Rice

If there were ever a proverbial Mount Rushmore-type edifice built to honor former great athletic coaches in the Altoona Area School District, Jim Rice’s visage would certainly be among those on it.

Rice, who compiled a sparkling 179-18 record in an 11-year stint as the boys basketball coach at the former Roosevelt Junior High School from 1960 through 1971, set the foundation for some of the Altoona High School’s greatest basketball seasons and teams.

Rice, who passed away recently at the age of 96, led the 1960-61 Roosevelt team to a perfect 27-0 record in his first season on the bench.

Rice was one of four former area coaches honored by the Altoona High School boys basketball program and its head coach, Doug Pfeffer, in a pre-game ceremony that was held prior to the Mountain Lions’ matchup with State College in January 2024 at the Altoona High School Fieldhouse.

Rice, who couldn’t make an appearance that night because of injuries that he had suffered in a fall at his home, was recognized along with former Keith Junior High School boys basketball coaches Rod Baumgartner and the late Tony Labriola, along with former Roosevelt boys basketball coach Frank Corso.

“Jim Rice was the dean of junior high coaches in this area,” Labriola — who died last July at the age of 81 — said in an Altoona Mirror article about the honorees. “Jimmy, Frank Corso, and Rod Baumgartner each won several Inter-County Conference championships, while I was fortunate to win just one at Keith — but I had some great players and assistant coaches.”

Vince Nedimyer, Sr. was a guard on two of Rice’s Roosevelt teams as an eighth and ninth grader in the early 1960s.

Nedimyer considered Rice one of his best coaches, who later became a close friend.

“Playing basketball for him was quite an honor and quite an experience,” Nedimyer said. “He was ahead of his time as a coach — he was zone pressing with our defenses before teams back then knew what a zone press was.”

Nedimyer and Dick Johnston, who was a year older, were teammates at Roosevelt, and Johnston, now deceased, went on to basketball stardom at Altoona High School and earned a Division I basketball scholarship to the University of Tennessee.

Nedimyer said that the lessons that Rice taught him about dealing with student-athletes resonated with him well into his adult years as a coach.

“Some of the things that he taught me about coaching and dealing with kids were things that I carried over when I became a head coach myself,” said Nedimyer, who later went on to become the head football coach at Altoona High School. “I was really sad when I heard that he had passed. He was a dear, dear friend who had a great impact on a lot of players who went through Roosevelt during the years that he was there.”

Corso was the head boys basketball coach at Roosevelt from 1980 through 2000. Corso never had the pleasure of coaching with Rice, but still knew him well.

“Jim had a tremendous record at Roosevelt, and he was dedicated to the game,” Corso said. “He patterned his teams after the great Farrell High School teams that were coached by Eddie McCloskey and he spent time getting advice from McCloskey as well.”

Rice coached in an era in which junior high school basketball games at Roosevelt were heavily attended, according to Corso.

“The stands were packed for every game, and junior high basketball was a big thing back then,” Corso said. “Now, everything seems so watered down. Back in those days, you’d see kids playing pick-up basketball games on outside courts quite regularly. Now, you don’t see that much at all.”

Gary Smithmyer served eight seasons as the assistant boys basketball coach at Roosevelt from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, then put in a head coaching tenure of over 20 seasons with the school’s girls basketball program.

Roosevelt later merged with the former Keith Junior High School to form the current Altoona Area Junior High School athletic programs.

Smithmyer said that he and Rice were members of a group of retired Roosevelt teachers and coaches who met for monthly breakfasts, and he saw Rice recently.

“I knew Jim pretty well,” Smithmyer said. “He was always a very easy-going guy who seemed to get along with everybody.

“As a coach, he was sort of a mentor to me,” Smithmyer said. “If I had a question or issue concerning coaching, parents, or administrators, I would take it up with Jim, because he had been through all of that himself.”