Harold “Hal” Pryor – (1996)

During the late 1930s and 1940s, Lorain High School football teams coached by the late Harold “Hal” Pryor were often mentioned in the same breath as the Massillons and Canton McKinleys when referring to state gridiron powers.

That golden era saw Pryor-coached teams win 75% of their games. In a 10-season LHS career—interrupted by his two-year U.S. Navy hitch in World War II—Pryor fashioned a 66-22-8 mark with four Lake Erie League (LEHI) titles, including three in a row.

Lorain had only one public high school then. It was commonplace for football crowds at Recreation Field (now George Daniel Stadium) to average more than 6,000 fans, regardless of opponent, with arch-rivals Elyria and Lakewood attracting 10,000 standing-room-only throngs.

Pryor’s LHS clubs, including tonight’s unbeaten 1939 enshrinees, recall him as a tough, no nonsense coach. His powerful unbeaten 1943 Steelmen—a 1974 Lorain Sports Hall of Fame team inductee—led by All-Ohioans Joe Bartos (’71 enshrinee) and Howard Jesko (’92 enshrinee) steamrolled nine consecutive foes with their 248-69 point composite.

That hard-nosed style of mentoring earned him Ohio Scholastic Coach of the Year honors in 1943, which, ironically, turned out to be now-closed LHS’s last unbeaten grid season. Bartos, regarded among Lorain’s best ever, later starred at the U.S. Naval Academy and as a professional with the Washington Redskins.

Before coming to Lorain in 1936, Pryor coached Carrollton High School to a two-year 21-1 record in football. His Carrollton basketballers reached the Ohio quarter-finals under the old 16-team Class B state format in the mid-1930s.

Himself a superb schoolboy and college athlete, Minerva-native Pryor collected four letters each in football and track and two each in basketball and swimming at Wooster College. He was named the college’s best all-around athlete in 1933-34 when he threw the javelin in track a school record 193-plus feet.

As a sophomore running back, Pryor scored a touchdown in Wooster’s 19-16 loss to Navy in 1931. The following year, Pryor scored all the Scots’ touchdowns except one, a feat that gained him All-American mention. He became the consumate “team player” his senior year (1933) when Hal almost never carried the ball to become solely a blocking back/placekicker.

Pryor was just one of two coaches to go undefeated against the late, great Woody Hayes in the prep or college football ranks. Hal’s Lorain teams beat Hayes’ New Philadelphia clubs 14-6 in 1937, 14-7 in 1938 and 54-0 in 1940. They tied, 7-7, in 1939. “Woody despised losing,” Pryor once recalled. “Lorain teams gave him fits.”

Hal’s widow, Ruth, still resides at the family home on South Jefferson Boulevard. They have two daughters, Jackie Schuenaman, of Lorain, and Halle Dee “Hal” Pryor, of Marina, Calif., three grand-children and one great grand-child.