Vaughns excels at so many endeavors
If you read this newspaper regularly, you already know Terrance Vaughns. He and his Uniontown High School basketball teammates have filled the sports section for the past three years with their exploits through the WPIAL and PIAA playoffs. Along the way, Vaughns scored 1,720 points and was selected first team All-State as a senior. He led the Red Raiders to a WPIAL Class AAAA championship and two trips to the PIAA Class AAAA championship game in the last three years.
But that’s only half of Vaughns’ story.
Did you know, for example, that Vaughns maintained a 3.5 grade point average through high school, ranked 40th in a graduating class of 218 and was a two-year member of the National Honor Society?
Could you picture him taking part in the Science Olympiad or belonging to the Spanish Club? He has been representing Uniontown High School and Fayette County much more than just on the basketball courts for some time. He was Uniontown’s B’nai B’rith honoree at that organization’s annual banquet last month.
It was that combination of academics and athletics that landed Vaughns on another exclusive list. He was selected as the top male student/athlete at Uniontown High School and will receive a $500 scholarship through the Davis & Davis Student/Athlete Scholarship Program.
The program, sponsored by Davis & Davis Law Firm and coordinated by the Herald-Standard, will culminate with a banquet to be held at 5 p.m. Sunday at Shady Side Inn.
Vaughns, son of Lisa Vaughns of Uniontown, learned at a very early age that sports are recreational activities.
He always had his priorities in order.
“Academics come first, that’s what I was always taught,” Vaughns said. “You can’t play any sport in my family if you don’t have good grades. Even B’s weren’t always good enough.”
That lesson manifested itself during the last few seasons, when Vaughns began to draw interest from many colleges and universities seeking his athletic talents while craving his academic talents just as much.
“The better your grades, the more looks you can get,” he said.
And when he decided to attend Clarion University, he did so knowing he would be provided a free college education.
Academics always have been important to Vaughns and the mix of athletics and academics has taught him many lessons.
“It helps with time management, for one thing,” he said. “Academics humbled me and so did basketball. I knew I wasn’t the best or smartest student out there, so that made me work harder to get as far as I could get.
“In basketball, when I was eight years old, we moved to Ben Franklin territory. I lived near the YMCA and played a lot of ball there. It was very humbling, getting my shots swatted back in my face. But I stuck with it and became determined to make myself better.”
Strange as it might sound, basketball wasn’t always Vaughns’ favorite sport.
“When I was young, I lived in the projects and Kevin McLee and I played football more than any other sport,” Vaughns said. “Then, my uncle came in and got me into basketball.”
McLee, of course, earned a football scholarship to West Virginia University. And Vaughns’ uncle is Dana Vaughns, who preceded him at Clarion and played pro basketball overseas. When asked who inspired him, Terrance Vaughns doesn’t hesitate.
“It was mostly my uncle,” he said. “He’s been there since I was three. He taught me how to play basketball, but more importantly, he taught me about work ethic and how to become determined to be good at something.”
Little did he know back then that he would become so good at so many things.