By John Bassetti

Many Mooney players went to Ursuline before the new school opened.

YOUNGS-TOWN — Jim Pepperney had an interesting perspective as to why Ursuline lost the first game against Mooney in 1958.

“We should have beaten Mooney, but they knew our offense,” Pepperney said of a good portion of the 1958 Mooney team’s seniors who attended Ursuline as freshmen before the new parochial school opened in the fall of 1956.

“Some went [to Ursuline] as freshmen and some went to Glenmary,” Pepperney said of an old convent on the corner of Glenwood and Chalmers where instruction took place for students who would be part of the sophomore class when Mooney opened.

Whether the year’s exposure to Ursuline football was a factor is debatable, but Pepperney, a messenger guard for Tom Carey’s Irish as a senior that year, found that there’s a greater matter about which to be concerned.

“Joe Hynes, a buddy of mine who caught the touchdown pass for us in that game, just passed away about a year ago. That was the first score in the series,” the 66-year-old Pepperney said of both the historical significance and personal loss.

P.J. [John] Moore was a junior quarterback making the TD throw in the second quarter in that game.

“We scored first,” said Pepperney, who alternated with Bill Emery in the Mooney game.

Hynes and Caleb Buggs were ends, Ernie Borghetti and David Crosetto tackles, Pepperney and Jim Dempsey at guards and Larry “Bear” Saykes at center. Another guard was Jack Carney and Rick Varley also played center, Pepperney said.

“We had so many seniors it was crazy,” he said of the team depth.

Although Pepperney was only 160 pounds, Borghetti, a fellow senior, was as “big as a house,” Pepperney said.

Borghetti later played at Pitt and in the NFL.

Although he alternated with Emery in the Mooney game, Pepperney said that, in other games, the assignments changed.

“In the Mooney game, I was strongside guard and Carney was weakside. Sometimes, we’d run the weakside guards in and out.”

For Pepperney, being familiar with high school teammates from grade school was helpful.

“Buggs, Saykes, Emery, Moore and I were from St. Columba.”

Ursuline’s ’58 team went 4-6, including a strange 4-0 loss to Woodrow Wilson.

Like many players, Pepperney had a father who saved newspaper articles and kept game programs for later years.

Pepperney has come to appreciate that foresight.

“It’s amazing what he kept,” Pepperney said of the clippings that chronicled his three years of tennis and another two at Youngstown College.

Memories of those years are precious, but they also have relevance to the present.

Pepperney recalled another deceased individual, Dick Williams, one of those who played freshman ball at Ursuline before being part of Mooney’s 1958 team.

“Some of these guys are dead. I’m only 66, so I guess I’m lucky to be alive.”

bassetti@vindy.com