The son of Lakewood High School’s football coach was a good learner. So good that by the time he wound up an awesome career at neighboring St. Edward High in 1974 as an All-Ohio and All-American linebacker he had become one of the nation’s most coveted players. How coveted? On the night before the NCAA’s national letter signing day, three coaches gathered in the Cousineau home to do verbal battle for his signature. It was a gathering of legends: Bo Schembechler of Michigan, Joe Paterno of Penn State and Ohio State’s Woody Hayes. In a red letter day for the Scarlet and Gray, Hayes emerged a winner. Cousineau went on to win All-American honors in 1977 and 1978 (and a quarter-century later to be named the winner of the 2003 Butkus Silver Anniversary Award as the best linebacker in college football from 25 years ago). He would set an OSU season record with 211 tackles in 1978, take part in 29 tackles against Penn State, at the time another Buckeye mark with 16 solo tackles against Southern Methodist. At the end of his senior year he was selected by the Buffalo Bills, with the first pick in the 1979 NFL draft. Unable to reach a contract agreement, he opted to play for the Montreal Alouettes in the Canadian Football League where he became the Grey Cup MVP in 1979. The Bills traded his rights to the Cleveland Browns in 1983 and in five seasons with the Browns he led the team in tackles three times and was picked to two all-NFL teams. He ended his career with the San Francisco 49ers, retiring in 1987. In 2006, he announced his candidacy for a seat in the Ohio House of Representatives, won his primary and is currently Republican candidate for the seat.
Just as Camelot provided the inhabitants of King Arthur’s court with “one brief shining moment,” Charboneau would do the same for long-suffering Cleveland Indians fans some 14 centuries later. The carefree native of Belvidere, IL, burst upon an unsuspecting major league scene in 1980, two years after being traded to the Indians by the Philadelphia Phillies in a minor league deal. With spring training injuries opening the door, he found himself in the Tribe’s starting lineup on April 11 and proceeded to hit-and hit-and hit. By season’s end he had built a .289 batting average with 23 home runs and 87 runs batted in and found he had been named the American League’s “Rookie of the Year.” But there were other sides to the irrepressible rookie’s talents which kept the town buzzing, the turnstiles humming and inspired the inexplicably popular song hit “Go Joe Charboneau” which soared to #3 on the local charts. Such as his penchant for dying his hair grotesquely unnatural colors, opening beer bottles with his eye socket and drinking the beer through his nose with a straw, doing his own dental work and reportedly resetting a broken nose with a pair of pliers. It was enough to terrorize every mother of an impressionable youngster, but somehow to know him was to love him. It all came to a crashing end (literally) the following spring when he hurt his back in a headfirst slide during an exhibition game. He was never the same. He underwent two back surgeries, played in 60 more major league games and was released in 1983. But the mutual love affair with Cleveland prompted him to continue making his home in the area while staying active in various baseball-related activities and he now makes his home in North Ridgeville.
A dominant competitive figure on the Greater Cleveland golf scene for a remarkable span of nearly 40 years, she was still hitting ’em down the fairways in quest of more titles at the time of her induction into the Greater Cleveland Sports Hall of Fame. Her collection of trophies at that point reflected nine Greater Cleveland Women’s Golf Association championships between 1969 and 2004 and seven runner-up finished, two titles and a pair of second place finishes in the Women’s Ohio State Golf Association Senior Championships, one title, one medalist and four semi-finalist finishes in the Women’s Ohio State Golf Association Championships and a myriad of other titles or significant finishes in tournaments not only in Ohio, but also on a national level as well as in her earlier years in her native state of Pennsylvania. Small wonder that the Northern Ohio PGA designated her a “Legend of Golf” in 2003. A retired teacher who graduated from Ursuline College, and taught at elementary, high school and college level, she was a co-founder, along with her daughter, Anne Caja, an All-American golfer at William and Mary College, of the Ohio Girls Golf Foundation in 1994, a organization which has been instrumental in fostering the growth of the girls golf in Greater Cleveland schools by providing golf training programs, financial assistance to compete in golf tournaments and in providing college scholarships. She lives in Chagrin Falls.
What was earning first team all-ACC honors as a middle linebacker at the University of Virginia worth to Dick Ambrose? Selection in the 12th round of the 1975 NFL draft by the Cleveland Browns. What was Dick Ambrose worth to the Cleveland Browns for the next nine seasons? Priceless. The 6-0 235-pounder—who earned the nickname “Bam Bam” which he carried through his career when he broke a pair of shoulder pads while making a tackle in his rookie season—became a starter early on and retained that status, starting 64 consecutive games, until a broken leg sidelined him in the sixth game of the 1983 season. He led the team in tackles for five consecutive years from 1977 to 1981, was named the team’s most valuable defensive player in 1977, was an integral part of the storied “Kardiac Kids” in 1980 (a team which wrote a special page in the Browns’ history), was voted the winner of the Browns’ Captains Award made annually to “a team player and an inspiration” in 1981, and was elected a team co-captain in 1982. He began studying law while still an active player, and received his degree from Cleveland State’s Marshall College of Law in 1987 and practiced law in Cleveland until he was appointed a judge of the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas in 2004. The native of New Rochelle, NY, has remained active in a large number of civic, charitable and athletic affairs in Greater Cleveland and makes his home in Westlake.
One of the best wrestlers ever developed on the Greater Cleveland area, he was a three time Ohio high school champion at Bay Village going 83-0 in his championship years (1974-6) and 104-5-1 for his scholastic career and earning first team high school All-American honors. At Bay he also earned two U.S. Wrestling Association National Freestyle titles. Continued his career at the University of Iowa where he was a four-time NCAA Division I All American, twice reaching the NCAA finals, and a four-time Big Ten Champion. After graduation he won National AAU Freestyle titles in 1983 and 1984 and was named second alternate to the 1984 U.S. Olympic freestyle wrestling team. Became the head wrestling coach at Edinboro University in 1984 and guided his team to five Top Ten NCAA finishes in six years, earning laurels as the NCAA Division II’s National Coach of the Year in 1986, then settled into a career in real estate, making his home in Westlake.
The passion for wrestling that burned in his small frame as he collected victories in each of his last 30 dual meets for Cleveland’s John Marshall High never ebbed. It became instead the torch which guided the rest of his life and played a substantial role in the development of Ohio High School wrestling as one of the nation’s premier programs. He was one of a trio of men who took leading roles in co-founding the Ohio State Wrestling Tournament which debuted in 1938 and for which he served as the official scorer for 60 years. He subsequently would become a co-founder of the Brecksville Holiday Wrestling Tournament which began in 1961 and is credited with setting the standard for holiday tournaments across the nation. Three years out of high school in 1936 he was officiating high school matches, later adding college matches as well, winning general acclaim as one of the state’s best officials long before closing out that phase of his career in 1994. Throughout it all—for 50 years beginning in 1946-47—he would serve as Secretary of the Greater Cleveland Wrestling Coaches and Officials Association, a beacon of consistency through a myriad of changes in the organization. Inducted into the Ohio Wrestling Hall of Fame in 1972, he was named Ohio’s Man of the Year by Wrestling USA Magazine in 1993. He died at the age 85 in January, 1999.
A three-sport at Cleveland West High, where he captained the baseball, basketball and football teams, he appeared on track to a professional baseball career after earning All-Ohio diamond honors at West in 1964 and subsequently playing for two years in the Cleveland Indians farm system. Instead, his future in sports took a sharp right turn which transformed him into one of—perhaps the—most successful college basketball referees ever to come out of the Greater Cleveland area. Donning, his first striped shirt at the age of 28 in 1974, he began a career as a Big 10 official in 1976 which has spanned 26 years and led to officiating assignments in 20 consecutive NCAA Men’s National Basketball Tournaments, including an appearance in the Final Four and numerous “Elite Eight” and “Sweet 16” match-ups. He has also called National Invitation Tournament games for two decades, including the 1993 championship at Madison Square Garden, and a tournament championship games for virtually every major collegiate conference. President of Big Ten Officials Association for eight terms and director of two nationally acclaimed camps, one for baseball, his “real job” is as coordinator of the Occupational Work Experience program at Buckeye High School in Medina County, where he has won honors as Educator of the Year and Employee of the Year. He currently makes his home in Westlake.
Five seasons in a Cleveland Cavaliers uniform were all the 6-11 Racine, WI native needed to establish himself as one of the finest players in team history. The verdict was first delivered in 1991 when fans voted him the starting center on the “Classic Cavs Team” covering the club’s first 20 years, and re-enforced a decade later when he was named to the 12-man All-Time Cavs Team. An All-American for a 25-4 Marquette University quintet in 1971-72, when he averaged 20.5 points and 11.9 rebounds per game, and a member of the 1971 U.S. Pan-American Games team, he turned pro in 1973. After two seasons in the American Basketball Association (ABA), he joined the Cavs for the 1974-75 season. His finest year came in 75-76—the memorable “Miracle of Richfield Year”—when he averaged a career high 15.8 ppg, but he scored in double figures in each of his five Cavs seasons, while his 3,790 rebounds rank third on the team’s all-time leaders list. He ended his playing career with two seasons in Los Angeles, where he was a member of the Lakers’ 1979-80 championship squad and two years with European teams, then returned to Cleveland and worked for 11 years as a Cavaliers television analyst. He now resides in Orange Village and is marketing director for a construction company.
Cleveland-born and raised, he parlayed a solid athletic career at Warrensville Heights High and a series of strong summer performances for highly respected sandlot teams into a baseball scholarship at perennial baseball power Arizona State. When he was named the MVP of the 1965 College World Series, won by ASU, the door was opened to one of the finest major league careers ever enjoyed by a Greater Cleveland native. Drafted by the Kansas City Athletics prior to their move to Oakland, he enjoyed 11 seasons as the A’s third basemen, playing a major role in the team’s three consecutive World Championships in 1972-73-74, playing on four American League All-Star teams and compiling career statistics which still rank him in the A’s top three in six categories. He went on to play five seasons with the Milwaukee Brewers, retiring at the end of the team’s pennant-winning season in 1981. Subsequently he became a special assistant to the Brewers general manager, was promoted to general manager in October, 1991, and held down that position for eight seasons. He remains active in Milwaukee community affairs and makes his home in Mequon, WI.
Deceased 2023
Brian Dowling is an athletic legend at St. Ignatius High School. He led his team to a City Basketball title, sinking four clutch free throws in the title game’s last 34 seconds to turn a 13 point deficit into a 53-50 victory. He also made the state tennis doubles finals as a sophomore and the regional singles finals as a senior. But it was as a football quarterback that Dowling achieved bigger-than-life status. In six high school and college seasons he played in just one losing game, when, as a prep junior in 1963, injuries sent him to a hospital at half-time of the City Championship Charity Game. He avenged that loss in the following year’s Charity Game, breaking loose for a 71-yard TD run and passing for four touchdowns in a 48-6 rout. At Yale, his teams were 21-0-1 in games he played and 5-6 in games he missed with injuries. The tie came in his final collegiate game when Harvard scored 16 points in the final 42 seconds to earn a 29-29 draw and a share of the Ivy League title with Yale. The previous year, his 66 yard touchdown pass with 2:16 left had beaten the Crimson 24-22 for the Ivy League Crown. An honorable mention All-American and the Outstanding Player in New England as a senior, he currently lives in Lowell, Massachusetts.