‘In awe’ of Aliquippa
Beaver County football continues to produce football legends
Author S.L. Price came to Aliquippa in 2016 to do a deep study of how high school football impacts a once-thriving steel town that had hit brutally hard times. The result was a terrific book, “Playing through the Whistle.” I read it again this past weekend and kept going back to two paragraphs:
“Forever, the school had been a refuge. After the racial strain of the ’60s and ’70s had eased, once white flight had exhausted itself and Aliquippa High had become mostly black, the high school on top of the hill, The Pit, and the football team that called old and young to return each fall Friday gained an immunity to the town’s most fearsome extremes. Teachers, parents and administrators toiled to make that so.
Kids and criminals, dealers and gangbangers knew that anyone crazy or dumb enough to bring the street to the school risked universal censure.
“Because the school was the one last pipeline to a future. The school meant academic and athletic scholarships, football stardom, a job someday. The school was pride and hope, the last bit of it, and even the worst could sense that if that flickered out, the earth could split open and swallow the rest and nobody would give a good goddamn.”
That observation was from an outsider.
Let’s go to Mike Zmijanac for an insider’s view. He grew up on Wade Street in Plan 12, near the high school. He was Aliquippa’s longtime defensive coordinator under Don Yannessa and then the school’s head coach from 19972017.
“Football means everything in Aliquippa,” Zmijanac said on Sunday. “It’s a typical mill town that has kept its identity through athletics. Places like Duquesne and
Midland and so many others couldn’t do it. People ask me how we do it. I say there must be something in the water. It must be the Ohio River.”
This seems like the perfect time to share Price’s and Zmijanac’s thoughts. Darrelle Revis, an Aliquippa graduate, was voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame last week. He joined Aliquippa alums Ty Law and the great Mike Ditka, whom Zmijanac described as “competitive a human being as there’s ever been.”
This is astonishing: Aliquippa is the only school in America with three Hall of Famers. And, to think, the total should be four.
“The times,” Zmijanac said, explaining why Tony Dorsett went to Hopewell High School in the late 1960s even though his family lived in Aliquippa’s Plan 11.
“The times were terrible back then. We had race riots in 1969 and 1970 that made national news. We had the National Guard in front of our school for weeks. Four or five years earlier or later, Tony would have gone to Aliquippa. He still always says he’s from Aliquippa.”
Yannessa often talked about the sad situation he inherited when he took over the Aliquippa program in 1972. Black players sat on one side of the gym for his first team meeting. White players sat on the other. Yannessa worked tirelessly to make the Quips a real team.
Aliquippa has been a big winner ever since, despite playing up in classification based on school size.
The Quips won their 20th WPIAL title last season when they beat Beaver County rival Central Valley in the championship game at Acrisure Stadium. They nearly won their fifth state championship, falling to Bishop McDevitt in the title game.
Another amazing stat: Aliquippa has had four No. 1 NFL draft choices since 1990 — Sean Gilbert, Ty Law, Jon Baldwin and Revis.
“You have to understand what the place means, what it always has meant,” Zmijanac said. “I remember a college coach coming into my office to recruit for the first time. He says to me, ‘You guys are in a heck of a cycle. How long has this been going on?’ I told him, ‘Oh, about 80 years or so.’ Look back at our championship teams in the ’40s and ’50s. This has always been an amazing place.”
The supply of great players at Aliquippa really is boundless.
“I truly believe it’s a
Beaver County thing,” Zmijanac said. “I live in the South Hills. People here don’t understand it. They look at Beaver County football and talk in awe about it.”
They’ve been talking in awe about Aliquippa football for a long time.
About 80 years or so.