2012-09-07
Timbuck Shields
A new scholarship to honor legendary coach Robert “Timbuck” Shields has been created
at Your Community Foundation (YCF).
The Timbuck Shields Legion Scholarship Fund was established by his daughter Cynthia Shaw,
her sisters Lynette Graeber and Michaela Chefren and her brother Robert Shields
to honor the man who coached high school athletics and American Legion Baseball
for more than 40 years.
YCF will invest the fund and all future contributions and use the net income to award an
annual scholarship or other financial aid to a high school student athlete from
Taylor or Harrison County who has maintained at least a 2.50 grade point
average and will attend college or vocational school.
“We started this fund to honor my father’s memory,” Shaw said. “He dedicated most of his
life to teaching, coaching and mentoring young people, and so many people are
successful today because of him.
“Now, his lifelong work and all of the lives he touched can continue through this
scholarship.”
In addition to her initial contribution, Ms. Shaw and her family plan to stage a benefit
baseball tournament at a date to be determined to raise money for the
scholarship fund.
Shields was well known around the area for his coaching exploits and for the positive
impact he made in the lives of his student athletes. An athlete himself, he
played football and ran track at Washington Irving High School in Clarksburg,
where he graduated in 1945. He played baseball in the Harrison County League,
as no high schools offered baseball back then.
He then played two seasons of football at West Virginia University before leaving to
play minor league baseball for several years. He returned home in the early
1950s to complete his education at WVU and began teaching and coaching at
Flemington High School in 1953.
Shields was the basketball coach at Flemington High School until the late 1960s, even
coaching for several years after he was named principal at the school. He led
the Greyhounds to a 279-90 record in 18 seasons and produced five Class A
leading scorers in the state — including the legendary Paul Popovich in 1958,
who later played Major League baseball. Popovich averaged 42 points per game –
a state record that lasted nearly 50 years.
Shields retired from the school in 1989, a year before it closed. Two years earlier in
1987, he began coaching American Legion Baseball in Bridgeport and continued
until his death last May at age 84.
His son Robert, the baseball and freshman basketball coach at Bridgeport High School
and football coach at Liberty High School, said when his father died he
received text messages from many of the boys who played for Shields and who are
now adults. “He really did affect a lot of people in his lifetime through
coaching and being an educator,” the son said in an article in the Clarksburg
Exponent-Telegram.
Tax-deductible contributions in any amount can be made to the Timbuck Shields Legion
Scholarship Fund in care of YCF, P.O. Box 409, Morgantown, WV 26507.