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Red Raiders 1975 WPIAL championship team recall their coaches

By Jonathan Guth jguth@heraldstandard.Com 4 min read
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Uniontown junior Mark Hozak helped lead the Red Raiders to the 1975 WPIAL basketball championship. Hozak and former teammates, Dana Perno and Reggie McLee, recalled playing for coaches Abe Everhart and Dave Shuck at the Fayette County Sports Hall of Fame ceremony on June 17.

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Submitted photo

Dana Perno played on Uniontown’s 1974-75 boys basketball team that won the WPIAL championship. Perno represented the team on June 17 when they were inducted in the Fayette County Sports Hall of Fame at Penn State Fayette, The Eberly Campus.

Uniontown’s 1974-75 boys basketball team won its school’s sixth WPIAL championship playing for two coaches with opposite personalities.

Head coach Abe Everhart was known for his quiet demeanor while assistant Dave Shuck wasn’t afraid to raise his voice, but both knew how to win.

“Abe (Everhart) was a great basketball mind,” former Raider guard Dana Perno said. “He was very calm, cool and collected. He never raised his voice and was always teaching. We had a lot of great respect for him.”

Shuck wore his emotions on his sleeve and had great impact on the team in teaching fundamentals.

“Dave (Shuck) thrived on fundamentals, and he exercised that every day,” former Uniontown player Reggie McLee said. “You see folks talking about West Virginia going to the Sweet 16 this year with ‘Press Virginia,’ but we were running presses in junior high under Bob Fee at Lafayette.”

Everhart stressed fundamentals as much as Shuck, and Mark Hozak, who was the lone junior in Uniontown’s starting lineup, and McLee both agreed that the fundamentals are not emphasized like they were when both wore maroon and white.

“We were there every day preparing to be the best that we could be,” Hozak said. “I think the game is really lacking in the fundamentals today. If you took a shot from the outside and nobody was underneath to get a rebound, our coach would have been on our ass, but you don’t see that today.”

“Basketball has really put an emphasis on the three-point shot, and there is not as much rebounding in today’s game,” McLee said. “I know that our coach would go crazy if we put up a shot and no one was underneath to grab a rebound.”

Uniontown had the luxury of building its success in the junior high school in town with some of the players attending Ben Franklin and others Lafayette.

“The guys at Ben Franklin moved the ball really well, and the guys at Lafayette were strong with the press,” said McLee, who played for Lafayette. “We really put it all together in high school. We made the extra pass and were very unselfish.”

The selflessness still exists today, as Perno didn’t want to take credit when told that he was the big gun.

“I don’t know about that,” Perno said. “Do they mean that I shot the ball a lot?”

Perno continued to play basketball at West Virginia University but treasures his time at Uniontown as the most enjoyable he had on the basketball court.

“I was blessed enough to play Division I basketball, fly all over the country, play on TV, Madison Square Garden, Rupp Arena, at Louisville, Syracuse, Cameron Indoor Arena, but by far, the best times I had playing basketball was with this group sitting in front of me,” Perno said when he accepted the team’s induction in the Fayette County Sports Hall of Fame on June 17.

Everhart was ever the gentleman, and expected his team to follow. Shuck, who would later become head coach for the Red Raiders and win a district title in 2002, followed those examples with Uniontown 27 years later.

“I see all of our guys sitting in the front row here following what Abe taught us,” Perno said referring to his former teammates sitting in the front row at the Fayette HOF induction ceremony.

“Abe (Everhart) taught us to be classy,” Hozak said. “We would never embarrass a team by running up the score.”

McLee comes from a family of strong athletes at Uniontown, and was proud of the way he and his teammates handled themselves on their way to the district championship.

“People knew about the reputation at Uniontown,” McLee said. “I thought we carried ourselves well and were a classy organization.”

Perno, Hozak and McLee all agreed that it upsets them to see the lack of participation in pick-up games at the playgrounds in today’s generation of basketball players.

“When we were coming up and going to the playgrounds, you had to be there two hours early and ready to play,” Hozak said. “The winners stayed on and we had some real battles and learned a lot just playing together at the playgrounds. It is a shame when you go to the playgrounds today and don’t see any kids on the court.”

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