ALIQUIPPA celebrates their 2nd straight WPIAL Class AA championship after they defeated Lincoln Park 49-45. (Photos by William McBride)
by Timothy Cox, For New Pittsburgh Courier
HERSHEY, PA — A year ago this Spring, the Aliquippa High School boys basketball team lost the final game of what would’ve been the clinching game of the PIAA Class AA State title game. The gut-wrenching loss was the team’s only defeat of last season.
Fast-forward to Sat., March 19, 2016 – many of those same Quips players from last year’s squad, were able to make amends and bring home the state title, miraculously in another undefeated season, going 30-0.
In fact, during the past two school years – starting in the Fall of 2014 through Spring 2016, the Aliquippa boys football and basketball teams have won an unbelievable 86 games, with just two defeats.
In that brief period the boys football and basketball teams have earned three Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Association League (WPIAL) titles and one Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association (PIAA) state crown.
The 2015-16 football team was also undefeated, until losing in the final-game, PIAA 2A state championship match last December against Southern Columbia High of Catawissa, Pa. Interestingly, both football and hoop teams are largely comprised of the same players.
Very talented young men, to say the least.
Still, for a such a small former steel town which only has a population of about 9,000 inhabitants, it’s remarkable that this Pittsburgh outskirt can remain so athletically competitive, when each school year, the entire student body annually enrolls a minimal number of boys. Even though there’s such a very small pool of players to choose from, the talent and skill-base remains very high.
Therefore, one has to wonder how and why such profound athletic prowess seems to occur at this small, urban, economically-challenged Beaver County school — year after year.
In speaking with several long-term residents of the Aliquippa borough, it’s noted that school pride, especially athletic success is bred from the smallest tykes throughout their formative years.
“It’s a never-lose attitude that starts before kids even reach Pop Warner leagues,” says Philip Billingslea, a WAMO-100 radio executive and native Quippian, whose father, Richard Billingslea, played on Aliquippa’s first unbeaten state basketball title team. That legendary squad defeated a tough York High School (63-51) for the 1949 PIAA crown at Philadelphia’s Palestra fieldhouse, according to a March 1980 Beaver County Times article by iconic sports writer Joe Tronzo
The 1949 team, which enjoyed a 29-0 record, also starred Dr. Larry Frank, who would later become President of Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri. Dr. Frank was also the first Black named as director of the NCAA and served as president of the South Western Athletic Conference (SWAC).
It’s often stated that the ’49 team is the bedrock and foundation of what would become Aliquippa’s long-lasting sports success. That team also featured Dr. Mickey Zernich, Clarence Shaw, former Aliquippa high school principal Jerry Montini, and was coached by Sam Milanovich.
But the current hoop squad was able to outdo their older counterparts by eclipsing the long-held undefeated mark, which stood 67 years, until March 19 when Coach Nick Lackovich’s 2015-16 squad copped the state crown by going undefeated and breaking the school record by defeating Philadelphia-based Mastery Charter North 68-49 at the Giant Center in Hershey – the same venue where the Quips lost a year ago.
Naturally Coach Lackovich says he’s more than proud to have coached this year’s team. After losing in last year’s final game and losing an undefeated season to eventual champion Conwell-Egan also of Philly, Lackovich said his returning players were not marching to any special rallying cry throughout the year. “We knew we left some goals on the table last year, and we had a good nucleus returning to achieve our goals,” said the three-year head coach. Prior to Lackovich taking over the boy’s team’s reign, the team was coached by Bobby Williams, who suffered three consecutive losing seasons, said Lackovich.
In Lackovich’s hire, the school retrieved a native son, who played three years in the Quip basketball program. Lackovich said he became a symbolic keystone, sharing the legacy and stories of past Aliquippa athletes with incoming youngsters. During Lackovich’s sophomore season, he played with seniors Donnie Gipson and Maron Clark. Gipson would enjoy a successful career at West Virginia University, and a lengthy pro career in Australia.
When asked why and how the Quips program experiences such ongoing phenomenal success, Lackovich credits “community pride and an internal will to succeed, at all costs. Most of these players are (family) related or close friends. Even the younger ones in elementary school, they’re already groomed with an attitude that they should not lose – they’re brought-up to win. When the kids graduate, it’s a next-in-line attitude,” said Lackovich who played college ball at Blue Mountain Community College (Pendleton, Oregon) and NAIA powerhouse, Texas Wesleyan University (Fort Worth).
Billingslea equates the success to the competitive games held at the city’s Jones School (Elementary School) playground. “That’s where it all began. Jones School was similar to ‘The Rucker’ in Harlem,” he said. The 15th Street Playground roundball court in Beaver Falls had a similar allure, attracting the best ball players from throughout Beaver County to Eastern Ohio. The Jones School property has since been razed and no longer exists.
Dr. Anthony Mitchell, a professor of African and African-American Studies at Penn State University Greater Allegheny, was a former athlete at nearby Beaver Falls High School, where he played football and basketball in the competitive WPIAL Section 3 4A basketball region from 1971 to 1974. Mitchell, a Geneva College (Beaver Falls) graduate, credits Aliquippa’s football and baskeball programs for its “remarkable success.” He adds that he thinks last year’s (hoop) squad may have been more talented, but this year’s team “was unselfish and committed to winning the state. We’re very proud of them,” he adds.
Alex Johnson, a 1971 prep star at North Braddock Scott High (now merged with Woodland Hills H.S.), competed as an all-star WPIAL player when Pittsburgh’s City League ruled Western Pa. basketball hoop success. Johnson played with the likes of Schenley legends Maurice Lucas, Ricky Coleman, Robert “Jeep” and his brother Nathan “Sonny” Lewis; Oscar Jackson Jr. (Beaver Falls), Jonathan Marshall (Clairton) and Ulice Payne Jr. of Ringgold High. Johnson says he too is impressed with what the Quips are doing in the modern era.
“No matter what league or era you play in, to run the table like they (Aliquippa) did, is phenomenal. I’ll put it simply like this: special players do special things. This team is very special,” added Johnson, who also enjoyed a solid career as a swing-forward at Robert Morris University.
Eddie Jefferies, former New Pittsburgh Courier, Sports Editor, asks the question, “How can this small town continue to win in football and basketball? And, it shows in the people in the stands, when you attend their games. It’s an attitude, almost like they expect to win. I’ve also seen that type of attitude in towns like Clairton and Duquesne,” Jefferies recalls the lore of teams like Midland’s ’65 PIAA champs with Simmie Hill and Norm Van Lier, and the ’71 Schenley squad of Maurice Lucas and Ricky Coleman. While this year’s Allderdice team helped revive Pittsburgh’s City League’s legacy, Jefferies calls the 2007 State title Schenley team of DeJuan Blair and David Kennedy as one of the City League’s greatest compilations ever.
But Coach Lackovich feels the City League’s dominance of past eras was destroyed during the rise of gang activity in many of Pittsburgh’s inner-city neighborhoods. “It really impacted many of the talented players who apparently affected by the violent lifestyles there,” he says. Jefferies agrees. “City kids can’t even play outside anymore. There’s too many factions, primarily the safety factors. The Ozanam League (inner-city youth league) had a way of bringing city kids from different neighborhoods together, so they would develop lasting friendships and connections – no reasons to shoot one another,” said Jefferies who was inducted into the Pittsburgh All-Sports Hall of Fame last October.
In Aliquippa, the names who helped shape the town’s legacy, read like a who’s who in WPIAL history. Several became top NFL draft choices and went onto professional sports success. Names like Jarrett “Jabbo” Durham, Josh Lay, Dwight “Juice” Kenner, Jesse “Ghost” Stewart, Myron “Quarters” Walker, Chris “Love” Peacock, Sherman McBride, John Thomas (retired Aliquippa Schools Superintendent), Mike Jackson, Raphael “Pudgy” Abercrombie, Maron Clark, Chad Calabria, Sean Gilbert, Chucky Fisher, Ty Law, Jonathan Baldwin, Darelle Revis, Victor Lay and Mike Ditka. Although the Dorsett family attended Hopewell High, the family lived in Aliquippa where Anthony “Hawk” Dorsett (Dallas Cowboys) and his older brothers Ernest, Tyrone and Keith groomed their gridiron skills. Younger sister Sheree Dorsett was a standout high school track star at Hopewell. Aliquippa natives Rushel Shell, a star running back at Pitt and West Virginia University and Shatori Walker-Kimbrough, point guard for the University of Maryland’s girls basketball team also both starred at nearby Hopewell High.
The recently-aired TV series “Friday Night Tykes: Steel Country” exposes the intensity of Aliquippa’s youth football program, in addition to how focused the young players are — even at early ages.The reality series, which appears on the Esquire TV network, also features youth football programs in Monaca, Ambridge, Beaver Falls and the Beaver Falls suburb, Blackhawk.
Coach Lackovich says the TV program gives an authentic peer into intensity of Aliquippa’s players, coaches and parents and how serious a role they undertake in personally continuing the Quip’s winning tradition.
Barry Cox, a Beaver County Sports Hall of Fame nominee, won two consecutive Beaver County scoring titles as a running back at Center High School (now Central Valley High). Cox recalls Aliquippa as typically his team’s toughest foe during his standout career. “They were always tough – at all positions.” Cox now “gives back” as associate director of the Homeboys Football Camp, a Beaver County-based youth football camp that facilitates player-development throughout the county for ages 7 to 17.
Cox, a U.S. Army vet and social worker, recently served as a youth football coach in Beaver Falls, Hopewell and Aliquippa.
He coached current Quips Kaezon Pugh, Jassir Jordan and Sheldon Jeter when they were pre-teens.
“I’m not surprised these kids have become champions. It showed in their Pop Warner days. It’s a winning tradition you can’t teach – it’s embedded in them from day-one,” said Cox, who explained that because the Quips don’t have a junior high football program, players are expected to be prepared for high-school play immediately after leaving the youth ranks.
“They plug ’em in and say ‘next man up.”
(EDITOR’S NOTE: Opposite of the school’s major success in football and basketball, Coach Lackovich notes that they are not very successful in baseball play. He says it stems from players not having early chances to develop baseball skills as youths. There are no Little League baseball organizations around here, he says.)
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