Hall of Fame

Fame proclaimed

Roscoe’s Fred Ahart inducted into the NYS Basketball Hall of Fame

By RICHARD A. ROSS

GLENS FALLS, NY — “There’s no place like home” is a tried and true adage, and one that certainly applies to Roscoe’s Fred Ahart in reference to Roscoe.

Trout Town is not only where he lives but the place where he has raised his family and coached for nearly four decades.

When you mention Ahart’s family, you have to include not only his wife Becky, children Maryann Clancy, Ralph Ahart, Michelle Ahart-Bosland, Katie Ahart and Kelly Ahart and his grandchildren, but the legions of former players and coaches that Ahart has built life-long kinships with.

The tiny school with the enormous heart has been an integral part of Ahart’s sense of belonging. On its fields and, in particular, on its basketball court, Ahart has been center stage year in and year out as he guided teams through the thick and thin of great successes and the counterweight of heart-rending disappointments.

But now Ahart has a new home away from home in the Glens Falls Civic Center.

By dint of his illustrious career that has seen him coach upward of 800 games with over 400 wins, Ahart was inducted into the New York State Basketball Hall of Fame on March 28. A plaque in his honor joins 112 other storied coaches, including two others from Sullivan County, Jeffersonville-Youngsville legend Paul Zintel (nominated by Ahart) and retired Monticello coach Dick O’Neill.

Ahart is the all-time win leader from Sullivan County.

Memories of glorious accomplishments that date back decades are easy to recall. Ahart arrived in Roscoe in the famed summer of ’69 and began working as a physical education teacher and coach. In 1983-84, the Blue Devils boys basketball team won their first Western Sullivan League Championship and went on to defeat Schroon Lake at Glens Falls in an early configuration of the now revamped state tournament. It is the only WSL boys basketball state level win on record. The Blue Devils lost to Fort Ann the next day but the die had been cast.

The next two seasons brought consecutive WSL titles. In 1985-86, the team bested Sugar Loaf for the Section Nine title. Two more WSL titles followed suit in 1988-89 and 1997-98. The latter was followed by another Section Nine title win, this one over S.S. Seward.

With the dissolution of the WSL in 1999-2000, Roscoe had to contend with the much more daunting competition of the Orange County League. The merger of Narrowsburg, Delaware Valley and Jeff-Youngsville, three of Roscoe’s small-school rivals, into the Sullivan West Central School district was another hardship the Blue Devils encountered.

But Ahart’s mission has always been about the larger things, not about winning per se. It’s been about building something enduring in his players and developing lifelong relationships with them.

A special boon to his induction this year was that it coincided with that of his long time friend Bill Merna, boys basketball coach of the Ogdensburg Blue Devils.

Going in side by side, the two friends, whose teams share the same colors and nickname, form the next chapter to their ongoing interconnectedness. In 2007, when Ogdensburg lost a heart-rending game to Malverne by two points in the Class B championship game at Glens Falls, Ahart was on hand as Section Nine’s co-chairman, a position he has held since 1996.

Chairman or not, Ahart would likely be at Glens Falls anyway. He loves the game dearly and whatever Fred comes to love, he sticks with for life.

That’s Ahart. Always there, always solid, always classy through life’s ups and downs, year in and year out.

Here in Sullivan County, Ahart is and will always be, famous. Now, as thousands peruse the Wall of Fame in Glens Falls, many more will learn what we already know: Fred Ahart is the stuff of legends.