Page 14 - The Hunt - Spring 2024

TRIBUTE
The Silver Fox
Students remember Coatesville’s Ross Kershey as a teacher, coach and friend.
Ross Kershey’s silver-gray hair contrasted sharply with his dark eyebrows and piercing eyes, earning him the nickname the Silver Fox. Tall and lanky, with only a slip of paper in his hand, he’d work the halls at Coatesville Area Senior High School like he was looking for the next fast break or fade-away jumper.
In 28 seasons on the basketball court and 14 on the track field, Kershey amassed 13 Ches-Mont League Championships,
14 league relay crowns, two district titles and a state championship. The school’s gymnasium bears his name, and his classic Overplay and Pressure Drill was published in 1971’s Treasury of Basketball Drills From
By Kim Douglas
Top Coaches. The drill emphasized “physical and mental toughness—an essential for any pressure team.” It’s a trait he embodied on the court and in the classroom at Coatesville from 1956 to 2020. Kershey passed away this past October at age 90.
As one of his students, I sat up straighter and always paid attention in his classes. You had to be sharp, because you never knew when the next question was coming your way. “Teaching was always first for him,” says Kershey’s only son, Scott. “Life around our dinner table was like an endless game of Jeopardy, with history, sports and entertainment categories. It was great.”
Kershey was both the namesake and the
first recipient of Coatesville Area Senior High School’s Honor Society’s Educator of the Year Award in 1981. Many of us recall his classroom model of Gettysburg Battlefield, complete with soldiers, cannons, ramparts and accurate topography. On school field trips to the site, visitors would gather around his students to listen in to his lectures. “On one trip, a guide stopped talking and told his group, ‘Listen to that guy,’” recalls Scott.
Kershey was also passionate about Coatesville. “His biggest gift was his love for the city and the people who lived there,” says Holly Wilson Leslie, a 1988 CASH graduate. “Each year, ahead of the prom, he’d dedicate an entire class to showing students how place
12 THE HUNT MAGAZINE spring 2024
PHOTOS COURTESY OF SCOTT KERSHEY