High School Sports |

The loss of a legend: Northampton basketball all-stater Jimmy Schneider dies at 69

Northampton’s boys basketball recently created a lot of excitement in the community with its run to the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference championship, the program’s first league title since a Lehigh Valley League championship in 1973.

For those old enough to remember, this year’s team brought back a lot of great members to a golden era of Konkrete Kids basketball, who won league and district titles in 1972 and another league crown the following year.

At the forefront of those championship teams was Jim Schneider, the son of legendary coach Pete Schneider, the uncle of former Major League baseball player Brian “Hoops” Schneider, and the brother of longtime Northampton coach and athletic director Mike Schneider.

Jim Schneider died earlier this week at the age of 69 after a battle with cancer and as talented as he was on the basketball court in earning all-state honors, Schneider was an even better person off the court.

“We won 22 games in a row in our senior year, the 1972-73 season, and there’s no way we would have had that streak without Jimmy,” said his close friend and teammate Mark Schlaffer. “He was a force. I remember against Shamokin he had 33 rebounds in one game.

“But I would rather talk about Jimmy off the court because he was a great guy. He didn’t have an enemy in the world. He was a gentle giant. Everybody’s lives were a little better if you knew Jimmy Schneider. The girls liked him, the boys liked him, everybody liked him. He was a guy who always had a smile on his face. He was just an uplifting person.”

He was a first-team all-state selection as a senior and over his last two seasons playing for Bob Nemeth’s juggernaut, he amassed nearly 800 points and 1,000 rebounds. In those two seasons, Northampton went a combined 49-6.

In those years, the Konkrete Kids played in a lot of big games in front of packed houses and Schneider provided a calming presence as well as stability in the paint.

“We got so used winning back then that we literally took it for granted,” Schlaffer said. “I am telling the truth when I say that when we walked on to the floor we always felt like we were going to win. That’s a heck of a feeling and Jimmy was a big reason why we felt that way. He was a good player as a freshman and sophomore and he just kept getting better and better. By his senior year, he was first-team all-state, which was done by the UPI [United Press International] back then.

“We were together on teams that went 22-1 as freshmen and 22-1 as JVs, so we only lost eight games in four years at Northampton.”

Schlaffer said that Schneider’s last game was against Chester at the Penn Palestra.

“We lost the game, but I remember their coach saying after the game that Jimmy was the most physical player Chester played against all year,” Schlaffer said. “That Chester team was just too fast. They dismantled us. But Jimmy was the only guy that could play with them. We had no chance, but Jimmy was tough.”

And, he was tough until the end.

“He never lost his faith in God,” Schlaffer said. “Even as he was struggling in his final months and suffering, he stayed positive and he never blamed anyone. He just saw it as God’s will. He looked at it as if this is God’s plan, this is the way it’s going to be.

“He kept his sense of humor. At one point, after I hadn’t seen him for a year and a half, I told him that I lost 60 pounds. He said, ‘Well, I lost 90 pounds.’ I asked him how he did that. He said ‘They cut my leg off.’ That was Jimmy. Even in his suffering, he was making people laugh.”

Schneider signed a basketball scholarship to play at West Virginia where one of his teammates was Bob Huggins. He spent more than 20 years flying for the U.S. Navy before becoming a commercial pilot.

Tim “Muzz” Masluk, who was a football player at Northampton and the basketball team manager in the early 1970s, worked for several presidents in the U.S. Secret Service.

“During the first Bush administration, No. 41, I was on the Secret Service counter assault and we were transferring through a regional airport in Japan when one of the guys noticed that a big guy was looking at me,” Masluk said. “I look over and it was Jimmy. So I go over and hug it out with him. he was in the Navy at the time and he told me that he was on the fleet admiral’s softball team headed to Okinawa. They were touring and playing other Navy teams on bases in the region. So, Jimmy was a pro long before his nephew Hoops.

“Jimmy, like his older brother Pete, was a naval aviator. Pete flew jets, but Jimmy was too tall so he flew P3s, submarine hunters,” Masluk said. “He was on a crew with 10 or more, flying missions hunting foreign subs, sometimes for 12 hours or more. I’d get some last-minute calls from Jimmy when he’d grab two or three of his guys and I’d give them a private tour of the White House. It was different back then, all above board. Jimmy did that for his guys because he knew it would mean a lot to them to have that opportunity.”

A tight bond was formed over the years with Schneider and Masluk’s parents.

“When he was back in town, he’d always stop by and visit,” Masluk said. “My Hungarian mother was known as Sally Jagermeister and she always had it in the freezer and you always had to do a shot with her. Up until the time she passed away in 2015, she would call and tell me that Jimmy was home and he stopped by for a shot. The day she died, Jimmy called me from Florida where he lived and we did a shot for Sally over the phone.”

Masluk said that Schneider was diagnosed with Pleomorphic Sarcoma, but he stayed optimistic.

“We all wanted to visit him, but he kept saying there’s nothing to do here,” Masluk said. “He kept saying that as soon as he got better he’d see us all at the Hunky Hall and we’ll do a shot together. I think he was too proud for any of us to see the big man down. When I got the call from Mark Schlaffer saying that Jimmy was gone, I had tears in my eyes. But I still did a shot for him. It hurts to lose the good guys. He was a good man from a great family. He will be missed.’

Plans for a memorial service have yet to be announced.