Dr. Harry Stille (left) and Coach Bob O'Hoppe (right)
were two
inspirational coaches who helped baseball endure at
Erskine College.
Two
Sports Endure the Century
By Maggie Peeler
When the clock strikes midnight January 1, 2000,
many people in the world will be fearing Y2K
problems, but Erskine College baseball and male
tennis players can celebrate a century of seasons.
While Erskine presently fields 10 sports, only two
have been around since 1900. Sports teams such as
volleyball and golf have come and gone at Erskine,
but two intercollegiate athletic teams have been a
fixture for the past 100 years—men's tennis and
baseball.
Baseball at Erskine began its intercollegiate
competition in the 1890s, according to Erskine's
former public relations director Richard Haldeman.
Baseball at Erskine has been successful over the last
100 years with a number of standout players. The 1903
team, which included one of Erskine's greatest
catchers, Buck Pressly, won the state championship.
Pressly, who coached the 1916 Erskine baseball team
to the state championship, became a town doctor after
he played professional baseball with “Shoeless
Joe” Jackson on the 1908 Greenville Spinners
team.
Another Erskine standout athlete was J.C.
“Jakie” Todd. In addition to playing
baseball, Todd was a star performer on the Erskine
football team. Todd also coached baseball at Erskine
from 1926 to 1941. Under his reign, Erskine
celebrated wins over South Carolina and Clemson.
Through the 40s, 50s, and 60s, Erskine baseball
continued to hold its own against large and small
colleges.
Following the years after World War II (1941 to
1946) when Erskine cancelled all of its sports,
success was hard to come by until Dr. Harry Stille
became the baseball coach in 1959. Stille's era is
remembered for leading his teams to victory over
Division I teams such as Ohio University, University
of Virginia, Wake Forest, Furman, Massachusetts, and
Yale.
In the mid 1980s an Erskine student-athlete by the
name of Bob O'Hoppe found success at the position of
shortstop for the Flying Fleet. He became a coach for
the Fleet in 1992 and set a record for the most
victories, 29, in a season. And In 1998, under the
coaching of Dan Massarelli, Erskine baseball finished
second in the Carolinas-Virginia Athletic Conference.
The recent years have produced three major league
players from Erskine—former Montreal outfielder
Jim Fairey, former Philadelphia pitcher Erskine
Thomason, and pitcher Eric Moody who played for the
Texas Rangers in 1997.
The other constant sport in the 20th century at
Erskine College has been men's tennis. The Tennis
Association was established in the early 1900s, and
the Erskine team won the association's tournament in
1906, 1907, and 1909, according to Haldeman. A player
who helped those teams earn the championships was Dr.
R.C. Grier, who was also a standout baseball player
for the Fleet. He later became president of the
college in the 1920s.
Although there was no official women's tennis team
at Erskine in the early and mid 1900s, Haldeman
recounted a story of a popular match in 1973
imitating the game between Billy Jean King and Bobby
Riggs. Anarie Duckett, an Erskine co-ed, competed
against Erskine administrator Bob Ackerman in front
of a large student body and faculty crowd. The
results of that match were very similar to those of
the match between King and Riggs. The women
prevailed. Yet, women's tennis as well as other
women's sports teams did not officially begin at
Erskine until the mid 1970s.
The men's tennis and baseball teams of the new
millennium as well as the other eight sports, have
the challenge of meeting the standards set by the
20th century Flying Fleet athletes. Will they endure
another 100 years? Which teams will be able to say
they too have been around for 100 years? Which
Erskine athletes will be written about come the end
of the 21st century? Only the future holds the
answers.
Here' s to the next 100 years.
(Editor's note: This is the first in a series
of articles taking a look at the past 100 years at
Erskine. We will publish an article each week in the
series through the end of the year.)
Countdown
to the year 2000
