Page 15 - The Hunt - Spring 2024

settings worked in fancy restaurants, so inner-city kids who may have never gone to nicer restaurants wouldn’t feel embarrassed.”
With a 104-1 record as a track-and-field coach, Kershey knew nothing about the sport before he was asked to coach in 1963. He learned all he needed to know from a handful of books supplied by his wife, Sally, the school’s assistant librarian.
Kershey’s family moved to Connellsville, Pennsylvania, from
West Virginia when he was 3. A commitment to education and service was instilled by his dad. “He liked to tell us how his barely literate father came home from the coal mines one day covered in dust, sat down and told him, ‘Boy, if you ever go into those coal mines, I’ll break both of your legs,’” Scott says.
Kershey took those words to heart, earning an academic scholarship
to Temple University. Though he always downplayed his skills on the court, he made the basketball team his senior year, graduating with a communications degree in 1955. A year later, he was teaching social studies and coaching basketball at what was then Coatesville’s S. Horace Scott High School. He never left. He also put his degree to good use as an announcer at Coatesville football games for over four decades and a sports columnist at the Coatesville Record for 25 years.
In 2021, in honor of his son, Kershey established the Scott Kershey Basketball Permanent Endowment to benefit the West Chester University men’s basketball team. Like his dad, Scott was a longtime high school coach and football announcer who attended WCU after five years
Ross Kershey in 1970.
in the Navy. “He never pushed me to do any of that—I just loved it,” says Scott. “We both thought ESPN was the greatest thing ever invented.” Back in 2005, I asked my former teacher if he missed coaching. His
response: “I coached 10 guys each year but had 160 students. Which job do you think was more important?” TH
Wilmington Friends School Leaders in education for 275 years!
Preschool through 12th grade.
Visit wilmingtonfriends.org for more information and to schedule a tour.
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