Jun 3, 2025 By Rob Burchianti 7 min read

Rick Hauger is likely best known for guiding Laurel Highlands to a pair of WPIAL boys basketball championships.

There was another championship the now-retired coach won that he also holds dear to his heart.

Hauger led Penn State Fayette, The Eberly Campus to the 1983 Penn State University Athletic Conference title with a team led by Uniontown and LH players.

The Roaring Lions went 21-4 and secured their first PSUAC championship after coming with one win of that goal the previous season.

The 1983 Penn State Fayette team is part of the Fayette County Sports Hall of Fame Class of 2025. The team will be inducted on June 20 during the Hall of Fame luncheon at Pleasant Valley Golf Club in Connellsville.

“It’s a great honor,” Hauger said in discussing the team entering the Hall of Fame with George Von Benko on the Hall of Fame co-founder’s Sports Line Talk Show on WMBS Radio recently.

“I’m real happy for the guys on this team. A lot of them were probably under-recognized as high school players although they played for very good programs. Two of our players were on Uniontown’s state championship team of 1981.

“It was really the essence of what a team is, how well they played together. It was a sense of satisfaction for those guys, too.”

Hauger, who coached the Roaring Lions for 15 years, reflected on the 1983 squad.

“I think it was my seventh year. The year before is where this team started to form,” Hauger said. “We had gone from last place in the conference to first place. We played for the state championship that year against Ogontz, who we played when we won the state championship. They beat us by four that year.

“We were led by another Laurel Highlands player, Tim Craft. Everybody called him Tux. He went on to play down in California (University of Pa.). The experience from that year, because Tim was primarily the only one we were losing – we lost another player, Dennis Martinek, who was really productive for us – that kind of led into this year.”

Hauger lauded the 1982-83 team.

“Outstanding. They were really close-knit, very unselfish on the court,” Hauger said. “One of the unique things I would say — you probably don’t see this that often — is all five starters averaged double numbers from 12.9 points up to 16.4 points. It was a team that was well balanced and with those capabilities of putting the ball in the hoop, teams had a difficult time in defending because the points could come from anywhere.”

Two former Red Raiders and three former Mustangs made up the starting five.

“They meshed very well together,” Hauger said. “From Uniontown we had Dwight Henderson and Jerry Hairston and from Laurel Highlands we had Donnie Crawford, who went on to be a major contributor for Rudy Marisa at Waynesburg, we had Mike Potkul, who became a major contributor for Coach John Unice at W&J, and we had Mike Grubisa.”

Hauger valued his bench.

“We probably played eight deep,” he said. “As coach you want to try to get as many players involved as you can. They come to practice on a daily basis, they work hard and you need those guys coming off the bench to be enthusiastic, work hard in practice so that they’ll push the guys that are in front of them.

“We had Jerry Georgiana from Uniontown, Mike Ferrari from Frazier and the one who really came on for us was Dave Skowronek. He was from Connellsville and he’s probably better known now as the father of Steeler wide receiver Ben Skowronek.”

Hauger’s lone assistant coach was Don Leaphart.

“He was a professor out at Penn State in the business department,” Hauger pointed out.

Hauger’s first few years at Penn State Fayette weren’t very successful mainly because he was told he wasn’t required to recruit, but he eschewed that advice after a while and eventually put together his championship team.

“It was kind of a perspective of Penn State at the time,” Hauger said. “I think I was 22 or 23 when I became the head coach and they just said don’t worry about recruiting players, do the best with what you have that come to the campus.

“I did that for a few years but it became obvious that things were going to have to change a little bit. Fortunately at that time we had an abundance of talented local players in Fayette County. We had no housing available. Most other Penn State places did have housing and some other teams we played. So we had to get them from a reasonably close distance to Penn State Fayette.”

The PSUAC was a very competitive conference and Penn State Fayette was now able to compete with the best teams.

“It was a very good brand of basketball,” Hauger said. “We would play McKeesport, Sharon, which was called Shenango, and Beaver County, New Kensington, Altoona, which I think eventually became a four-year school, and DuBois. The talent was very good. Out east you had the Philadelphia teams. Strong competition.”

Penn State Fayette’s non-conference schedule included mostly area colleges.

“Waynesburg, W&J and California either had a freshmen team or what we referred to as a JV team,” Hauger said. “Those were the type of teams we’d play for exhibition games. If anybody remembers Allegheny Community College in Pittsburgh, coached by Bill Shay, we’d play them twice a year. The competition exhibition-wise was very strong. Plus, you’re talking about locations that had a lot of talent in their areas back in the day.”

After coming within four points of its first PSUAC title in 1982, the 1983 team set its sights on finishing the job.

The Roaring Lions defeated Penn State Beaver handily in their playoff opener, 106-86, then held off Penn State McKeesport in the semifinals, 52-50.

“We played them (McKeesport) three times that year,” Hauger remembered. “We were fortunate we beat them twice. They were a tempo team and it seemed like we always fell into the trap of them being deliberate and the game got to a pace which was much more favorable to their style of play than our style of play. We were an up-and-down-the-floor type of team.”

In the final Penn State Fayette once again faced Penn State Ogontz, now known as Penn State Abington, at Penn State University’s main campus. This time it was the Roaring Lions who would come out on top, 75-74.

Hauger recalled the final seconds.

“At the end of the game we were up 75-72, there was no 3-point line at that time, they didn’t have any timeouts, we burnt one with less than five seconds left,” Hauger said in assessing the situation.

Hauger explained to his players that the clock would not stop after a basket and a team had five seconds to inbound the ball.

“I said I don’t care what you do, basically, just don’t touch them, let them score and don’t take the ball out of bounds,” Hauger said. “The game’s over if we don’t do anything ridiculous. And those kids were very coachable so it ended up fine.

“It was a lot nicer ride home from State College that year than it had been the previous year.”

Hauger is pleased to see the 1983 team recognized for what it accomplished.

“There’s no question about it,” Hauger said. “With this honor that they’re receiving, it gave me time to reflect back and look back through some old records and newspaper articles. There was (Herald-Standard sports editors) Tod Trent, Mike Ciarochi, Rob (Burchianti) was even there at the time. They were very supportive of our teams out there.”

Hauger expressed joy at “getting to reconnect with some of the guys you haven’t talked to for a while — still trying to track a few down — but, yeah, a very special team to me.”

Hall of Fame festivities for June 20 begin with the annual golf outing at 8:30 a.m. followed by the luncheon and inductions at Pleasant Valley Golf Club in Connellsville. Golfers can register and luncheon tickets can be purchased by contacting Katie Propes by phone (724-415-2211) or email (kpropes@occluss.com).