(EDITOR’S NOTE: The Times News will be running a series of stories asking area coaches and athletic directors - past and present - to remember their “Most Memorable” sporting event. Today’s Most Memorable moment comes from former Lehighton basketball coach Tom Schaeffer)

By Rod Heckman

rheckman@tnonline.com

There are some things you just never forget - no matter how long ago they occurred.

While details may get a little fuzzy over time, the feelings of those moments can be conjured up with just a mention of the event.

For most people, those memories include obvious experiences like graduations, weddings and the birth of a child.

But for coaches, outside of winning a championship, some games stand out more than others for a number of reasons.

Tom Schaeffer, whose Most Memorable Moment as Lehighton’s golf coach appeared in Thursday’s Times News, also sat on the bench of the school’s boys basketball team for more than 20 years (including over a decade as the head coach).

And even though it’s been over 53 years - Jan. 6, 1967 to be exact - since the Indians pulled off a 78-77 upset of Stroudsburg, Schaeffer remembers the contest as if it happened yesterday.

“They were really big and were one of the best teams in the Lehigh Valley League at the time,” said Schaeffer, who took over the program in the 1961-62 season. “(Hal) Watson went to Villanova on a free ride. They had (Paul) Shaffer who was 6-6, and (Arlie) Williams who was 6-5 or 6-6.

“We went to a 2-2-1 defense and they had trouble against it. It looked like a man up front because we really harassed (point guard Bruce) Baustein. Inside, we were zoned. We had a good scouting report from our assistant coach, and that’s how we put together our combination defense.”

The favored Mounties, who were 7-2 entering the contest and just coming off a rout of Emmaus, raced to an early lead as expected. Watson, who scored 1,425 points in his career and was averaging more than 30 points a game that season, hit for 11 first-quarter markers as his team took a 22-9 advantage.

Still trailing by 12 midway through the second frame, Lehighton started to fight back. Loren LaRose, Rick Beyer and Ron Kunkle each tallied six points as the Indians closed the gap to 37-31 by halftime.

Schaeffer’s club employed a full-court press in the second half and eventually pulled even at 51 late in the third period.

Beyer completed a three-point play with five minutes to go to give Lehighton its first lead, 61-58. Steve Sheckler, at 6-5, followed with an inside basket and his own three-point play to keep the Indians on top.

“We played like a wheel offense, and it wound up a lot of two-man game with Beyer and Sheckler,” said Schaeffer. “There was a lot of pick and roll.

“Sheckler was big, but he was a project. There were many people who didn’t think he’d even score 100 points for me. Well, he ended up scoring almost 400. I told people we knew what to do with these guys.”

Beyer ended with 13 points in the final quarter and finished with a game-high 28. Sheckler, meanwhile, registered a double-double, posting 17 points and 12 rebounds.

But it wasn’t just the effort of those two that produced the upset win.

Kunkle (eight points) added a key bucket to push the Lehighton lead to six, and LaRose hit a shot with a minute-and-a-half left to help fend off a late Stroudsburg rally.

LaRose shot 9-of-12 from the floor, including all seven of his shots in the final frame, to end the night with 21 points.

“LaRose was the quarterback on the football team,” said Schaeffer. “I forget what offense (the football team) ran, but he had to do a lot of blocking. His right arm was used so much that he had a calcium deposit and couldn’t extend his right arm, so we had to develop an offense that he would come up court left-handed.”

While he didn’t have a big scoring night against Stroudsburg, Ed Jacoby made his presence felt with numerous assists - including one to Beyer on a basket with under 20 seconds to go that ultimately made the difference in the team’s one-point win.

“Jacoby was good,” said Schaeffer. “(Coach) Bill E. Foster had moved from Bloomsburg to Rutgers, and he wanted Jacoby badly down there, because Jacoby would have been a point guard at 6-2, which was big back then. He was a good ballplayer who won a couple of games for us against Jim Thorpe and Catty at the foul line.”

While Lehighton relished its big win and then nearly knocked off eventual LVL champion Whitehall before falling by a 59-58 score in its next contest, the Indians managed just a 9-12 record during that 1966-67 campaign. Still, it was much better than what their fans had known before.

“When the principal came to me to take the head basketball job, I said I didn’t know if I was ready for that,” said Schaeffer, who also returned to the bench in 1993 and helped open the high school gym with an overtime win over Nazareth. “He said, ‘Well you can’t do any worse than some of the people we’ve already had here.’ Lehighton had some bad basketball before that. At one point in the late 40s, they lost 43 in a row.

“I enjoyed basketball. There’s more involved in coaching a basketball team than anything else because there’s so much strategy and planning and everything that has to be done.”