Mon Valley Memories: Rice family produces three generations of success

Major League Baseball has had several three-generation families beginning with the Boone family: Ray Boone, his son Bob, and his two grandsons, Bret and Aaron. Well, Monessen has its own version of such a group with the Rice family made up of sports stars Maurice, Craig, Justice, and Brandon White.
Maurice leads it off. After playing for an undefeated and unscored upon WPIAL champion team in junior high, he earned three high school football letters (fittingly, he would later become a mailman in Monessen). He gazed back on his Monessen High days.
“In the 1955 season we were co-champions of the Big Six with a 7-2-1 record under Armand Niccolai,” he said. “I was a halfback and defensive back.”
Maurice also stood out in track and field as a member of a great relay team along with Ron Minnie, Felton Brown, and Eugene Crabtree, the older brother of NFL star Eric Crabtree. “We won almost every event that we ran even though we weren’t taught how to hand off the baton — we didn’t really have the (proper) instruction.”
In 1956, the four seniors set a Big 10 meet record, breezing in at 1:33.5 during a 880 relay race. Frequently, when this group of gifted runners competed, the outcome of their races wasn’t in question for very long.
After school, Maurice joined the Air Force where he played basketball, once winning the All-England Tournament. He led his team in scoring at around 18 points per game. Then, back home, he played City League basketball.
His son Craig also took to the court and enjoyed a season in which he averaged 14 points per game.
“I had 28 points in a playoff game once,” said Craig. “That was 1985, Coach Joe Salvino’s first year as Monessen’s basketball coach. We went to the Pitt Field House, but lost to Serra Catholic in the quarterfinals. I think we went 23-5.”
Years later when Craig’s son Justice figuratively followed in his father’s sneaker prints (and even played for the same coach in Salvino), suiting up in the Greyhounds uniform, Craig and Maurice had even more to be proud of.
“He’s the number three all-time scorer at Monessen,” beamed Craig. “He made All-State First Team, Class A, and he was Class A WPIAL Player of the Year. Monessen won the WPIAL championship then lost in the state semifinals to the eventual champs, Kennedy Catholic. He had a great year (2017).”
As a senior, Justice, a splendid 6-1 guard scored, seemingly at will, pouring in 20.3 points per game, and, when teamed up with two other All-Section players, Jaden Altomore and Lyndon Henderson (who once scored 55 points in a game), Monessen became a dominant unit, one that went 21-8.
Craig, who was an assistant coach on that great team, continued, “My son was a tremendous ballplayer, but as good as he was, he was a better student and, actually, that much better of a person.”
Scholarship in hand, and well grounded values in mind, Justice took his talent to Grove City College. He proved his academic merit by making the dean’s list in his very first semester, and he quickly proved his mettle on the court as well.
This past season he started each of the 26 varsity contests and averaged 24.1 minutes played per game. In addition, he scored nearly six points per game, and led his conference among all freshmen by averaging around three assists a game. Among his team’s starters, he posted the second highest percentage on his three-point launches. Finally, while going up against teams such as Washington and Jefferson, Allegheny, and St. Vincent, Rice averaged about one steal per game.
His Wolverines won 62 percent of their games, going 16-10 before losing a heartbreaker in the Presidents’ Athletic Conference Championship Tournament in February. In that contest versus Westminster, Grove City took a 46-44 lead with nine minutes left to play when Justice drove to the hole and cashed in on a dramatic layup.
However, Westminster was later able to erase the Wolverines’ largest lead of the game, 55-47, to send Grove City home crestfallen after dropping a 61-60 decision. Rice could take some consolation from the fact that he was tied with a teammate for the most assists in the game for Grove City. With a fine freshman season behind him, the future looks positively glowing for Justice.
Another grandson of Maurice is Brandon White, a sophomore at West Virginia University. He was awarded a scholarship to play baseball there, and he promptly became the Mountaineers starting center fielder, a job he won as a freshman and has held on to.
Completing the Rice family portrait, Maurice also has two daughters, Vicky and DeLaine. He and his wife Rella, formerly of Harrisburg, now live next door to Craig, making it a true, solid family affair.