Clyde Stallsmith didn’t do anything the traditional way, and that, perhaps, is what made him stand out among the crowd.
First, his college coach never saw him play. Fellow inductee Ira Norfolk heard from a good friend that Stallsmith was a dominant player in the Marine Corps, so he signed him to a scholarship, sight unseen.
Second, he began his collegiate career when he was 24 years old and graduated at age 28. The 6-foot-3, 195-pound forward, affectionately called “Old Man” by his teammates, averaged nearly 16 points per game in his Barton career and set the school’s single-season scoring record (at that time) as a senior with 596.
Third, Stallsmith was married and was a father when he was in college. His wife worked and their son was in grade school while he attended Barton and played basketball. He was also a chaplain in the Wilson Jaycees.
His childhood was different as well. Stallsmith spent much of his youth in a Meadsville, Pa., orphanage, but still managed to excel in school, eventually earning Most Valuable Player, All-Conference, and All-District basketball honors in high school. He turned down scholarship basketball offers from numerous colleges to join the Marines, where he spent six years before joining Norfolk in Wilson.
While in the Marines, Stallsmith was named to the All-Marine and All-Service basketball teams in 1964 and 1965. He made the all-tournament team in the first Rainbow Classic basketball tournament in 1964.
The teams Norfolk coached, and Stallsmith played on, from 1965-69, were exciting, averaging 90 points or more in most games, which attracted lots of fans. Ironically, as noted by Norfolk, Stallsmith is the fifth of his players to be inducted into the Barton Athletic Hall of Fame. Ed Carraway, Bobby Gilmore, Larry Jones and Cliff Black were already in the hall.
Stallsmith averaged 21.3 points and nine rebounds his senior season, hitting 238 of his 517 shots for 46-percent accuracy. The Bulldogs averaged a league-best 94.2 points per game and posted a 13-17 record. For his career, Stallsmith made more than 50 percent of his field-goal attempts. He was named all-conference and all-district his junior and senior seasons at Barton.
Norfolk especially remembers a home game with Elon on Feb. 9, 1969, noting Stallsmith “just tore them up inside” with 39 points on 17-of-25 shooting in an 89-83 conquest.
“He was the stabilizer for us,” Norfolk said of Stallsmith. “He was just highly knowledgeable with lots of savvy. If he were on a hockey team, he would have been called ‘the enforcer.’ He was just a pleasure to watch, a smooth operator.”
Stallsmith has four sons: Tony, Bob, Bill and David.
