State Final Four in 2003

This is the only girls basketball team in New Albany history to make it to the state final four in 2003. Best public school team in the state, the other three final teams were private schools who recruited D1 athletes. Mr. & Mrs. Keesee hosted a pizza party for the entire community to celebrate NA girls Regional Final win over Bexley. I could tell you every girl in this photo. A wonderful memory. This team is being inducted into the New Albany Athletic Hall of Fame this fall, twenty years later.

By: Lauren Creasap Davie

Front right, I started from back to front sitting: Megan Cromp, Whitney renne, Erin dunsmore, Stacey shockey, Kristen Cathell. Left standing: Rachel white, Whitney Burris, Diana Pickett, Morgan Hoover, Rhea Davidson, Keesee’s, Lauren creasap (me), Rex reeder (coach). Sitting right side of table: Dana Doran-myers, Kelli Hughes, Kelsey Burris and Jessica Cromp.

Baseball in New Albany

Baseball in New Albany has experienced some major success in recent years with high school state titles in 2004 and 2021 and a Little League state title in 2018. But did you know that the history of baseball in New Albany goes back more than 100 years? Learn more in the latest episode of our New Albany history series!

Alive with Traditions!

Nothing has ever given me more of a small-town vibe than Summer of 2018 in New Albany, Ohio.

I was inspired to write this #newalbanystories entry after reading the story, by Steve Joseph, about his memories of New Albany Little League in the 70’s.

Our family and some of our closest baseball friends were incredibly honored this summer to be a part of New Albany history when our 13 year old son’s little league baseball team took the state champ title and moved on to take 3rd place at regionals. Out of 3,587 little league teams from around the world, our New Albany Ohio Little League Team finished in the top 20!! After the state championship, we got to have a real genuine, small-town heroes welcome with fans lining the streets, firetrucks/police escort for our team, news anchors, and a greeting from our Mayor. It was EPIC! I have two more boys hoping to get their chances to defend that Little League State Title. THIS IS TRADITION. Our 2018 Little League All-Stars inspired a whole following of young boys and. Coaches (dads) to keep up the tradition of New Albany Ohio Little League and I can’t wait to see where that takes our community over the many years to come.

My husband and I both grew up in small town New Albany. We are very proud to be running our small family business in such a bustling, yet still very small community…Traditions Landscape Group…yep, that was a marketing plug! 😉 We are raising our four children in this community and cherish everything old and new! John played New Albany sports for many years and is now coaching youth sports. Our oldest started at age three with Timbits, eventually moving on to tee-ball, baseball, flag football, soccer, basketball…our fourth and final child just made her way through a tee-ball season of her own last year (Did you know that in New Albany Baseball, your fourth kids plays for free?). We think of Bevelhymer Park as our own backyard and feel very blessed to have such awesome parks and recreation facilities.

A lot has changed over the years…but New Albany, Ohio is still very alive with traditions! Early mornings at the ball fields, long lines at the concession stands, parents there to support their young athletes, the ringing of our National Anthem, and baseball under the lights! EAGLES PIZZA…Founders Day celebrations…lots of 5K races, including the annual Walking Classic and Thanks4Giving 4Miler…lighting of the Christmas Tree at Market Street…An incredible showing of support for our school athletics…countless recitals and shows at the McCoy Performing Arts Center…OUR AMAZING SCHOOL SYSTEM AND TEACHERS. On a personal note, I cannot tell you how amazing it feels to send my 8th grader to school each day, knowing that he gets to sit in a classroom with some of MY 8th grade teachers…LOVE! {Suzie Harris Cooper, Jim Morgan, John Galbreath}

Everywhere I go, I see old faces and new faces…and it has never felt more like HOME to us! Just outside of New Albany city limits…you are no more than a couple miles away from scenic country landscape and farming fields…seriously, is there a more perfect place? The beautiful trails that weave throughout our community are just another grand way to keep us all connected. Restaurants, green-space, dog parks, shops….all of which are among our many original and/or renovated buildings from “the old days” of New Albany. Our community carries a lot of history…it is evolving, binging in new traditions, and everything going on today will ultimately be a part of history…let celebrate THAT!! Here’s to New Albany {Old and New}…afterall, we are #8 on the list of America’s best 50 cities to live in!

Christi Richardson {and John, Josh, Jacob, Nolan, & Gracie}

Lots of Memories

Connie Carr / New Albany English Teacher

You mentioned the Little League diamond and all at once a lot of memory cells fired in my brain. Hopefully, if Connie Carr is reading this, she will forgive my grammar mistakes. Spell check should catch most of my spelling errors. We moved to New Albany in 1973. Oldest son Jimmy was ready for T-ball in 1974 I believe. Middle son Andy followed him by 4 or 5 years, youngest son Scott followed Andy by another 4 or 5 years and daughter Debbie played softball starting a year after Scott. A sum total of about 16 or 17 years in New Albany Youth League sports. Must qualify the Joseph’s for some kind of award! HA!
I coached many of those years and was treasurer of the league for many years. My wife Judy and Donna Brown ran the little concession stand for many years. She remembers the rectangular pizzas (purchased frozen from Callie Cardules at the Dairy Creme) selling like hot cakes.

The league saved money for many years to buy a new ice machine. Coaches that stand out in my memory were Rod Putterbaugh, Mike Carr, Bill McKinney, Harold Phillips, Jerry Cherry, Jack Farley, Jim Sponagle, Herbie (“Don’t look at the ball- RUN”)Kellett, John Tinon, Robin Nye, and many others. Joe Morlan, of course, leaning on the outfield fence scouting for future Big League pitchers.
Many very treasured memories of small town New Albany. We love it here!!

By: Steve Joseph

I would like to add to some of the Coaches that helped get the New Albany Little League up and running:

Team 4 / 1969

Tom Kessee, Fred Shoemaker, Dexter Stevens, Mike Kowalski, Dave Mckinney, Chet Abshire, Bill Cowan, Hoel Harris, Gane Hatch, J B Bowe, Mr. Flowers, Jack Brooks, Mr. Seckerson, Mr. Elschlager, Johnny Bowman, Otto Lindenbolt, Pat Folie and others.

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.

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

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!