Down River 5/20

By John Lipez

Alison Has Done It Again:
Beech Creek native Alison Bechdel has done it again. Bechdel recently released a third graphic memoir, The Secret to Superhuman Strength.

Her latest offering relates her life-long love of exercise, part of her effort to attune her body with her mind. Not unlike previous offerings, Fun Home and Are You My Mother? this latest graphic rendering has been critically acclaimed.

The Secret to Superhuman Strength traces Bechdel’s efforts, by the decade, to be part of and in tune with the latest in fitness offerings, from Jack LaLanne in the 1960s to the present day.

Bechdel is a 1978 graduate of Bald Eagle-Nittany High School where her closeted father Bruce, in additional to being a funeral director, was a faculty member. The book provides a couple pages to her time at BEN, now the Central Mountain Middle School. She does not treat her experience there, relative to physical fitness, too kindly.

As she writes, “After my progressive elementary school, seventh grade was a rude awakening. A crushing orthodoxy was enforced in the smallest things, such as how you carried your books.” The accompanying graphic shows her being ridiculed for wearing a book bag by a fellow student in a football jersey; nearby in the hallway, a man with a “coach” t-shirt on is seen slamming her against a locker.

Bechdel writes the most terrifying thing about “this new regime was the public shower we were required to take at the end of gym class.” The cartoon panels tell of her changing clothes inside a locker room restroom stall to “minimize the time I was naked in front of everyone.” That anecdote ends with a drawing of her late father driving Alison and her two brothers home from school as he says to Alison, “Mrs. Bossert says you’ve been changing in the toilet stall. You can’t do that anymore.”

She does relate that in her seventh grade year at BEN, the federal Title IX law was passed and as she notes, slowly increased athletic opportunities for females. Up to that point, she writes, “But in my day, only the tough girls played sports.”

The book makes for a fascinating read/view. It’s available now at Barnes & Noble in State College. And it does pique one’s interest in our quaint locale, thanks to arguably the most notable county native in the last century. I went to Wikipedia to see what that online service might say about Bechdel’s hometown of Beech Creek: “…a borough in Clinton County, Pennsylvania…The population was 701 at the 2010 census. It is the setting for Fun Home, a 2006 graphic memoir by Alison Bechdel, who grew up there. Brittani Kline, winner of America’s Next Top Model, Cycle 16, was born there.” Brittani, by the way, is still in the area while Bechdel resides in the woods of Vermont. That Wikipedia stop caused me to look up area notables. The best I could do was a pennlive offering from a couple years ago. It listed Bechdel as Clinton County’s most notable citizen, the late Joe Paterno for Centre County and the late Gonzo journalist Hunter Thompson for Lycoming County (Thompson had spent some time as a newsman at the late Jersey Shore Herald many years ago). The pennlive listing was an eclectic one, from the obvious (Jimmy Stewart from Indiana County to Duane “The Rock” Johnson from Northampton County; it said the Rock graduated from Bethlehem Freedom High School in 1990). And let’s not forgot our friends to the northwest in Cameron County: silent film cowboy star Tom Mix from Mix Run PA; you can look it up.
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Something of a Coaching Carousel:
Remember when most high school coaches were faculty members at the schools at which they coached? In terms of new hires, there seems to be a trend the other way in recent years. The Keystone Central School Board last week hired two new varsity coaches at Central Mountain High School and both are coming on board without a teaching position to flesh out their hire.

Jamie Rauch, the new volleyball coach, is a staff member at the Quehanna Boot Camp in Clearfield County. She has a great playing and coaching resume, playing at Mount Lebanon High School and Lock Haven University and coaching at both the jayvee and junior high levels at Central Mountain.

Jeffrey Bowdell, the new girls’ basketball coach, will continue as a faculty member at Loveland High School in Cincinnati, Ohio until the end of this month. He’ll be heading east with his wife who, it is understood, has taken a position at Bloomsburg University. He brings a resume of coaching experience in a variety of sports at a variety of levels.

Both Rauch and Bowdell were ultra-enthusiastic about their new chores at Central Mountain at a Zoom unveiling with the media last week. Down River and everyone at The Record wish both well as they join programs on the upswing in recent years.

Their hiring continues a recent trend within Central Mountain. Shanon Manning, the new varsity football coach, hired earlier this year, will be a coach only within the district as he is involved in counseling services for youth (he comes to Central Mountain after a successful run at nearby Bellefonte High School).

Also from last week we learned Central Mountain is in the market for another head coach; this with word that the school board accepted the resignation of Jeff Brinker as the girls’ soccer coach, effective April 12. That one came with no forewarning and no comment from the school district.

The girls’ soccer program has struggled in recent years. Let’s hope a new coach and that recently consolidation of youth soccer programs within the district helps turn things around. It was all that long ago that Central Mountain girls’ soccer was a formidable force on the central Pennsylvania soccer pitch.