By Monty Siekerman
Icon's Florida correspondent
It’s nice to find a photo of an Ada water tower and a little piece of the history of the community a thousand miles away.
There it was—a football for sale at Dick’s Sporting Goods in Lakeland, Fla., with one side of the package showing the Ada water tower and a brief history of the Ada-made Wilson football.
For $79.99 a customer could buy a leather GST Game Ball and learn about Ada’s place in the football kingdom. There was only one ball available for sale with this packaging. The Wilson-made GST composite football ($34.99) and Special Edition ($24.99) didn’t boast about being made in Ada on the side of the packages.
There were other balls on the shelves, more numerous and cheaper, sold by Under Armour and Nike. In addition, Dick’s had many of its own-brand balls available for $9.99.
Although Super Bowl Sunday is approaching, the overall football display at Dick’s was minimal considering the size of the store. The Dick’s local manager said that much more space will be devoted to footballs and the equipment for the game beginning in April and May because youth teams will be forming in Florida at that time. Although football is a fall/winter sport most places, ending with the the Super Bowl in early February, for Florida retailers the football sales season is late spring/early summer.
Dick’s in mid-Florida is one of thousands of sporting goods stores in the nation, and throughout the world, where footballs are sold. And, on those shelves, customers will find a picture of Ada and a little bit of history of the village when they peruse the football display. Go Ada!
The wording on the package reads, “Wilson Sporting Goods has been making leather game footballs in the United States for nearly 100 years.
“Every major innovation in game footballs has been developed by Wilson. Since 1955 every NFL Game Football, every Super Bowl Game Football, and every Wilson youth, high school and college leather game ball has been made at the world’s only dedicated football factory in Ada, Ohio.
“Wilson football craftsmen and women are proud to make the best footballs in the world in the heartland of America. We wouldn’t have it any other way.”
He had to rub it in. Here' a separate e-mail with the following message:
"A mere 56-plus wind chill here. About 80 degrees warmer than Ada-Bluffton."
