Coach has left lasting PSU legacy

Joyce Tomana

Take a moment to recognize the 10 letterman representing the 1947 Penn State football team to be honored at today’s homecoming game. Their achievements are among the most accomplished of Nittany Lion teams.

William “Rip” Scherer is among them. He evolved his Penn State experience into a lifetime of quiet success in coaching, teaching, mentoring and family life. He’s truly a sage when it comes to football and life lessons.

Teammates John Findley, Lee Henry, Bob Hicks, Ellwood Patchel, Bob Ross, Joe Sarabok, Tom Smith, Wally Triplett, Bob Williams and several family members will attend.

Scherer met his future wife, June, in 1949 soon after he began teaching and coaching football at North Catholic High School. Sarabok was best man at their wedding. Scherer spent most of his 42-year career in the Pittsburgh area, eventually retiring in 1991 as Moon High School athletic director. The Scherers raised seven children.

Sports continue to connect the family. Their son, Rip Jr., is an assistant coach for the NFL Carolina Panthers. He began as a Penn State graduate assistant coach in 1974. The Scherer’s grandson Ryan is a current Nittany Lion.

Rip, 84, still participates in the Penn State annual football coaches clinic. He moves a little slower now, but coaches value his experience and consider his advice relevant.

“Several of his immediate staff went on to become head coaches and moved into high administrative posts,” says my brother Mike Tomana, a Moon graduate who played football at Yale University and graduated from Boston College Law School.

“Rip had tremendous influence on many athletes at Moon who were later successful in college and business. Look at the careers of Bob Davie, John Calipari, Rich Milot,” he said.

Davie, currently an ESPN college football analyst, coached college football for 25 years, finally as Notre Dame head coach. Calipari is the head

men’s basketball coach at the University of Kentucky. Milot, a Penn State linebacker in the late 1970s, had a successful nine-year career with the Washington Red-skins, including a 1983 Super Bowl win.

“I am eternally indebted to Rip,” says Tim O’Malley, current executive director of the Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League. “He gave me my first teaching and coaching jobs, and more opportunities to advance my career. He led by example, always above reproach, with integrity. We still call him ‘Coach.’ It’s a sign of respect.”

“Rip has the old-school belief that sports taught and revealed character,” says Charles Corbin, a former Moon player now practicing law in Virginia. “He was never shy about making that connection. He wanted to mold players into men, not just coach football.”

Dozens of anecdotes can explain why coach Scherer is regarded so highly. I most value how he responded to my brother’s serious injury — broken ribs and a collapsed lung during the first game of his senior year, 1973. Consequently, his season was limited as he recovered, but thanks to coach Scherer’s efforts, Mike was recruited and admitted to Yale.

“Rip went out of his way to find college opportunities for players,” Mike recalls. “The ’70s was a tough era for everybody. The Vietnam War was still going on. We all had draft cards. But when we played for Rip none of that mattered. We stepped on the field and it was all business.”

As Penn State overflows this weekend with nostalgia and celebration, Rip Scherer’s Penn State experience is a growing mosaic of the past and present.

Joyce Tomana is a 1979 journalism graduate of Penn State, member of the College of Communications Alumni Society Board and former Daily Collegian sports editor. She can be reached at joyce tomana@msn.com.