Looking back at Waynetown High School
Waynetown High School began playing basketball at the turn of the twentieth century. Early on the team was called “The Old Gold and Black”. Sometime in the 1920’s the team was renamed “The Gladiators” and the team colors changed to red and white. Waynetown had a girls’ basketball team in the 1910’s-20’s, but for some reason girls’ basketball was discontinued. Waynetown’s most successful teams were in the 1940’s when Ralph Capehart coached the boys to a 16-0 regular season in 1943-44 and finished the year winning the Sectional and Regional tournaments. Capehart’s 1944-45 team also went undefeated during the regular season and won the Sectional tournament. From 1942 to 1945 Capehart’s teams won 51 straight regular season games. Waynetown’s only other sectional win was in 1970. The Gladiators also won the County Tournament two times, in 1943-44 and 1944-45.
Waynetown High School was merged into North Montgomery High School in 1971.
Four men who coached at Waynetown and eight players from Waynetown are in the Montgomery County Basketball Hall of Fame. The coaches are Ralph Capehart, Cliff Davis, Tom Bowerman, and Fred Johnson. The players are John “Mobe” Cramer (1925), Art Harpel (1926), Charles “Waxy” Blackford (1927), George Barker (1944), Pete Moore (1944), Kinnard White (1956), Jim Harpel (1960), and Steve Pierce (1962).
Read about the greatest Montgomery County teams