Hoops history
AG grad Clemmer\'s project results in ultimate area record book
Shawn Clemmer loves history, particularly local basketball history.
“I’ve always been a historian and a stat person,” said the 1992 Albert Gallatin graduate. “Ever since I was young I’ve always kept notes of interesting facts and stats and things like that on basketball.
“I played basketball in high school and after I graduated I helped Ray Trincia coach, and that’s when I really started getting a lot more into stats.”
One day while talking with friend and fellow AG graduate Buddy Quertinmont, Clemmer had an idea tossed to him.
“Buddy Quertinmont and I always sit around and talk about basketball and the old days,” Clemmer said. “I was telling him about all this information I had collected over the years and he said you need to make a book.”
Clemmer thought about it and soon the wheels were set in motion for “The Record Book,” a history of basketball he compiled that includes Fayette County, Greene County and a few other surrounding high schools.
It’s been popular enough to where Clemmer plans to do an update every two years with the next issue slated for around November.
“Buddy basically dared me to do it, so I did it,” Clemmer said with a laugh. “Buddy and I both were getting tired of people mixing stats and things up, and then we always got into debates on who the best players were, who the best teams were, whatever.
“I was thinking it would be nice to have some kind of reference point to go to for some of these arguments.”
The next steps were organizing what he had and tracking down more information. Clemmer didn’t just want to list a horde of statistics and records, though.
“I thought if I make a book, I need pictures,” Clemmer said. “I don’t want to just have sheets of paper to give to somebody. Pictures would make it more interesting.
“Buddy liked the idea and was kind of coercing me into doing it, and my daughter Mallory actually was the one who started getting pictures for me. She knew how to get different types of pictures from old yearbooks and things and that’s how we started putting the whole project together. I call her my editor and design person. She helps me with that aspect of it.
“My wife Lauren helps, too. It’s kind of like a family project we do together and enjoy. It started with me being like a historian stat nut and my daughter has the same traits and we just have fun doing it. We’re kind of like old souls. I do a lot of genealogy on my family tree and that’s how I learned to get on old microfilm, like from the Herald-Standard and other places.
“One thing I always loved was the Herald-Standard Roundball issue and that’s kind of what I used a lot as my guide. You can see the book is mostly Fayette County but more than that, it’s Greene and other teams from around here. My goal was to go through every team and give them a historical record so they have it. I wanted it to be a guide for other people to see and remember the past, basically.”
Clemmer’s fascinating book is packed with scoring and coaching records, individual and team honors and accomplishments and has a section for each high school. Included are boys and girls basketball programs from Albert Gallatin, Brownsville, Connellsville, Frazier, Geibel Catholic, Laurel Highlands, Uniontown, Carmichaels, Jefferson-Morgan, Mapletown, Waynesburg Central, West Greene, California and Southmoreland. It also contains records from some defunct catholic schools and pre-consolidation schools.
“I had all these notes and stats but they were like random in old notebooks,” Clemmer recalled. “So I started to concise everything. It probably took close to a year from when I started just to get all the information together. My daughter and I worked probably about three months real hard trying to get photos to go with it.”
When they had everything together, the next step was printing.
“I shopped around online on where to print it at an affordable price and I get each book printed for like $16 and I usually charge $20 for it, and just put the money into buying more copies basically.
“I don’t make a ton of money. I don’t do this for a profit. It was just a passion to put it together.”
Some schools proved to be more difficult than others when it came to assimilating each team’s information.
“Probably the easiest to do was Uniontown because it has such a storied history and it wasn’t very hard to find stuff about them,” Clemmer said. “The harder schools are, of course, the defunct schools, like All Saints High School. Some of the Greene County schools, like West Greene, were harder because there’s not a lot of information out there on some of them.”
Clemmer, amazingly, even found out statistics on players who didn’t even realize themselves what they had accomplished.
“There were probably about seven-to-10 players that I don’t even think knew they had 1,000 points that I found,” Clemmer pointed out. “One from Frazier, his name was Jimmy Davis, in the early ’70s and if you go to Frazier, he’s not on their (1,000-point) banner. No one knew he had 1,000 points.
“But I went through every box score over the years and when I counted it all up I had him with over 1,000 points. There were more like that where they just didn’t keep track of some kids’ career totals.”
Clemmer doesn’t consider what he’s doing as work.
“It actually relaxes me,” he said. “Some people like to go to the beach. I’d rather go to the microfilm room somewhere and sit back and go through and read old stories. I get lost in it sometimes and look for hours and spend a whole day doing that.
“I just do it because I love the subject, I love history, I love stats.”
Clemmer was pleased when he saw the finished product.
“I was very satisfied,” he said. “My wife Lauren rushed me a little bit because we wanted to get it out before the 2024-25 basketball season, which was a good idea.
“I have a lot more information I plan on getting in the next issue. I have some WPIAL records and PIAA records I want to incorporate into it. There were some where I didn’t have exact point totals that I’ve since tracked down so I have them now. I don’t want the next issue to be like me adding a couple names here and there, I want it to include more significant information and have it continue to grow.”
Clemmer, who is currently a middle school principal in the Brownsville Area School District, is a former coach but has put those days behind him for now.
“I coached for about 15 years on the varsity and JV level but now I just want to watch my daughter play,” Clemmer said.
Mallory Clemmer will be a junior at Geibel Catholic and was one of the top players in the WPIAL last season.
Interestingly, Shawn Clemmer’s name isn’t mentioned anywhere in his book, only his nickname, “Dr. Stats,” is referred to. He explained the reasoning behind that.
“I didn’t want people to be walking up to me in public in front of my daughter or wherever, getting into arguments with me, trying to tell me this wasn’t right and questioning things, because I knew that would be part of it,” Clemmer said. “I did it as accurately as I possibly could. I didn’t try to cheat anybody. Sometimes if a number may have been wrong in a newspaper in a game, well, it is what it is. But I encourage people to email me and we’ll correct it. And I wanted it to be a growing project where if you have some stories, stats or whatever, email me, I welcome that.”
Clemmer’s book even mentions on the inside cover, “Any discrepancies, comments, questions, or additions, please email DOCTORSTATS@OUTLOOK.COM”
As for his nickname, Clemmer chuckled. “Doctor Stats is my alias. (Uniontown boys basketball coach) Robbie Kezmarsky gave me that name. Most people know it’s me by now, though.”
His first issue proved to be a success.
“I sold 100 right off the bat and kept having more orders so I kept fulfilling them,” Clemmer said. “Initially, I had a bunch down at Harry Fee’s barber shop and they sold out of them. I’m friends with Phil Loomis, the barber, and he said, ‘Put them down here, they’ll sell. Everyone’s always talking about basketball and sports.’
“Now I’ve kind of stopped until I get the new issue out. I’m hoping to have preorders for that.”
Clemmer threw an idea out for fans of other sports in the area.
“Personally, and I don’t have the knowledge to do this, but I think it would be really cool for someone to do a football record book like this, or a baseball one,” Clemmer said. “I’d love to see something like that myself. This area has a ton of great sports history.”
To preorder the 2026 Vol. 2 edition of “The Record Book,” contact Clemmer at doctorstats@outlook.com.