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Peru's Chuck Kinney
I was surprised and pleased when the Press-Republican asked me to write a blog for their website. Our first meeting was in November 2005 and about a month later the first blog appeared. But it was not my first gig with our local newspaper.
Twenty years ago I was hired as a part-time sports reporter and worked the dinner hour while the real sports reporters took a break. Mostly I answered the phone and wrote brief recaps of high school baseball and softball games. During that time I was asked by sports editor Bob Goetz to write a feature article titled "Where Are They Now?" I would select former high school athletes, mostly ones who had left the area, track them down for a phone interview and then write an article about their memories of those glory days.
From 1985-1992 I wrote over one hundred "Where Are They Now?" articles and learned a lot about the North Country's sports history before my high school playing days. The first subject for my series of articles was Chuck Kinney, who graduated from Peru High School in 1955. He once scored 98 points in one high school basketball game.
Earlier in the 1953-1954 hoop season Our Lady of Victory Academy's Lefty Tessier had scored 64 points, setting a local high school mark and gaining state recognition. Legend has it that Peru coach Tony Papero didn't want a John Flynn-coached player to hold such a record, so on a historic night late in the '54 season, Papero decided that Kinney would be the "designated shooter" for his Indians.
Even Kinney admitted to me in a 1985 interview, "It was a little bit set up. I was the only one allowed to shoot in the fourth quarter." In that quarter alone the six-foot-five-inch center scored 44 points. Peru trounced Champlain High School that night 120-80. You can bet it's a record that has never been topped.
Kinney averaged 31 points in his senior year, including 48 against Mooers and 47 against Ellenburg. He went on to play college basketball at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). The last I knew Kinney was living in Southport, North Carolina.
The legend of Chuck Kinney will remain part of local high school basketball lore forever. If the Peru Central School District ever created an Athletic Hall of Fame he'd be a shoo-in as a charter member.
