Remembering Ted Nypaver
The Fayette County Sports community was deeply saddened recently with the news that Fayette County Sports Hall of Famer Ted Nypaver passed away on Nov. 22 at the age of 88.
A former South Union High School standout, Nypaver had a storied career as an athlete and a coach.
He was profiled in Memory Lane columns several times over the past few years. Here is an excerpt from one of those columns.
Nypaver excelled at football and track and field during his high school days at South Union Township High School. Nypaver garnered All-Fayette County honors and WPIAL honorable mention as a senior. He graduated in 1953.
“If it weren’t for Bill Power I would have never gone to college,” Nypaver stated. “He’s the one who helped me. It was so nice of him to recommend people other than his own players. I was fortunate enough to receive letters my senior year and it said that you’ve been recommended by Bill Power from Uniontown High School.
“I didn’t go to college immediately after high school because I was involved in a serious auto accident and messed my knees up and I did a year of rehabbing. I wound up going to college at Northeast Louisiana and I was fortunate enough to play – I started immediately. When I went down there to play they had three players from Uniontown starting – Tony Peccon. Dan Hoke and me.
“I decided to leave because I would hitchhike home and it became very difficult. I then went to Grove City for a season and then I transferred to Salem (W.Va). I was named Salem’s Outstanding Senior Athlete in 1958-59. I got a degree in education.”
Nypaver decided to get into coaching and became an assistant at Dunbar under Stan McLaughlin and was there for four seasons.
After four years at Dunbar he took a job at Beth-Center as head coach and spent two-years there. He then went to Blairsville where he coached the football and basketball teams to Indiana County championships in 1965. He then spent one turbulent season at Mount Pleasant. He then took over the coaching reins at Southern Huntington.
He had a remarkable record at Southern Huntington during his 17-year career there. He posted an overall mark of 124-31-6 including a home record of 65-12-2. The highlight was a 26-0-2 stretch from 1978 to 1981, a 28-game undefeated streak that at the time was the longest among Pennsylvania public schools. He coached five undefeated squads during his tenure. Three other teams had just one loss.
Southern captured six Inter-County Conference sectional championships and seven titles in nine seasons with the Mid-Penn Conference. Nypaver was named Inter-County Conference coach of the year three times. In 1981, he was chosen as one of the top six coaches from Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio and was honored at the Coach of the Year Clinic in Pittsburgh.
“I had a great run at Southern Huntingdon,” Nypaver reported. “I met a lot of great people there and it was an ideal coaching situation. We had a booster club second to none in Pennsylvania. They did so much for us there. It was a Utopian situation for coaching and the administration was great and the boys were hard-nosed farm boys and loved football.”
Nypaver left Southern Huntingdon after the 1983-84 season to become head football coach at Spring-Ford high school in Royersford, Pa. His teams won eight Pac 8 championships and the Ches-Mont League in both 1986 and 1987. He also coached two undefeated track teams. From 1985-96, Nypaver coached at Spring-Ford and teams he was affiliated with either as a head coach or assistant coach compiled a 94-17-1 record.
In 1987 Nypaver retired, but helped out at Great Valley with their head coach Ben Crisi and one of his former players got the job at Reading Central Catholic and Nypaver helped him.
Nypaver never forgot his Fayette County roots.
“I have great memories,” Nypaver offered. “In your articles a lot of guys mentioned the playground system and we were patch boys from what I called the hill and we walked down to Ben Franklin and other playgrounds. Bus Albright – who I worked for – was the one who put the playgrounds together. I worked at Boyle playground. It was very competitive on the playgrounds and I have great memories of Uniontown and the playgrounds.”
The news of Nypaver’s passing sparked memories from many people.
“He was quite a character, but a character with character,” close family friend and acclaimed writer Bob Dvorchak stated. “He could make you laugh, he could pull stunts, but when it came to being business-like he was business-like. ”
Some of Nypaver’s former players had memories of their former coach.
“Coach Nypaver brought in kind of a new offense,” former Beth-Center standout Mickey Davis recalled in a Memory Lane article. “Coach Nypaver did like to throw the football and that was unusual for us at that time. We were three yards and a cloud of dust. We were always pleased with his game plan.
“He was a taskmaster and that went hand in hand. Most of the kids were coal miners’ or steelworkers’ kids and some farmers thrown in there. We had that background of paying attention and a great work ethic. We were hard-nosed kids.”
“Coach Nypaver you were one of the best of Spring Ford as you took our Football team to the PAC 10 championships,” Damon Grier from Auburn, California said. “You were always a great man whom we all looked up to. Thank you for your wisdom.”
“I am privileged to have known and spent time with you Coach Nypaver as you molded young boys into men.” stated Jon Herbsleb of Douglassville, Pa.
Reflecting on his long coaching career Nypaver always said it was about the kids.
“I still talk to quite a few of them on a weekly basis,” Nypaver offered in a Memory Lane piece. “I had them 60 years ago for football, 65 years ago for some of them. We talk about things that happened in high school. The richness is my camaraderie with my former players. I think that’s worth more than anything and that’s what I enjoyed most about coaching.”
Nypaver was inducted to the Huntingdon County Sports Hall of Fame in 2002, the PA Scholastic Football Coaches Hall of Fame in 2019 and the Fayette County Sports Hall of Fame in 2022. He was honored this past September when Southern Huntingdon named the football field Ted Nypaver Stadium.
George Von Benko’s “Memory Lane” column appears in the Sunday editions of the Herald-Standard. He also hosts a sports talk show on WMBS-AM radio from 10 a.m. to noon on Saturdays.