A Marysville High School athlete from long ago will enter the school’s athletic Hall of Fame on Friday.
The late Allen Bump, who graduated from MHS in 1929, will join along with three-sport standout Mike Adkins, retired head baseball coach Ed Starling and football stat guru Ron Sabins for enshrinement.
Bump was a football and basketball player for the Monarchs.
He was Marysville’s starting halfback during the 1926, 1927 and 1928 campaigns.
The 1927 season was especially impressive for Bump. He scored 17 touchdowns and converted seven extra points.
The Monarchs posted a 10-0 record under the guidance of the late coach Gerald L. Kingsmore, who is also a member of the Monarch Hall of Fame.
Marysville’s defense allowed only 26 points that year, while the offense scored a whopping 412.
Bump’s 109 points accounted for 25 percent of the team’s offense.
There is a caveat to the 1927 campaign… the game against Nelsonville actually ended in a 13-13 stalemate.
Nelsonville, however, was forced to forfeit the game (with a 1-0 score for MHS) for having used an ineligible player.
The 1927 season saw the Monarchs compete in their first league, the Tecumseh League, which consisted of affiliates Bellefontaine and Urbana for football, basketball and track and field.
Bump scored one touchdown and four extra points during his sophomore season of 1926.
The Monarchs won seven of their eight games that fall.
Bump’s senior season of 1928 resulted in the Monarchs posting a 7-2 record.
Marysville’s three-year record with Bump on the roster was a sparkling 24-3.
Bump tallied 417 total points on the basketball court in three years.
He played during an era in which high school hoop contests were lower-scoring battles.
Bump tallied 151 points during the 1927-1928 season, in which the Monarchs advanced to the quarterfinals of the state tournament.
Bump was the leading scorer on the 1928-29 team as a senior. He tallied 139 points as MHS advanced to the final eight of the state tourney.
Steve Devine, who is chairman of the MHS Athletic Hall of Fame committee remembered the research into Bump’s career.
“Allen Bump was part of some of the ‘golden years’ of Marysville High School sports in the late 1920s,” he said. “There was a particularly talented group of athletes passing through the halls of the high school beginning in 1926 through 1929 and Allen Bump was one of them.
“He was a great halfback in football and guard in basketball, but he was lucky to play with others who were talented as well,” said Devine. “Freck Wilcox, who was part of the Marysville High School Athletic Hall of Fame’s first induction class in 1998, was one of Bump’s teammates.”
Devine said Bump’s career came to light to the committee more than two decades ago.
“Way back in 1997 when we were researching Freck’s credentials (through the Journal-Tribune archives), we kept reading or hearing about the exploits of some of Freck’s teammates,” he said. “Allen Bump was one of those and someone we didn’t want to lose sight of over the years.”