By Phil Blackwell
Ed Schmitt was the man most responsible for establishing the boys soccer dynasty at Fayetteville-Manlius that has produced more Section III titles than any other school. Tommy Myers carved a path from F-M to a long and successful professional football career.
Ron Pelligra was a two-sports superstar at Christian Brothers Academy. Decades later, Greg Paulus managed the same feat and, like Pelligra, carried it over to the college ranks.
All of them are now joined together by their membership in the Greater Syracuse Sports Hall of Fame’s Class of 2018, which will get enshrined Nov. 5 at the Hall of Fame’s annual dinner at the OnCenter.
In all, eight men are part of the Class of 2018. Joining Schmitt, Myers, Pelligra and Paulus are long-time SU athletic director Jake Crouthamel, basketball star Joe Reddick, Hall of Fame co-founder and baseball executive Bill Dutch and 1930s boxing champion Eddie “Babe” Risko.
When Ed Schmitt arrived to coach soccer at F-M in 1965, the sport did not have a strong foundation in Central New York, and the best athletes preferred other sports.
Thanks to Schmitt, all of that changed. Employing a combination of physical fitness and technical training seen throughout Europe, Schmitt got his F-M teams to a high level and sustained it for 22 years.
The Hornets went 264-55-14 in Myers’ tenure, nine times making it through an entire season undefeated. His teams accumulated 15 league and Section III championships. Beyond that, though, was establishing a National Soccer Camp that lasted more than 30 years and served as a template for other sports camps across the country.
Tommy Myers attended F-M during Schmitt’s legendary tenure, but made his name on the gridiron, making his way to SU in the early 1970s, where he starred as a free safety and set a school record for punt return yardage (436 yards in 1970).
Drafted by the New Orleans Saints in the 1972 NFL Draft in the third round, Myers would accumulate 36 interceptions and 15 fumble recoveries in the next decade before winding up his career with the USFL’s Houston Gamblers, where he was a teammate of Jim Kelly. Myers, in 1989, was named to the Saints’ Hall of Fame.
Just as Myers was going to the NFL, Ron “Luca” Pelligra was completing a scholastic career at Christian Brothers Academy where, in football, he was a two-time All-City selection on offense and defense, but did even better on the wrestling mat, winning 80 of 88 bouts and becoming CBA’s first-ever Section III champion in that sport.
That was just the prelude, though, to a career at St. Lawrence University that included two All-American selections as a defensive tackle and a 93-7-1 wrestling mark that included SLU’s first-ever NCAA title in any sport, earned in 1976.
Not content with that, Pelligra returned home, graduated from SU’s Law School and, for 30 years, served as a respected attorney in the area, working until he passed away of a heart attack in 2013 at age 58.
As a proud CBA alum who gave back generously to his alma mater, Pelligra got to see Greg Paulus emerge as one of the most storied athletes that school, or any other school, has produced in this area.
The numbers were staggering on the football field – 11,763 passing yards and 152 touchdowns, both state records. And in his senior year, 2004, Paulus quarterbacked the Brothers to its only state championship, beating New Rochelle in the final.
Yet it was in basketball that Paulus would make his long-term impact, from the 2,399 points he scored at CBA to the four years spent at Duke University as its point guard. And he would stick with basketball even after returning to SU in 2009 as a graduate transfer to throw for 2,025 yards and 13 touchdowns.
For the last decade, Paulus has served as an assistant coach – first at Navy, then at Ohio State, and then a season at Louisville before joining Maurice Joseph’s staff at George Washington University this fall.
Despite the season getting underway in early November, Paulus, whose wife is expecting their first child this fall, said he hopes to be back in town for the Syracuse Sports Hall of Fame induction dinner.
