Photo taken from 1970 Champion High School yearbook. Champion’s Randy Gradishar (left) bull rushes an opposing player during the Golden Flashes’ 1970 season.

It’s one of the most unlikely of unlikely stories.

A high school kid in a rural school district that played his first game of football in 9th grade, considering himself a basketball player above all. He works part-time at his father’s grocery store. College? Probably not. His plan was to get a job like everyone else in the community.

But that plan never happened.

Instead, colleges came knocking, and for football, not basketball.

The same grocery store he worked at played host to a meeting that would go on to change his life.

Every journey starts somewhere, and soon-to-be Pro Football Hall of Fame linebacker Randy Gradishar’s story starts in Champion.

Right off of Route 45, where Fat Cat Tattoos now sits, is where Gradishar worked since the age of 11, the B&J Supermarket.

One day during his senior year, a man came to Champion to speak with Gradishar to recruit him to his school. Neither he nor his father knew who the man was, Gradishar’s family watched the Browns and Indians, but not much else in sports.

The man’s name was Woody Hayes, and he wanted Gradishar to attend Ohio State. While most coaches, even then, would pitch to the player, that’s not how Hayes did it. The longtime Ohio State coach recruited Gradishar’s father, Jim. The ‘J’ of B&J Supermarket.

“I went up (to the high school) and spent about an hour and 15 minutes or so with Woody Hayes, and his last question for me was, ‘What does your dad do?’ And I said he owns a grocery store, not two miles down the street. And Woody, he was always an energetic kind of guy, so he says, ‘Well, let’s go see him.’ So we drove down to my dad’s store,” Gradishar said. “We walked back by the meat, because that’s what my dad was working, and we had to wait a few minutes because he was serving the customers. He had sliced a pound of bologna, and when he finished slicing for the customer, all of a sudden, he’s talking to my dad.

“I’m just standing there, and it was a little over an hour I think, and then he took off. Then I turned to my dad and said, ‘Dad, he didn’t even mention my name.’ They were both in World War II, so that’s all they talked about was World War II. They were both in the Philippines. I thought that was interesting that he never even mentioned my name and then some time later, after that, after his visit, I realized that he was recruiting parents, recruiting my father to get me to go to college and go to Ohio State.”

Hayes’ strategy of recruiting the parents and not the students was a winning one, as he got Gradishar to attend.

But how did a small-town kid on a recently-established football program wind up on the radar of the biggest college in the state? Social media was nonexistent and the recruiting process was in a different universe compared to today.

Al Carrino, Champion’s first football coach, sent Gradishar’s tape to a number of colleges without telling him, including Ohio State.

Multiple schools pursued him, including Penn State, but the Buckeyes won the day.

As a freshman, Gradishar began playing football, which was new to Champion. By the mid-1960s, football had already caught on at both the professional and college levels, but was just starting to reach the rural high schools of the Mahoning Valley. Bigger schools like Harding fielded teams as early as 1892, but 1966, Gradishar’s freshman year, was the program’s first year.

At the time, playing in the NFL wasn’t even a blip in Gradishar’s mind, let alone the prospect of being an all-time great. Winning and playing the best he could — the same tenets Gradishar lived by in the NFL — were the only things he thought about while donning the purple and gold.

“Champion didn’t have a football program until my freshman year. My dream then was to take advantage of the opportunity to learn to play the sport and be the best I could be for my coaches and the team,” Gradishar said. “My coaches had me play tight end, linebacker, and all special teams. I loved playing the sport but didn’t feel I was especially good at football. I always thought I was better at basketball. In the back of my mind, I thought about playing at a Mid-American school to play both sports.”

Over his four years with the program, the Flashes finished with a combined 17-21-2 record, marred mostly by a 1-8-1 record during the team’s first season.

Gradishar’s fondest memory on the gridiron during his time with Champion? A big win over Grand Valley during his senior year, described by Gradishar as “a convincing victory for an upstart football program.”

At the time of his graduation, Gradishar was a three-year letterwinner in both football and basketball, a three-time all-league and all-county selection in basketball, holds the single-game (26) and career (817) rebounding records, which still stand today, as well as a blocked shots record (44). In football, Gradishar was a two-time all-league and all-county selection, and won the Star Helmet Award twice.

Gradishar was inducted into the Champion Athletic Hall of Fame in 2004.

The Gradishar name still roams the halls of Champion High School and is carving its own path. Gabby, Randy’s great niece, has been carrying on the family sports legacy in the softball world as a multi-time all-state pitcher and is a Penn State commit.

Upon induction, Gradishar will be the third Pro Football Hall of Fame member from the Mahoning Valley. Paul Warfield (Warren G. Harding, Class of 1983) and Edward DeBartolo Jr. (Cardinal Mooney, Class of 2016).

Have an interesting story? Contact Brian Yauger by email at byauger@tribtoday.com. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, @_brianyauger.