Overview:
High school basketball coach found after 45 years, reunited with former players in heartwarming reunion. A heartwarming story of a long-lost coach's reunion with his beloved players.
Coach Steve Schweitzer was my high school basketball coach. I entered the Courter Tech High School gym to try out for the basketball team in the fall of 1970. There, before my very eyes, stood my coach. I had no idea what organized sports would do for my future; I was just a fifteen-year-old kid who knew he was good at sports. To this day, I still feel my best sport is baseball, followed by football, and finally, basketball. I played all those sports in the neighborhood streets and parks of the West End, South Cumminsville, and College Hill neighborhoods. When my cousin Willie (Mike) McCarter became an All-American basketball player at Drake University and was drafted in the first round by the Los Angeles Lakers (of which, to this day, I am still a dedicated fan), I began to focus on basketball.
It is essential that I let everyone know why Chris Jones, Darnell Dawson, and I needed to find him. Coach made the three of us co-captains during our senior year, and we have been attached to the hip since then. We wanted the world to know how vital our coach was to us. About two years after graduating high school, we lost contact with Coach Schweitzer for roughly forty-five years. That was the central question among the three of us when we got together during those years: where was Coach Schweitzer? As we grew older, you could see the pain in our eyes when that question came up. We stayed in contact with our other favorite coach, Sam Ionna (coach Ionna launched my high school coaching career). We still longed for Coach Schweitzer; we wanted to know the answers to the obvious questions: is he alive, where does he live, how is he doing, and how do we contact him?
In 2017, I was discussing an advertising campaign with an employee of Cincinnati Water Works. I asked her for her email address, and she said it was Stephanni Schweitzer. I immediately asked her if she was any kin to Steve Schweitzer. She said yep, he is my dad; it was as if the sky had opened and delivered to us, Coach. I immediately got Darnell and Chris on the phone. And the rest, as they say, is history. We found our beloved coach; we have been getting together with him for the past five years, excluding two years during the pandemic. Now, all’s right with the world. He lives here in Cincinnati; we are planning our next get-together with him, hopefully in the spring.
After leaving Courter Tech, he coached the Aiken High School football team for three years. Shout out to the football players who had a get-together for him on March 2nd.
I’ve wondered what happened to Steve Schwritzer myself. Played high school football against him in the mid 60’s. He at Purcell and I at Withrow. Then we were both part of UC’s football program following high school in the 60’s. He was backup QB to starter Both Owens on “64”, my freshman year. I can’t remember what’s year it was, but the last thing I’d heard about Steve, I believe he was Head Football Coach for a high school west of Cincy near the Indy line. One of my Withrow teammates, Dave Sherman was an asst. for him.
It was great to see all of the football players as well as both Coaches Switzer and Young.
This started as a reunion with Aiken football ball players and their beloved coaches and the crossing of a player and coach crossing paths at the retirement home. It was a chance for players to honor their coaches that meant so much. The Aiken class of 1976 players remember when they were lead to a PHSL football title and they will never forget their leadership and how they carried that through their lives.