By Chris Rossetti, www.d9sports.com
Special to MaxPreps.com
PITTSBURGH – The WPIAL will induct its 2008 Hall of Fame Class Friday, June 20 at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Moon Township.
Eight players, three coaches, one official, one contributor and three teams will be honored as part of the second Hall of Fame class for the historic Western Pennsylvania high school athletic association that is celebrating its 101st anniversary.
Four current or former professional athletes highlight the players who are being inducted including 1960 National League MVP Dick Groat, former NBA great Norm Van Lier, WNBA star Swin Cash and former NFL player Ron “Po” James.
Those four players will be joined by former United States’ Olympic team members Candy Young and Colleen Rosensteel as well as former Pitt basketball standout Don Hennon and high school swimming star Michelle Chow.
The three coaches being inducted are Chuck Klausing (football), Ed McCluskey (boys basketball) and Sheron Watson (girls volleyball), while Cliff Fair is the official being inducted and Larry Hanley is the contributor.
The three teams being inducted are the 1967 Ambridge boys basketball team, the 1945 Donora football team and the 1980 Shaler baseball team.
Dick Groat
The most familiar name among the athletes might be Groat, who was one of the first two-sport professional athletes having played for the Fort Wayne Pistons of the NBA and the Pittsburgh Pirates, St. Louis Cardinals, Philadelphia Phillies and San Francisco Giants in Major League baseball including winning a World Series in 1960 with the Pirates, the same year he earned National League MVP honors after hitting a league-high .325.
Groat, a 1948 graduate of Swissvale High School (now part of the Woodland Hills School District), played basketball, baseball and volleyball in high school and set a school record with 37 points in a basketball game while leading the WPIAL in scoring in 1948. He went on to play college basketball at Duke and was twice named an All-American while being named the UPI National Player of the Year in 1952 and setting an NCAA record with 839 points that year. Groat is currently a color analyst for University of Pittsburgh men’s basketball.
Norm Van Lier
Van Lier is considered one of the best point guards to come out of the WPIAL and ran the point for the 1965 state championship Midland team that went 28-0. Van Lier went on to star for St. Francis (PA) and then played in the NBA from 1969-79 for the Cincinnati Royals, Chicago Bulls and Milwaukee Bucks. He was named to the NBA All-Star team three times and led the NBA in assists in 1971. He finished his career with 5,217 career helpers, which still ranks in the top 40 in league history.
Swin Cash
Cash was a standout basketball player and track athlete at McKeesport High School graduating in 1998. She scored 2,678 career points and had 1,782 career rebounds including an amazing 40-point, 21-rebound, 10-blocks performance in the 1998 WPIAL Class AAAA title game. She also won the WPIAL track championship in the hurdles her senior season before going on to star in basketball at the University of Connecticut where she won NCAA Division I titles in 2000 and 2002 while scoring 1,583 career points and earning All-American honors in 2002. She then went on to the WNBA and helped the Detroit Shock win WNBA titles in 2003 and 2006. She was named to the Eastern Conference All-Star team in 2003 and 2005. Cash also won also a member of the 2004 U.S. Gold Medal winning Olympic Basketball team becoming just the sixth women to have won an NCAA Championship, a WNBA Championship and an Olympic Gold Medal. She played her first six years in the WNBA with Detroit before joining the Seattle Storm this season. Through June 9, she was averaging 13.0 points, 5.8 rebounds and 3.0 assists per game for the Storm, who were in second place in the Western Conference.
Ron James
James, a 1967 graduate of New Brighton High School set a WPIAL record with 200 points scored in football his senior year (the record stood for 22 years). He then went on to play for New Mexico State and is the school’s second all-time leading rusher with 3,885 yards. Moving on to the NFL, James played four seasons with the Philadelphia Eagles (1972-75) and ran for 1,215 yards and four touchdowns in his career while also catching 102 passes for 747 yards and two touchdowns.
Candy Young
Young qualified for the 1980 U.S. Olympic team in the hurdles but never got to compete because the United States boycotted the 1980 Moscow Games. A 1980 graduate of Beaver Falls High School, Young held the world indoor record in the 55-meter hurdles (6.85 seconds) and shared the world record in the 60-meter hurdles (7.37 seconds) while still in high school. She went on to win four NCAA championships at Fairleigh Dickinson while earning eight All-American awards and was elected as an inaugural member to the school’s athletic Hall of Fame in 1999. She dominated the 55-meter hurdles in 1983 and 1984 claiming back-to-back NCAA Indoor Championships in the event and was the NCAA outdoor runner-up in the 100-meter hurdles those years.
Colleen Rosensteel
Rosensteel, who graduated from Greensburg Central Catholic in 1985, was a member of the 2000 U.S. Olympic judo team. In high school, she was a basketball and track star for four years and won seven PIAA track and field championships in her career, the most of any WPIAL athlete ever. She held the national high school record in the discus, and went on to compete at the University of Florida.
Don Hennon
Hennon could have been an NBA star after finishing his Pitt career with 1,841 career points, which is still fourth in school history. But he passed up a chance to go pro to become a doctor. A 1955 graduate of Wampum High School, he scored 2,376 career points, which stood as a WPIAL record for 38 years. At Pitt, he was a first-team All-American in 1958 joining Wilt Chamberlain, Oscar Robertson, Elgin Baylor and Guy Rodgers on the team.
Michelle Chow
Chow is considered one of the greatest swimmers in WPIAL history and is a 1986 graduate of Gateway High School, where she was named the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Athlete of the Year in 1986. She won eight PIAA individual gold medals, the most a swimmer could win in a career while also leading the Gators to the 1985 state championship. Adding seven WPIAL gold medals to her resume, she swam at Texas A&M.
Sheron Watson
Watson, who coached 21 years at Norwin (1973-93) while also serving as a gym teacher at the school, guided the Lady Knights to dominance that might not be seen again.
Norwin won 15 WPIAL girls volleyball titles in those 21 years including 13 in a row at one point and 12 PIAA championships. When she retired in 1993, one only high school in the United States (Safford, Ariz.) had won more state titles. Her lasting legacy, though, might have been the number of players that went on to become head coaches at either the high school or college levels.
Chuck Klausing
Klausing guided Braddock High School to six consecutive WPIAL football titles from 1954-1959 while helping the team to a then state record 56-game unbeaten streak, which is still the second longest in state history. Also coaching at Pitcairn (now part of Gateway) High School, he also was a head coach at the collegiate level at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and Carnegie Mellon while also being an assistant at Rutgers, Army, West Virginia and Pitt.
Ed McCluskey
McCluskey coached at Farrell (now a District 10 school) for nearly 30 years (1949-77) and led the Steelers to an amazing 698-185 career record with 11 WPIAL titles, the most in league history. He also guided Farrell to seven PIAA titles, the most of any boys basketball coach in state history.
Cliff Fair
Fair officiated basketball and football at both the high school and major college level for more than 40 years. He was the first WPIAL Quad-A supervisor of football officials and was the assigning secretary of the West Penn Basketball Officials Association.
Larry Hanley
Hanley was long-time WPIAL Executive director and board member. Hanley was the WPIAL Executive Director from 1996 to 2006 and was also a 16-year member of the Board of Control serving as vice-president for six years and president for six more.
1967 Ambridge Basketball Team
The 1967 Ambridge basketball team that went 27-0 with a WPIAL and PIAA title tops the list of three teams being inducted. The Bridgers sent three players to major colleges – Dick DeVenzio – Duke; Dennis Wuycik – North Caroline; Frank Kaufman – Purdue, and Chuck DeVenzio’s squad won its 27 games by an average of 25 points per game including the PIAA title game 93-61.
1945 Donora Football Team
The 1945 Donora (now part of Ringgold) football team was voted as the best in WPIAL history in 1984 by readers of the Pittsburgh Press and for good reason. Stan Musial’s alma mater (Musial was on leave from the Cardinals in 1945 serving in the U.S. Navy), allowed just 13 points all season long with winning the WPIAL title and sending nine players from that team to play college football at Pit and one, Deacon “Dan” Towler to the NFL.
1980 Shaler Baseball Team
In 1980, the Shaler baseball team was so good that it had two players taken in the top nine rounds of that year’s Major League Baseball draft (Doug Maggio and Wayne Schuckert) while also seeing three other players from the team, that won both the WPIAL and PIAA titles, get drafted after going to college and one play in the NFL. The Titans, under Jerry Matulevic, won its three WPIAL playoff games by a combined score of 26-1 and its five PIAA playoff games by a combined score of 42-15. Shaler ended the season on a 25-game win streak.
2007 Inaugural WPIAL Hall of Fame Class
The 2008 class joins the 2007 inaugural class that included coaches Walter “Pete” Antimarino (Gateway football), Dave Nichol (Monaca baseball and boys basketball), Don Graham (North Catholic boys basketball) and Pat Campbell (Bethel Park boys swimming), teams 1987 North Hills football and 1996 Bethel Park boys swimming, athletes Sean Shapert (Moon soccer), Bill Fralic (Penn Hill football and wrestling), Suzie McConnell (Seton-LaSalle basketball and softball; girls basketball coach at Oakland Catholic), Dick Hoak (Jeannette football, basketball, track), Jennifer Flynn-Oldenburg (Baldwin volleyball, basketball, softball), Arnold Palmer (Latrobe golf) and Cary Kolat (Jefferson-Morgan wrestling), officials Jim Horner (wrestling) and Norm Crawford (track) and contributor Charles “Ace” Heberling (first full-time WPIAL Executive director; officials’ representative).
