COLUMBUS, Ohio – The Ohio Prep Sportswriters Association (OPSWA) will welcome two new members into the OPSWA Hall of Fame during induction ceremonies at halftime of the Division I state championship game Saturday night. Cleveland Plain Dealer sportswriter Tim Warsinskey and former Bowling Green Sentinel-Tribune sports editor Jack Carle will join 54 other prep sports writing greats enshrined in the OPSWA Hall of Fame.
On Friday night, the OHSAA will honor the late Persh Rohrer from the Ravenna Record-Courier, a 1989 OPSWA Hall of Fame inductee, who recently passed away but continued to be a contributing writer for the newspaper where he started working in 1952. Biographical information for all three men is below. The OPSWA inducted its first Hall of Fame class in 1983. The complete list is posted at: http://www.ohsaa.org/news/OPSWA/HOF.htm
The OPSWA was created in 1972 to support, promote and recognize the coverage of high school sports across Ohio. More information is available at: http://www.ohsaa.org/news/OPSWA/default.htm
2015 Hall of Fame Inductees
Jack Carle joined the sports staff of the Bowling Green Sentinel-Tribune full time in 1978 after freelancing at the paper while a student at Bowling Green State University. In January 1980 he was named sports editor and oversaw prep sports coverage in northwest Ohio, in addition to BGSU sports. During his 35 years at the Sentinel, the sports department started All-County teams in football, volleyball, baseball, softball and basketball and helped sponsor county all-star basketball games. He earned numerous United Press International and Associated Press awards for his sports coverage, including Best Ohio Sports Writer in 2003 and two Best Sports Section awards. Carle, a native of Circleville, Ohio, was president for the Ohio UPI Sports Writing Association. In 2007, the Northwest Ohio District VII Coaches Association honored him for his prep basketball coverage. He and his wife, Julie, have been married for 32 years and have three grown children.
Tim Warsinskey has covered high school sports for three decades at three Ohio newspapers — the Chillicothe Gazette, The News-Herald of Lake County, and The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer. He has been named Ohio Prep Sports Writer of the Year five times and has won numerous other writing and reporting awards. He has covered two Olympics and several professional and college beats. He currently is a general assignment sports writer at The Plain Dealer. A graduate of Akron Firestone High School and Ohio University, he lives in Mentor with his wife, Daneen, a registered nurse. They have two children and three grandchildren.
2015 Special Recognition
Born on Armistice Day, Nov. 11, 1918, Persh Rohrer was employed by the Record-Courier since Sept. 5, 1952. Last year he was officially recognized by the Ohio Newspaper Association as the oldest working journalist in the state of Ohio. Rohrer spent 37 years as the sports editor of the Record-Courier, retiring on Jan. 20, 1989, but continued to be a daily part of the staff as a correspondent and wrote a weekly seasonal bowling and golf article. He was a 1989 inductee into the OPSWA Hall of Fame and still carried the money clip he received from the Cleveland Browns in 1964 to reporters who covered their championship season. He also briefly held positions at the Indianapolis Times and the Defiance (Ohio) Crescent-News and the Athens Messenger. Rohrer was a member of the United Press International’s Sportswriters Hall of Fame (class of 1985).
