LEHIGH VALLEY FLASHBACK
A look back at Lehigh Valley sports stories over the years from May 24.
2008: Easton’s Chanelle Price, competing in the final high school meet of her illustrious career, sets a PIAA 3A meet record and breaks the National Federation High School mark in the 800 meter run with a time of 2:02.90, claiming her third straight gold in the event at the state track and field championship meet in Shippensburg. Price breaks the 28-year-old state mark of 2:05.47 held by Upper Dublin’s Kim Gallagher and the national mark (for state sanctioned meets only) of 2:04.50, also set in 1980. The run was just off Price’s career best of 2:02.38 set in the U.S. Outdoor Championships in 2007. Also at the meet, Rover Abby Schaffer broke the state record in the pole vault with a vault of 13 feet, one-half inch. Easton’s Lindsey Regan set the mark of 13-0 in 1994.
2003: Behind the stamina of Brandon Carter, who runs 10 races in two days, Bethlehem Catholic captures the PIAA Class 2A boys track and field team title with 36 points, three more than runner-up Wyomissing. Carter, who is fourth in the 100, wins a bronze medal in the 200. is part of the Golden Hawks’ silver medalist 400-meter relay team and anchors the gold medal-winning 1,600 relay team of Jules Eggleston, Frank Trovato and Maurice Simmons that clinches the team title.
1993: Bob Shriver steps down after 13 years as Easton’s football coach to become the school’s athletic director. Shriver leaves as the third-winningest coach in Red Rovers history (105-50-2) with three East Penn Conference and two District 11 titles.
1990: Lafayette falls 7-2 to thirdranked Florida State in the NCAA South II region baseball tournament. The Leopards are eliminated the next day, dropping a 13-3 decision to Brigham Young.
1983: Stacey Spitko scores on an eighth-inning error to lift Parkland to a 3-2 win over Whitehall and the Trojans’ fourth straight East Penn Conference softball title.
1975: Parkland reaches the PIAA girls softball championship game by beating Central Dauphin 13-7.
1975: Allen’s Dave Kusko, a twotime District 11 champion and the tournament’s top seed, falls to eventual champion Harrison Lauer of Fox Chapel 3-6, 6-3, 1-6 in the semifinals of the PIAA boys tennis tournament.
1960: Six days after his release by the Yankees, 40-year-old Elmer Valo signs with the Washington Senators. The Palmerton native, who began his major-league career in 1940 with the Philadelphia A’s, will play one more major-league season with Minnesota and the Phillies before retiring with a .282 lifetime average.
1958: Easton’s Larry Sobel joins fellow Red Rover Charlie Bibleheimer (1952) as the only District 11 tennis players to win the PIAA title when he downs Lower Merion’s John Custer 4-6, 6-4, 6-1 in the finals. Sobel had lost to Lancaster’s Alan Koth in the 1957 finals.
1958: The Lehigh-Northampton League upholds a protest filed by Pen Argyl and Parkland to strike a victory by Wilson (that came in a replay of a previous tie game between the Warriors and Hellertown) from the standings, knocking Wilson out of a potential four-way tie for the title with Pen Argyl, Parkland and Bangor in one of the tightest races in LNL history. Eight of the nine teams finished with at least a .500 record — the three co-leaders at 5-3, Wilson and Hellertown at 4-3-1; and Fountain Hill, Coplay and Nazareth at 4-4. Only East Stroudsburg
(0-8) finished with a losing record. Parkland eventually wins the title, beating Bangor 3-2 after the Slaters downed Pen Argyl 6-5 in 10 innings.