NORTHAMPTON — It’s easy to imagine freshman George Symborski’s devastation when he noticed his name scratched off the Northampton High School varsity basketball roster only a day after he was picked in 1951.
But Symborski, now 83, wasn’t defeated. Instead, he and his childhood friends chose to play for the YMCA on a squad Symborski said was so talented that it won a YMCA championship against West Springfield in 1954. To immortalize the win, the team took a basketball, painted it silver and wrote each of their names in red.
For a while, the ball was on display at Joe’s Cafe on Market Street where it disappeared and reappeared over a span of 65 years. Symborski and others thought the athletic artifact was again lost to the ages until it was found again in a dingy storage space a few weeks ago. Today, the ball takes on more of a golden hue.
“We used to take that ball … and everyone would dribble it down the court and take one shot with it. Then we’d put it back in the bag because we didn’t want to scratch it anymore,” Symborski said. They would take it to games as a good luck charm, he added, but rarely used it.
As Joe’s Cafe owner Meaghan Sullivan was cleaning out a storage space in the basement of a building adjacent to the restaurant, she found the ball tucked away in a box behind a sheet pan. Sullivan immediately knew what it was.
“He’s been asking me to find this for quite a few years,” Sullivan said of Symborski. “I had it hiding behind the bar and found the right time to give it to him, while he was with all of his buddies.”
Joe Usaforest, also 83, played guard on the team and was almost brought to tears when the ball was brought to his home in East Longmeadow on Wednesday afternoon. Neither Usaforest nor Symborski, who played center, can remember the score of their championship game; however, both agree their team was legendary.
“Our group was so good that kids were quitting high school teams to come play with us at the Y,” Symborski said.
Usaforest said he remembers the ball first made its way to Joe’s Cafe when a team member brought it to the restaurant for display around a year and a half after it was signed.
“Everybody wanted to go there to get a pizza and look at this ball, touch this ball,” Usaforest said. “So that spread around.”
The silvery basketball stayed behind the store’s bar until the late 1950s when it mysteriously disappeared. At the time, Usaforest believed someone may have stolen it.
It wasn’t until around 1986 when the ball resurfaced. A bartender found it behind crates in the restaurant’s basement, Usaforest said. On Usaforest’s wall hangs a photo of former teammates Thomas Walsh, Donald Cadette, Ziggy Lyons, and Usaforest and Symborski with the ball from its first resurfacing.
Sullivan thinks that the basketball was once again placed into storage around 20 years ago when the restaurant underwent renovations. She said she was “psyched” to have found it, as Symborski wasn’t the only former team member wondering about its whereabouts.
Symborski, who grew up on Isabella Street, remembers growing up with Usaforest and other kids in the neighborhood where they would play football, basketball and hockey year-round. Though he remembers how upset he was after being denied a varsity spot, Symborski said there was a silver lining.
“It turned out I was with my friends,” he said. “We got along together.”
After the former YMCA building in Northampton was razed in the 1950s, the team became sponsored by former Mayor Wally Puchalski, owner of Wally’s Soda Bar, where the team would meet before every game. It was then that they continued their dynasty as “the Wally’s.”
One of the most memorable games for Symborski was against Dunbar CC sometime after 1954, when players on the opposing team made fun of the Wally’s for dribbling around their silver-plated basketball before a game.
“They started laughing and pointing at us,” Symborski said. “We beat that team.”
With its 65-year history, the ball has transcended into almost mythical status among the former members of the championship-winning YMCA basketball team. As Usaforest put it: “That’s going to go to the hall of fame, that basketball.”
Symborski said he hopes the basketball can be put on display at Joe’s Cafe where it can remain for posterity. He doesn’t want to see the ball go missing again, but if it does, he would see it as just another chapter in the basketball’s peculiar saga.
“The mystery continues,” Symborski said.
Michael Connors can be reached at mconnors@gazettenet.com.