Golf is a series of tee parties in Mon Valley
Mickey Hornack, a longtime member of Holy Ghost Golf League at Chippewa Golf Course, lines up a putt.
Linda Ritzer/Observer-Reporter
Mickey Hornack, left, and Ed Brown talk before teeing off with Holy Ghost Golf League at Chippewa Golf Course.
Mickey Hornack and Ed Repka are retired educators who worked in the Mon Valley, still live in the Valley and play a lot of golf there. Their games, like the geography, feature ups and downs.
For more than 40 years, they have been members of the Holy Ghost Golf League, which hasn’t given up the ghost. The group, in its 50th year, is still hitting chips at Chippewa Golf Course on Friday nights from April into October.
“There are so many groups playing in the Valley, but I don’t think any are as old as Holy Ghost,” says Hornack, a former teacher and varsity basketball coach – and still a devoted duffer – from Nottingham Township.
His league was initially limited to congregants of Holy Ghost Byzantine Catholic Church in Charleroi, before non-parishioners were allowed to join. Over time, the number of Holy Ghost members playing dwindled to a very precious few: one.
“I’m now the sole member of the church in the league,” Repka, former superintendent of the Ringgold School District, says with a laugh.
Linda Ritzer
Jerry Ritzer practices putting before a round with the Holy Ghost Golf League at Chippewa Golf Course.
Hornack, Repka and a few other Holy Ghost players enjoy their Fridays at Chippewa, outside of Bentleyville, but don’t store their clubs in the garage for six days afterward. They gather at other courses on other days in an informal grouping they call the Senior Rates Tour. They, quite simply, choose from a variety of facilities that offer lower greens fees for seniors, then bash the dimpled ball around again.
“We travel to different courses on Wednesdays and Thursdays, a lot of them in the Valley,” Repka says. “We go to old Seven Springs (now Victory Hills) in Elizabeth Township, Fort Cherry, Village Green. We go to Uniontown and Greensburg.”
Golf may be flog spelled backward, a self-torturous venture in many instances. And fewer people are playing these days. But to these players and many other links aficionados in the Mon Valley, the sport remains a wholly satisfying pastime.
In many instances, they don’t have to travel far to play. There are seven courses in the Valley where public players can get in 18 holes: Butler’s, Cedarbrook, Chippewa, Mon Valley Country Club, Riverview, Victory Hills and Willow Brook. Butler’s and Cedarbrook each have two 18-hole layouts, and Mon Valley – despite its country club status – accommodates non-members.
Holly Tonini
Holly Tonini
Bill and Sherry Ford, co-owners of Riverview Golf Course
Cedarbrook, at the crossroads of Interstate 70 and Route 51, and Riverview, in the Bunola section of Elizabeth, are popular destinations on the eastern side of the Monongahela River. Cedarbrook has an appealing enticement – flat-rate golf – which is what it appears to be: one rate to play at any time, on any day, with or without a cart. Play at the Rostraver Township club is scenic and challenging, just as it is at Riverview, which has an interesting history.
“Slightly over half the course was constructed on a strip mine,” says Bill Ford, co-owner with his wife, Sherry. He says that his father, also named Bill, was stripping coal on the property, which he was leasing, in the summer of 1960 when the owner offered to sell. The offer was accepted.
“My dad didn’t know what to do with it and decided to construct a golf course. Until then, he had played six to 10 rounds of golf his entire life.”
In a whirlwind effort, the elder Ford and work crews transformed land pockmarked by surface mining into a playable venue that opened less than nine months later, in the spring of 1961. At that time, there was a movement within the golf industry toward larger greens, a signature at Riverview to this day, along with large tee areas.
Courtesy Riverview Golf Course
Courtesy Riverview Golf Course
The view of the Monongahela River from Riverview Golf Course
The John Hancock of signatures there, however, is the spectacular view of the Mon below from the third tee. Ford’s father had a water line installed that runs from the river to a reservoir on the course, supplying water for use on the property.
There is another signature at Riverview, though it is much less discernible. On a rare occasion, a player may encounter a few remnants of coal on the erstwhile strip mine.
All courses are different, but in some ways, playing at Riverview is like playing other layouts in the Valley. There are hills, valleys, swales, big drop-offs – and a lot of beauty.
Hornack loves playing in the area. “You find good golf courses around here,” he says. “The climate lends itself well to green grass for golf season. Northern courses have more grass in the fairways, and the greens hold the ball a little better.”
Repka, the Holy Ghost holdover, likewise is enamored of Chippewa and the regional venues the Senior Rates Tour frequents. “We enjoy the courses,” he says. “Primarily, it’s the friendliness of the people who work there. They cater to us, give us good tee times. Some courses are easier than others, but they’re all taken care of and close to us. We like that.”
They never get teed off when they’re teeing off.