If “Playing Through the Whistle: Steel, Football, and an American Town,” the new book on Aliquippa by Sports Illustrated scribe S.L. Price, were a movie (it’s not; it’s much more than that), current and longtime Quips coach Mike Zmijanac would perhaps be the protagonist (as I alluded to, it’s much more complex than that, but still).
A stark greeting to Aliquippa High School's Carl Aschman Stadium has been greeting visitors for decades. (Bob Donaldson/Post-Gazette)
Zmijanac, the silver-haired embodiment of sardonic wit who has been in charge of Aliquippa football since 1997, was named Post-Gazette coach of the year just last year. Among the interesting factoids unearthed about the gruff “Coach Z” over the years includes that he never played a snap of high school football, but that didn’t stop him from becoming a junior high football assistant in 1972, and that he’s now retired as a creative-writing teacher.
But imagine if he had never gotten that first English gig at Aliquippa … an excerpt from Price’s epic on the Quips:
Zmijanac came from the other direction: Nobody ever considered him can’t-miss. He had graduated from Edinboro State College, up near Lake Erie, in ’64, received his draft notice a day later, and rushed home to take a job teaching English at Aliquippa Junior High. “Either that,” he said, “or go to Vietnam.”
Another noteworthy Zmijanac-dote from the book? While he never played football at Aliquippa, some say he was a pretty good playground basketball player, and he even ran some pick-up games with fellow Aliquippa grad George Suder and Pittsburgh hoops legend/Hall of Famer Connie Hawkins in the late 1960s. But was Zmijanac good enough to play in the ABA, where Hawkins reportedly told him he got a tryout with the Pittsburgh Pipers?
“I didn’t go,” Zmijanac said. “Could I have made it? I don’t know. I never regretted it. Just the fact that, in my heart, I know I could play with Simmie Hill and Norm Van Lier and Connie Hawkins — I could actually be on the same court and play and be good enough to play with them? — is enough.”
Some other noteworthy details reported by Price in his thorough, 444-page masterwork:
• Longtime and still current Aliquippa football assistant/head track coach Sherman McBride on Rushel Shell, the all-time leading rusher in Pennsylvania high school history who, like Hall of Famer Tony Dorsett, went to nearby Hopewell rather than Aliquippa: “Rushel Shell’s mother? She lived right behind the bar on Main Street here,” McBride told Price. “But you want to say because your kid’s going to Hopewell that you’re better? We were fine for you when you were here, but you move a little to the left or right and your [expletive] don’t stink now?”
Rushel Shell, like Tony Dorsett before him, was a star running back for Hopewell instead of Aliquippa. (Steve Mellon/Post-Gazette)
• Sort of like if Zmijanac had gone to Vietnam instead of Aliquippa Junior High, imagine if former Pitt star and likely Pro Football Hall of Famer someday Darrelle Revis had left the area after starring in basketball as a ninth-grader at tiny Beaver Valley Christian Academy in Rochester to attend a Washington D.C. powerhouse? Revis, Price reports, strongly considered accepting an offer to play at DeMatha Catholic in 2001, near where his father lived in Maryland, as a 5-foot-10 wunderkind who had no interest in football at the time: “I was scared,” Revis said. “My mom was like, ‘It’s your decision,’ and at that young age, you don’t know nothing. Just going to school, trying to play sports; I’m kicking rocks, and all this stuff was coming. I don’t know if that was the right move. Going to DeMatha: a great school. I thought, This is getting crazy. … “
• Oh, by the way, Zmijanac says Revis never missed a single practice in basketball or football but was late once, after getting a flat tire on his way back from getting a tuxedo for prom. Zmijanac calls him “the finest young man I’ve ever known.”
Former Aliquippa player Darrelle Revis, now with the New York Jets, takes part in a 2013 autograph session. (Matt Freed/Post-Gazette)
• Some of the most engrossing, and heartbreaking, material in “Playing Through the Whistle” comes courtesy of five-time All-Pro cornerback Ty Law, a New England Patriots great, but not someone who always immediately comes to mind when talking Aliquippa football products. A star there 10 years before Revis, Law seems a little more removed from the town’s pull, and essentially says as much toward the end of the book. And who could blame him? Price tells of his mother selling some of his possessions to buy crack, and what made it even worse was who she sold them to. While playing and starting as a true freshman at Michigan, Law would sometimes leave campus for days at a time to drive all the way home and check on his family, then drive all the way back through the night and still make it to class in the morning.
There’s so much more on those guys and a cast of others — Don Yannessa, Mike Ditka, Sean Gilbert, Jon Baldwin, Dravon Henry, Kaezon Pugh, current Aliquippa Mayor Dwan Walker, current Shaler football coach Jon LeDonne, and those are just some of the names who didn’t slip through Aliquippa’s cracks.
“Playing Through the Whistle” is on sale now and can be ordered on Amazon.com. Price will make an appearance at 6 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 3, presented by Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures at the main branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh on Forbes Avenue in Oakland.
Brian Batko: bbatko@post-gazette.com and Twitter @BrianBatko.
First Published: October 4, 2016, 1:00 p.m.
