Pulling off perfection
Paul Uram knew how to put together a powerhouse.
Once he was hired as a physical education teacher at Lyndora School in Butler, he assembled a gymnastics team that simply couldn’t be beaten.
“Paul would identify those who showed a knack for gymnastics during gym class,” former Butler gymnast Bill Erdos said. “He asked us to come in after school and practice with him. That was in 1956.
“By 1957, we were competing against other teams and nobody was beating us.”
That Butler gymnastics team that went unbeaten from 1957-62 and won more than 60 individual championships will be inducted into the Butler County Sports Hall of Fame during the organization’s annual banquet at 6 p.m. Saturday at the Butler Days Inn.
The squad won six consecutive Western Pennsylvania Gymnastics championships. won the AAU Western Pa. championship and placed second at the AAU National Sokol Championship in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1960.
“I guess that was our only loss,” Erdos said of the national event. “We came up a few points shy there.”
Many of the gymnasts on that team got involved in college gymnastics. Erdos did some coaching at Youngstown State. Ken Musko competed at West Virginia, Jim Curzi at Michigan and John Franchuk at Pitt.
Curzi, who repeatedly won the all-around title in high school, went on to receive the Nissen Award at Michigan as the best collegiate gymnast in the country.
Others on the Butler squad included Earl Hackett, Dave Johnson, Chuck Moses, Gary Sadlak, Pat Daniel, George Jankovich, Roy McCann, Ricky Smith, Bill Daubenspeck, Pat Gornick, Bill Johnson, Bud Monteleone, Rich Okeson and Tom Warton.
“Coach Uram was a two-time national sokol champion himself,” Erdos said. “He got the most out of everybody. Some people were good at one particular event, others were good at all-around.
“Everybody scored points and contributed to the team.”
Among the events at that time were floor exercise, high bar, parallel bars, long horse vault, side horse, still rings, trampoline, flying rings, rope climbing and tumbling.
“Some of those events aren’t contested today, but we had somebody for everything,” Erdos said.
The team took 19 medals home from an AAU meet in Pittsburgh one year without Curzi, its top gymnast, permitted to compete. He was erased from the list of competitors because he was defending champion.
Erdos recalled the team being taken to colleges in the area “just to work out with them. Working alongside collegiate competition really motivated us,” he added.
There were 13 gymnasts on Butler’s original team. Erdos is hopeful four or five of them will be at the banquet. Uram is expected to be there as well.
“A lot of those guys live out of the area now,” Erdos said. “When we were all together as a team, we were confident, motivated and very well-coached — and we had fun.”
Tickets for the Butler County Sports Hall of Fame banquet are $30 in advance, $35 at the door. They are available at bcshof.com, Parker’s Appliance in Chicora, Saxonburg Drug, Moses Jewelers, Snack n’ Pack and Bill’s Beer Barn in Butler.
