselves and keep up on the events of the area.

In the time before cell phones and internet and even the renovation of the resturant when the old gas station was across the street and the tiny police station was there too.  Back before New Albany  had been Wexnerized, not that it is a bad thing but you very seldom saw a white fence.  I remember when the big house was being built between 605 and Kitzmiller, now it doesnt seem so big when you drive through some of the neighborhoods.  It is amazing how the little town  has changed from the family owned feed mill, an ice cream shop and the pizza shop and dont forget the Christian radio station.  I really can’t even remember seeing anything more than an old station wagon or Ford pick-up truck driving through town; where now you really never know what you will see but its almost a guarantee that its not going to be that old farmer parked in the parking lot with his dog in the back of the truck.  More like a Lexus or BMW or the occasional Porsche with some one on a cell phone driving crazy because they have some where they have to be in a hurry. Now there are more businesses and churches and what seems like miles and miles of white board fence.  How times have changed for an area that began as an old farm town and so many of the people that live in the area don’t have any idea or care to know what the past of the area they live.  Please if you have a memory to share do, give others a chance to remember.

By:  Shawn Lemay

Hey Coach

In the spring of 2007 my daughter and I went to a Wittenberg university softball game with some friends. The center fielder hit a home run!  Her mother jumped up, cheering for her daughter.  I leaned over to my friend and said, \” I know that lady.  She coached me in softball when I was a kid,\”. I was certain it was her.  Crisco is what we called her, as in go Chis go- it became Crisco!  So I had to introduce myself.  Between games I went up to her, it went something like this… I have to ask and don\’t mean to creep you out, but aren\’t youChris Richards from New Albany? (FYI- aka Kathy to some). She wore a stunned expression of confirmation.  Wanting to give her reference, I told her I was Jeanne Maynard, Keith Harig\’s sister (they were classmates) and she had coached me on the Red Barron\’s softball team the summer after she graduated.  She had placed me too!  She remembered I had long, white-blonde hair.  She even said she had recently looked at pictures from that summer (-she later emailed the to me and they are posted on Facebook).  How cool is this little reunion?!   We chatted and later introduced our daughters.  In the fall of 2008, our daughters became friends and teammates on that Wittenberg  Tiger softball team.  Chris, her husband Don, my husband Jim and I enjoyed watching our girls play together for two years.  Thanks to Facebook we stay connected and Chris is fondly in my cell as Crisco.

By: Jeanne Maynard Amicon

2013 New Albany Science Olympiad Invitational A Huge Success

A big thank you goes out to all the teams that participated in this years New Albany Invitational!
We had over 60 teams participate between B & C divisions – competing in 23 events per division.
A big thanks to the over 130 volunteers, coaches, and district staff for helping us pull off this event
successfully. We’re planning our 3rd annual Invitational for Feb. 2014… stay tuned!

February 24, 2013 By: avatke

Photo By: Dirk Stevens

Ben Coleman Rocks Out!

This is one of Ben’s first concerts back in the day. Wow, how time flies. Now Kohl and Brian are in their second year of college and Ben is off to Austin, Texas next week for South by Southwest. They were a great band and are great young men.

New Albany-Plain Local Schools

It’s National Signing Day! Congrats Alan Watson – headed to Columbia University & Darron Lee headed to The Ohio State University! We are so proud!