When did Williamsport Attorney Ron Travis’s interest in athletics begin?

“When I learned how to throw rocks and was able to translate that into throwing a baseball,” he replied. “Baseball was my first love, and my Little League coach at Salamanca (in western New York State) was actually Paul Owens, who later became the General Manager of the Philadelphia Phillies. I got into basketball as sort of a fluke, because I couldn’t play baseball in the winter.”

When Ron was just 11 years old, he began to hang out at the school gymnasium after school “to throw a basketball against the wall” until it was time to leave for his pin-setting job at the local bowling alley. The high school basketball coach at Salamanca, Clair Wescott, took an interest in Ron, talked to him, helped him learn the game, and even let him practice with the team when they needed an extra body.

“Looking back, I had to be a real hoot for the high school players, and they would abuse me on the court. But each day I would come back and try to be a little better.”

Ron never got to play high school basketball for Wescott, as Ron’s family moved to Olean, New York, before he was of high school age. At Olean, however, Ron actually played against Salamanca. “He (Salamanca Coach Wescott) didn’t care for the fact that he got me started and now I wanted to beat him,” Ron confessed.

The Travis family moved to Williamsport before his junior year in high school. Not making the basketball team that year, Ron played, instead, with men in the YMCA league.

During that year, he grew six inches to a height of 6’2”. Williamsport basketball Coach John Berry heard about “this high school kid playing with the men” and sought him out the fall of his senior year. Ron made the team as a starter, and that 1961-62 squad went 21-3, also winning the district championship. He remembers “beating St. Joe’s, a great team that everyone thought would beat us. I threw down a couple dunks in warm-ups and scored 16 points, and people started asking, ‘Who’s the lefty?’ That’s how I got the .nickname which I carry today."

He considers highlights of those years to be scoring 82 points at Freeland against “a team with players from Lehigh”; 66 points against “a team made up of LaSalle seniors, which included Fatty Taylor and Larry Cannon” (future pros); and 56 against “a team with Manny Leaks,” another future pro.

But, perhaps, he is most proud of the 54 and 63 points he put up in back-to-back games in La Plata, Maryland. The first game was against John Thompson (the Georgetown Hoyas’ coach soon after), the recently retired Sam Jones (of Boston Celtics’ fame) and John Hummer (from Princeton and another soon-to-be pro). The second was against Jerry Chambers (the University of Utah’s star, the MVP in the NCAA 1966 Final Four tournament, who then played professionally).

From his marriage in 1969, through law school, his first law job in Philadelphia, his return to Williamsport in 1971 and until 1976, when his first child, Kelli, was, born, Ron and his wife Pam traveled often and widely on his “basketball traveling circus” trips as a player in city, intercity and YMCA leagues.  In 1971 his Lancaster YMCA team won the national YMCA championship.

He fondly remembered those days:

“One night I might be matched up against 6’lO” Ron Krick, from West Reading (Krick led them to three consecutive PIAA Class C championships, 1959-61). The next night it might be Pee Wee Kirkland (a former Norfolk State University player and well-known New York City “street player”).

Ron admitted, “From December through the middle of April, we were off somewhere every weekend for basketball games ... lots of miles on the car and on the hip and knees. But I thought that the body would never fall apart how wrong that was. When I was 31 (in 1976), I ripped my left knee totally apart on the basketball court.”

That’s when Lefty decided to play tennis as a means to help with his rehabilitation. And once he began hitting that yellow ball, his competitive juices began to flow on the tennis court also.

Once his knee healed, it became a three-court world for Travis — the law year-round; basketball in the late fall, winter and early spring (his “traveling circus” teams until about 1990; Williamsport’s Salvation Army and Ohev Sholom synagogue courts after that); tennis in the late spring, summer and early fall.

According to Lefty, tennis quickly became “a blood sport” to him, as he began playing in local tournaments, both in singles, and in doubles with his  friends, Doug Kohler and Charlie Pagana. “The three of us were able to move past most of those who were still playing tennis as a game for gentlemen, as we lived and died with each match,” he admitted.

Continuing with his confession, “During those days more than a few of my rackets came to be broken - tossed when things didn’t go well. But the more I played, the better I got, and the serve became a weapon.”

Lefty, Doug and Charlie expanded out and began “going on the tour of lower New York State” also, playing in Painted Post, Elmira. Corning, Hornell, Silver Lake, Cortland and Rochester.

“For a couple of years, Kohler I were the winners of all of the New York doubles tournaments that we entered, and I won all of the 35-and-over singles.” Lefty had come a long way from when he had bought that first racket, a $10 Slazenger, back in 1971 and started to hit balls against a practice wall in a park across from his home in Upper Darby.

Commenting on their “tennis touring days” back in the late 70s and 80s. Travis said, “Looking hack, that was insane to do that to our bodies. Six or seven matches in 90 degree heat on hard courts for some $10 prize. But it wasn’t the prize as much as the competition which drove us.”

In 1991, at age 47 Lefty decided to play even more serious tennis in United States Tennis Association sanctioned 45- and-over singles’ tournaments. That first year, after some humbling tournaments where he experienced early-round losses, he finally won an event in Wilkes-Barre.

The next year he won 45-and-over singles’ titles in York and Bethany Beach. Then in his third year, three victories — at York, Bethany Beach and St. Mary’s. At age 50 he entered his first National event, making it to the quarterfinals in a 50-and-over Clay Court event.

From then for about a decade, until he had his hip replaced in 2005, Ron played “at least one national event a year.” He considers his best moment to have been when I was 52 and got placed in the draw - 8 were seeded and 8 were placed.”

Courtman, Ron Travis — lawyer, basketball player, tennis player — is now down to two courts at age 63. “The basketball is gone, but so is the hip pain. The knee still talks to me and swells from the tennis, but it is not so bad to make me head for the golf range.”

Although this self-labeled “hacker from Williamsport” now limits his basketball to avidly following and attending Lycoming College and Williamsport High School contests, and now admits that “tennis is not life or death,” Lefty still hopes that “by the time I turn 65 I will be able to move well enough to go compete in the National 65-and-over Grass Court championship.”

Clearly, his competitive juices will never stop flowing—and Ron “Lefty” Travis will continue to love all three of the courts that have been such important parts of his life.

Back to Part 1

# # #