Clay Caudill, TE From Ohio...

I'll do what I can from my contacts. We need a TE or two, and the midwest produces some good ones...

Looks like LSU is listed as Warm on his 247 profile along with 3 other schools. Holds 15 offers.

Doesn't live too far from me either. Hope he commits to us so I can watch him. Same with the Sandusky RB

There's an O-lineman (Trey Leroux) from Norwalk who is getting looks from major colleges. 6'8 335 pounds. Maybe LSU should take a look at him. Only a Jr

Dear mpwilging:

At the risk of turning this blog site into a high school reunion remembrance blog—and drawing the enmity of other posters here—I think I know you.

Did you attend Appleseed Junior High and graduate from Malabar High School in 1968; count among your friends tennis player Fred Brubach and football player Joe Keetle, who were also friends of mine; have several gorgeous sisters; live on Marion Avenue for a while, and your family ran a meat market downtown?

If so, it is indeed a very, very small world. How did you become an LSU fan?

A teammate of Clay Caudill at Mansfield Senior is also attracting attention from a number of Big Ten and Mid American Conference schools.

Angelo Grose, a wide receiver and defensive back, is also a lightning quick basketball player and track athlete who long jumped more than 23 feet and high jumped 6-7 last spring. He also an outstanding student in the classroom.

Two Mansfield natives will be playing Division I football this fall. Jornell Manns, a Senior High product, is a redshirt freshman wide receiver at Minnesota, and Tyrell Ajian, a product of Mansfield Madison High School, will probably start in the defensive backfield at Kentucky, where head coach Mark Stoops heavily recruits Ohio as many SEC fans know.

Two more bits of information about Senior High grads.

U.S Senator Sherrod Brown, (D-Ohio), a 1970 graduate, continues to mull over whether to seek the Democratic nomination for president, and Hugh Douglas, a Mansfield Senior graduate who played football at Central State in Ohio and later for the New York Jets and the Philadelphia Eagles and today is co-host of the morning show on Atlanta radio's 92.9 The Game, was recently inducted into the Black College Football Hall of Fame.

Consider yourself up to date!

Note to mpwilging: My name is Jim Winkler. I grew up in the Brinkerhoff School district, played hours of tennis at Maple Lake Park and the Woodland Club, and knew your uncle, Phil, from Appleseed. We had a lot of mutual friends. While in college, Joe Keetle and I worked one summer at Richland Shale Brick near the airport. He was a great guy. Tragically, he died from a stroke a number of years ago. I graduated from Senior High in 1968 and American University in Washington, D.C. in 1972 and then spent two years in the Army thanks to a low draft lottery number.

With the help of the GI Bill, I earned a master’s degree in journalism from Ohio University in 1977 and a law degree from University of Toledo College of Law in 1986, going to school at night while working during the day. I spent some 35 years in a variety of public relations and communications positions at Medical College of Ohio and then five years at UT, after the two universities merged in 2006. I retired in 2014.

I spent the last 4 years in Walbridge and made several friends but was glad to get back to Louisiana food and football. It was ok in the summer but crazy cold in winter!

Well, one Mansfield Senior product has made a decision—Sherrod Brown will not be seeking the Democratic Party nomination for president—and we all await Clay Caudill’s decision where he will play college football.

Texas Tiger 7, you are right. Much has happened in Mansfield Senior football over the years—much of it celebratory and some very sad. Allow me to share two more historical items.

The 14.000-seat football stadium where MSH plays is named after Harold W. Arlin, who was president of the Mansfield Board of Education and the driving force behind its construction that was completed in 1947.

An engineer, Arlin was sent to Mansfield from Pittsburgh to launch a publicity campaign for the city’s huge Westinghouse appliance manufacturing plant, to get every household in America to buy the washing machines, dryers, refrigerators and stoves that were being churned out at the gigantic plant in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s.

But his real claim to fame is that he is considered the first commercial radio announcer in the country when he worked at legendary Pittsburgh radio station KDKA. the country’s first radio station.

On November 2, 1920, Arlin made history as the radio's first announcer when he read over-the-air the returns to the 1920 presidential election between Senator Warren G. Harding and Governor James Cox.

During his tenure at KDKA, Arlin is credited with being the first announcer for the first radio broadcast of a baseball game, an August 5, 1921. game between the Pirates and Phillies and the first radio broadcast of a football game on October 8, 1921, between Pitt and West Virginia.

Arlin also interviewed many celebrities on the air. He spent five years at KDKA, where he was nicknamed the "Voice of America." Arlin died in 1986 and is buried in Mansfield.

Since 1972, when the Ohio High School Athletic Association started post-season football playoffs, Arlin Field has hosted more than 60 games involving teams from other cities. Its large seating capacity, easy parking, outstanding turf, and its north central Ohio location make it an attractive neutral site.

During his high school days at Elyria, former football coach Les Miles played there a couple of times when Elyria and MSH were members of the Buckeye Conference, one of the best high school conferences in the state back then. And there are some who still remember a November night in 2001 when a lanky junior wide receiver from Akron St. Vincent-St Mary visited Mansfield for a playoff game. Licking Valley, a high school near Columbus, handed LeBron James and the Irish a 37-13 loss.

I do hope that Clay Caudill knows a little about the rich history of the football field where he plays on Friday nights.

***

Tragically, James “Jimo” Adams, a 1967 MSH graduate and an all-Ohio tackle, was among the 75 football players, coaches, school administrators and prominent Huntington residents who died in the November 1970 plane crash of the Marshall University football team. He is still remembered in Mansfield to this day.

Clay Caudill's teammate at Mansfield (Ohio) Senior High School, three-star cornerback Angelo Grose, committed to Michigan State yesterday.

MSU, I believe, is still in Caudill's top five schools, along with West Virginia, Kentucky, Wisconsin, and LSU.