Henry "Hank" Josefczyk
Birthdate: February 16, 1938
Birthplace: Maynard, OH
High School: Yorkville (Ohio) High School (1956)
College: University of Dayton (1956-1960)
Year Inducted: 2020
Henry “Hank” Josefczyk was a high school phenom in the 1950s and still holds the Ohio Valley record for scoring average by a senior. During the 1955-56 campaign at Yorkville – tucked along the Ohio River on the eastern edge of the state – Josefczyk scored 1,097 points in 26 outings for a whopping 42.2 points per game. The Ductillites posted a 22-4 mark that season and won the Jefferson County title for the second straight year. They also captured the Ohio Class B section and district crowns, including a win over an unbeaten Strasburg team, before losing to Chagrin Falls, 62-60, in the regional tournament.
A 6-6 center who knew how to dominate the paint, Josefczyk finished his four-year run at Yorkville with 2,013 career points, which ranks him among the top 15 scorers in Ohio Valley history. He leapt into stardom as a junior while averaging 17.5 ppg. But his reputation as an outstanding all-around athlete already was well intact.
In high school, Josefczyk won 11 varsity letters – four each in basketball and baseball, and three in football. He excelled most on the hardwood, cementing his status as a legend of the area. As a senior, he broke the Yorkville single-game scoring record set by Ken Alessi by netting 76 points in the regular-season finale against Shadyside. The Tigers must have sensed they’d be in for a long night as Josefczyk had destroyed them with a 60-point night earlier in the season – one of several games that season in which he racked up at least 50 points.
Josefczyk was selected first-team All-Ohio, All-OVAC and All-Eastern Ohio, and received Chuck Taylor All-America recognition by playing in the annual North-South All-America Game in Murray, Ky. He also played in the Ohio/West Virginia vs. Kentucky All-Star games in Huntington, W.Va., and Ashland, Ky.
After mulling scholarship offers from right around 200 schools, he settled on the University of Dayton, where he was a member of the freshman team and logged three years with the varsity. In his sophomore season with the Flyers, he was the sixth man on a team that finished NIT runner-up and also was the first-ever recipient of UD’s prestigious John L. Macbeth Scholar-Athlete Award.
Josefczyk was senior class president and salutatorian of his graduating class at Yorkville. Not surprisingly, he went on to more academic and professional success. He graduated from UD in 1960 with a degree in electrical engineering and went on to earn a master’s degree from Case Institute of Technology. He returned to campus as an instructor, teaching the school’s first graduate digital computer courses. He then joined the business world, working for 12 years at Intel Corp.
