Moyer's impact in Canton was bigger than just football

Over the years the Canton Warriors have been a very successful football program in the NTL.

Anyone thinking of the Warriors may remember back to the district title in 1990 when Canton beat Southern Columbia.

People may think of the fact that Canton is now the only team in the league who hasn't added lights and still plays Saturday day games.

No matter what thoughts come to mind, one thing is certain. Anyone thinking of Canton football will first think about former coach Miller A. Moyer.

"Obviously he meant a lot, they named a field after him," said 1989 Canton graduate Craig Route, who was a junior high coach under Moyer. "He was just a tremendous person, as well as a coach. He could name all of his players by name. He could tell you what they did in the past. You would plan to go to his house to be there a half hour or an hour, and you knew you would really be there for three or four hours, just talking football with him."

Moyer, who coached at Canton for 32 years and had over 200 coaching victories, died at the age of 87 on Sunday, and for many his death meant remembering what he meant to the Canton school district, as well as the community and county.

"He was a great man, a great coach," Canton athletic director Bob Rockwell said. "He affected thousands of lives. Anytime you think of Canton football, you think of Miller Moyer. It's a great loss for the community. It's going to affect the community. He affected so many people's lives."

32 YEARS OF GREATNESS

For some schools three years is a long time to keep a coach, for the Canton Warriors the same man roamed the sidelines for over three decades.

"He was very instrumental in building the program," 1991 Canton graduate Lyle Wesneski said. "He involved the entire community and the entire community believed in what he was trying to accomplish. My dad played for him, then a lot of sons and grandsons played for him. The expectations were real high. He raised the bar."

Wesneski was a starter on the 1990 District 4 championship team, a team that won't soon be forgotten in Canton.

"When you were with him, it never seemed like are we going to win this game. We expected to win," said Boo Perry, the quarterback on that 1990 team, and a 1992 Canton graduate. "He never said anything about winning or losing, because that's what he expected. He expected to win. Everything he did in preparing for practices, preparing for games, was unbelievable. More then anything, he had you prepared for a game. You knew the players by name, for Towanda, Wyalusing, whatever. You knew the plays they were going to run.

"If we did lose, which back when I played there weren't many games we did lose, he just said keep your head high, you played a good game. He wouldn't say it was the refs fault like many coaches do. He was just so classy, he would say they beat us, what are you going to do?"

While Moyer's most famous team may be the one in 1990, he spent decades building the program to get to that point.

"He was Canton football. He actually started the program and made it run for all of those years. He made Canton football what it is today," said Gene Vermilya, a 1970 Canton graduate. "What he implemented is still being used today.

"He was one of the coaches that I think was a professional coach. He could have coached at the pro level, but he always stuck with Canton and he always stuck with the smaller school and it was just a challenge for him, I think. That he could take a bunch of small farm town boys and make them into men. For a small school. He played with the big boys."

OPPONENTS RESPECT

It's easy to earn the respect of your own players and community, it's much harder for a coach to gain respect from the coaches they have gone against, and beat.

With Moyer even the coaches of his biggest rivals only have positives to say about him.

"Miller was a darn good coach, and over the years he was one of my biggest nemesis," former Wyalusing coach Ray Raffin said. "We had a darn hard time beating him. Miller was a real gentleman, well liked. He was a good coach. When you thought you had him figured out, he would do something new.

"When I first came up Canton wasn't extremely strong. Then Moyer got into the game and as the year went by they kept getting better and better. There were a couple decades there where they were the team to beat."

While they were rivals on the field, Raffin became friends with Moyer off it.

"Moyer and I were good friends. I stopped over and visited him several times since he retired. We crossed paths and we always had good conversations. He liked to hunt and he liked to fish, and I like to do the same things," Raffin said.

For one year Moyer coached with Mark Strzlecki at Troy, but most years they were rivals with Strzlecki coaching the rival Trojans, while Moyer coached the Warriors. Still Strzlecki knows that Moyer made it a friendly rivalry.

"Troy and Canton have the Old Shoe rivalry and under coach Moyer it was always respectful, a good rivalry," Strzlecki said. "What he was best at was preparation and the time he put into it. He coached for so long and had so many great seasons."

It wasn't just former coaches who thought highly of Moyer.

"Miller was one of those guys, he was just a mainstay," Athens coach Jack Young said. "You knew when you went against Canton you were going to go against a football team that was well coached, well prepared. I know off the field he was just a great man, on the field he was a tough competitor."

And for years Moyer was one of three coaches - Raffin at Wyalusing and Jack Young Sr. at Towanda the others - who coached for decades at the same school in the NTL.

"I didn't like seeing any of those guys not coaching anymore as far as my father, coach Raffin and coach Moyer," Young said. "Coach Moyer was a great man, a great man. He will be missed.

"They put the NTL on the map and those guys, they had a lot to do with where our district is today. They helped make our district what it is today. They are Hall of Fame coaches. That is what they are."

For many Moyer, along with Young and Raffin, helped make the NTL what it is.

"I think it was huge, just having those three men and the tenure they had," Towanda coach Craig Dawsey said. "They made NTL football better. They put NTL football on the map. If you go through the state of Pennsylvania football, and from my particular standpoint it was with coach Young. They knew who coach Young was anywhere in the state, and I know it's the same with coach Moyer."

Many of the coaches today owe what they know about the game to coaches Moyer, Young and Raffin.

"He was part of a coaching fraternity that produced so many great teams and players from the 70s, 80s and into the 90s along with Jack Young and Ray Raffin," Towanda assistant coach Ryan Larcom, a 1989 Canton graduate said. "A lot of guys that are coaching today that I coach with, they played under those guys. We learned from them not just how to coach the game, but how to treat people.

"When I first started coaching at Cowanesque Valley, I went and saw two people. I saw him and Jake Shaffer, a longtime Canton assistant. I tried to copy everything at Cowanesque that Canton was still doing at the same time. He was just a great tool for me to be able to start my career by learning from him."

PREPARATION AND DEDICATION TO THE GAME

Anyone who speaks of Miller A. Moyer, the first thing they mention with him as a coach was his preparation and the time he spent studying the game.

"He was always prepared for each game," Route said. "He would have sheets he would hand out when I was a player. They would say something like 72 percent of the time the play will go behind the fullback with the white shoes. Just his statistics, he was very well prepared. Not just during the season, but during the offseason as well."

Many of the players he coached went on to coach themselves, and they tried to take the preparation he taught them with them.

"It was my biggest gain from him, he prepared nonstop," Vermilya said. Anyone that coached with him and played under him and went into coaching had that drive. The drive to prepare your kids the best you can possibly be for every game and for every practice. He was prepared, even for every practice."

A number of former players believe it was that preparation that allowed Canton to have the success it did.

"He was the master of game preparation," Wesneski said. "He would sit for hundreds of hours looking at every weakness a team would have. Canton doesn't have the biggest, fastest kids every time. But for years he took the kids that were medium sized and out-schemed people.

"The preparation he put in really separated us from the mediocre schools. He taught me how to scout. He always would say, being a perfectionist, if I don't look at every single play my opponent runs then I'm not totally prepared. For the 10 years I coached, if I didn't look at every play an opponent ran, then I would feel like there would be something that would surprise me when the game was played."

It's not just former players who went on to coach football, who took his lessons with them after they graduated.

"Even though I coach a different sport than him, I probably brought his name up more in lessons to kids more than anyone else there is," 1991 Canton graduate Lance Larcom, Canton's varsity boys' basketball coach, said. "Coaching is coaching, not matter what sport it is. The preparation he put in, the way he coached his team. It's universal to any sport. When I think maybe I don't need to watch this game tape, or don't need to scout this team, he's definitely the one person that would pop into my mind.

"I will always try and think back to how he prepared us and try and mimic that."

IMPACT EXTENDS BEYOND THE SIDELINES

While Moyer made an impact as a football coach, he was also a teacher and many of his former players remember the love he had for all his students.

"He was a good person to find those kids that really weren't maybe the greatest athlete. Maybe they weren't the greatest student. But, he was able to help them get positive accomplishments in their life. Some kids that may not have made it through school, he was a mentor to them," Route said.

"As far as the people's lives he has touched, the numbers are so many you can't even fathom it," Perry said. "Not just in football, but also in the classroom, where he taught for so many years."

Many former players remember that Moyer was the type of person who would go the extra mile to help a kid out.

"He just wanted everybody to succeed," Vermilya said. "He spent his time trying to make kids succeed. In the classroom, that was his biggest thing. I had a potential scholarship to Syracuse and he drove me there. He thought nothing of taking his time and driving me up to Syracuse. There was nothing but greatness in that man."

While many remember his love for talking football, they also remember his love for just spending time catching up with former students and their families.

"After I graduated, he would always say 'stop down and visit. Bring your kids down, I want to see your kids,'" Wesneski said. "He always had the open arm, open door, policy. He wanted people to stop in anytime, no matter what time it was. He would love to see you. That is something special about him. He is going to be a lasting image and figure in the Canton school district and athletic department and even the community."

"Having conversations with him in the last couple of years, while his son, Miller Moyer Jr., is coaching here and he would sit at practice and you could see his total love of the game. You can see the passion and you can lose yourself for hours and not realize the time has passed. The way he felt about his kids and fellow coaches is something you strive to be like."

SIMPLY A LEGEND

For all his success on the field, Moyer will be remembered for so much more.

"He treated everyone fairly, everyone the same," Rockwell said. "He had the respect of all his players and we are not talking a few people, we are talking thousands of guys."

And because of the way he treated those players, and students, Moyer gained the respect of those around him.

"He basically epitomizes football in this area, especially in Canton," Lance Larcom said. "Whenever anyone thinks of Canton football, that has to be the first thing that comes to mind. The love he had for the game. The respect he had for it, that he showed for the game itself, is unmatched. I can't imagine another coach in this, or any area, that is going to be as revered as coach Moyer."

After everything he accomplished, perhaps it is easy to sum up what Moyer meant to Canton.

"He's a legend, I think you can sum it up real quick that way," Dawsey said. "To coach as long as he coached in one school is an awesome testimony about a man, what he thinks about kids and his passion for the game. A giant in high school football has passed on. I am certainly going to miss him and my condolences to the family. But, what a legacy. Hopefully I am even close to being that blessed to be able to do something like he did for so long.

"He's a legend. And that's all you really need to say about coach Moyer."

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