Pleasantville High School's First Champions Return

The 1966-67 Varsity Cross Country Team State Championship was a victory that Jerry Mimnaugh, Pleasantville High School class of 1969, never forgot.

The team was the school’s first New York State Championship winner, and its triumph not only gave Pleasantville sports bragging rights, but also turned around the lives of many of its young runners.

Mimnaugh, who lives in San Diego, organized a reunion of Pleasantville Cross Country and Track and Field Team alumni last week. About a dozen men who graduated from 1964 through 1974 came home to Pleasantville from as far away as Alaska, South Carolina and Manhattan. They attended the Track and Field League Championship at Valhalla on Monday, May 1, toured Pleasantville High School on Tuesday and then gathered for dinner, testimonials and reminiscing at a local restaurant.

“Sports teach you to budget your time,” Mimnaugh said. “I was not a particularly good student when I started high school, but with running, I had to focus and budget my time and that made me a much better student. At the beginning of high school I was a struggling student, and I ended up going to Cornell University.”

Mimnaugh and the others credited their coach, Bill Girard, for their success. The 1966-67 PHS yearbook had this to say: “Aside from the skill and determination of the members, the major factor in the team’s success was Coach William Girard. He not only had the boys run 15 miles a day, six days a week, morning, noon and night, in all weather, but also had the whole school out cheering them on.”

Dan Rosenberg, class of 1969, returned from Anchorage, Alaska for the reunion. A retired wildlife biologist, Rosenberg said team spirit and family ties brought him back to Pleasantville for the reunion.

“My family has been in Pleasantville since 1910,” Rosenberg said. “My father, Mel, was in the Pleasantville High School class of 1933, which was the first class to graduate from the new building. The high school building opened in 1929. Before then, it was on Bedford Road.”

Assistant Principal Gregg Fonde gave the alumni a tour of the building, which had additions added over the years and is far larger than the high school they recalled. The men expressed surprise at the changes.

“Look at the auditorium seats, they are so plush,” one said. “They used to be hard wood that would give you splinters.”

“What, no chalk?” another said, when shown the smart boards that have replaced classroom blackboards. “What do you throw when the teacher’s not looking?”

They were equally surprised by the opportunities that Pleasantville students have today – 19 Advanced Placement classes open to all, extensive training in music, art and theater, internships that give seniors real-world experience, job training programs for students with special needs, a high-tech television studio where students present the news and – new to most of these alumni, – girls in sports.

Title IX, the federal law ensuring equity in education, was not passed until 1972 and Pleasantville’s first Girls Cross Country Team was started the following year.

Today’s track coach, Tim Dirgins, who joined the group along with past coaches Bob Geddes and Tom Patterson, said the alumni made a generous contribution to the booster fund.

"We are incredibly grateful for the alumni who made the trip back to Pleasantville from near and far,” Dirgins said. “It was great for our athletes to see the love these alumni still hold in their hearts for both Pleasantville and track and cross country."