Bill Ginn played football, basketball and ran track at Stivers. His best sport was basketball. He played for Coach R.C.”Skipper” LaRue. Stivers was City League Champion in 1944 and was named the 1944 City”Team of the Year.” Bill was Stivers 1944 “Player of the Year” and was named to the All-City First Team that year.
Bill was offered a position to play basketball at the University of Wisconsin in 1944, but returned to Dayton to work at Aero Products. Peter Kuntz of Kuntz Lumber Company sponsored Bill at the University of Dayton where Bill had an outstanding career.
At U.D., Bill played for coaches Jim Carter his freshman year and Tom Blackburn his junior and senior years. Bill set the U.D. scoring record as a freshman with 15.3 points per game. He scored over 800 points despite missing most of his sophomore season with a fractured jaw. His high point total was 27 against Xavier. He played against Adolph Rupp’s 34-3 Kentucky team with Alex Groza and scored 15 of Dayton’s 29 points that game. Bill was a part of the foundation that brought Dayton to national power status in the Tom Blackburn era. Bill graduated from the University of Dayton in 1949.
After graduation from U.D., Bill coached and taught at Springboro High School from 1949 to 1951, then moved to Milton-Union HS, where he coached for 10 seasons. He still holds the Milton-Union record for most coaching victories in basketball. While at Milton-Union. Bill coached football, track and cross-country and started the wrestling program. He also started a “Varsity M” club which he modeled after the “Varsity D” club at Dayton. After leaving the high school environment he became a manufacturers representative for several sporting goods companies, and subsequently was a sporting goods salesman for MeE Sporting Goods in Springfield at the time of his death on April 30, 19
Bill married Dorothy Ellifritt, also a U.D. graduate. They have three children; Bob, Bill and Lori and nine grandchildren; Brian, Erin, Jen, Kristen, Ben and Brady Ginn and Kylie, Ty and Chase Parsons.
