Red Raider History

Last updated on
Monday, January 01, 2007 08:38 AM
Part I


To the Red Raider Hall of Fame

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Let's Start at the End!

   On Friday, March 22nd, 2000 just after a caravan of cars and buses had pulled from the front entrance of Uniontown High School, a young man turns to a much older man and says, "I'm going to be one of those buses next year". The older man smiles and replies, "I sure hope you will".
   It is those hopes which have rekindled the spirit of one of the truly great sports histories in America. Uniontown High School was about to enter a world that it had not seen in nearly 20 years. A world of little giants who would attempt to carry off the State of Pennsylvania's most cherished sports prize. The PIAA Boys' Basketball Championship. Those hopes had been fueled by 5 unheralded Red Raiders who had fought back to earn its place among Uniontown's greatest sports legends.
They had begun earning respect with an overtime victory over an only once beaten Schenley team. They had increased that respect with an easy victory over a Bethel Park team a few nights later. They turned that respect to fear with a hard fought win over a 25-0 Erie McDowell team before a sold-out crowd of new believers. But they saved the stuff of legends for a game with a highly rated Penn Hills team that like Uniontown had made its strongest impact during the playoffs. They stared down the barrel of a sharpshooter named Drew Shifino and caused him to misfire all night.
    In the end it was the spectacular play of five Red Raiders who silenced one of the state's most celebrated lone guns. Uniontown 75, Penn Hills 62. And now only one game separated Uniontown from the legion of previous Red Raider Champions.
Unfortunately, they would meet a team that was bigger, stronger and yes quicker than themselves. The Chester Clippers had only lost 4 games before facing Uniontown.
    But it was a team possessed at Hershey Park Arena. Chester's all-state point guard Jameer Nelson led the Clippers to a 73 - 48 victory.
Yet even that loss didn't lesson the growing spirit of the young men who would follow Uniontown's near championship season. For the first time in many years, the sounds of bouncing basketballs could be heard all over town. And the summer brought renewed hope that perhaps 2001 would bring Uniontown another championship.

School of Champions

Perhaps nobody really knew the significance of the events of January 7th, 1916. It was a day when Uniontown High School would play and win its first ever basketball game. Two men whose names are only listed as H.L.Cleland and McQuiston were the coaches for what was called an "experimental season". Uniontown's very first starting five defeated a team from California, Pennsylvania by a score of 32-19.
Between then and now Uniontown High has seen a magnificent array of championships and champions pass through her doors. Uniontown holds the record for the most WPIAL basketball sectional championships with 38. Only Washington and Monesson have come close with 35 and 34 respectively. The Red Raiders have won a total of 17 State Championships and 35 WPIAL championships. But Uniontown Area Senior High School is not merely a school with championships it is clearly THE SCHOOL OF CHAMPIONS!!!

That honor was originally given to Uniontown in the mid sixties when it was winning football games and basketball games with astounding frequency. During one particularly exciting period, between 1961 and 1965, Uniontown's football teams ran up a record of 44-2-2. At about the same time, many of the same athletes helped contribute to RED RAIDER basketball teams that ran off a near record 52 straight victories, before falling to Aliquippa by one point at the Pittsburgh Civic Arena. By the 1966 season A.J. Everhart Jr., a second generation coaching legend, had run up a seven year basketball record of 183-8.
But before all the strings were broken, Uniontown owned two WPIAL football Championships and two State basketball Championships. One RED RAIDER, Ron Sepic, would become the first Uniontown athlete to earn High School All American honors in both basketball and football. There would be a steady stream of young Maroon and White warriors gaining All State and individual State Championship honors. Thus the sign in front of the High School that's become a local landmark and the source of pride for anyone who's ever walked the Halls of Uniontown Area High School.

How and Where It All Began

Uniontown High's history goes back to a Legislative act over 110 years ago. And on May 12th, 1885 Uniontown had its first two graduates named Minnie Baker and Carrie Costello. Ella Peach was one of Uniontown's first two school teachers that year. She would eventually spend more than 3 decades in service to the city's schools and the community. No wonder just a few short days after her death in 1918 they would later name Central School in downtown Uniontown...Ella Peach.
    Few people seem to know the true origin of the term the RED RAIDERS. Hard evidence of when the exact date the name was first used was the most elusive fact of the thousands researched for this project. Uniontown's school colors, Maroon and White, appear to have been first used in the early 1900's. They had originally been Scarlet and Black! And there is something of a debate about the reason for the change to Maroon and White.
After nearly a month of torturous investigation and study, a well known RED RAIDER historian (and there are a few such people) came forth with what he believes is the true origin of the nickname RED RAIDERS!
   It was once part of Fayette County lore that a group of Delaware (or Le Nne Lenape) Indians lived in the hills above what is now known as Uniontown. Chief Nemacolin was the leader of the tribe of scavengers who lived off the land. And they lived in peace. But suddenly the Delaware peace was shattered when German and Scotch settlers began populating the land stretching into the mountains.
   It was then Chief Nemacolin was pressed into action. He began sending bands of raiders into the night and into the villages below to secure food and supplies for the tribe. The settlers were obviously shaken by these activities. In fact one writer, Conrad Richter, thanks to his novel The Light in the Forrest has been given full credit for being the first person to use term the RED RAIDERS.
   "On warm summer nights, you could see the RED RAIDERS come down from the mountains to the villages", the book supposedly proclaims.
Those onslaughts were not completely lost to history. In 1911, the story goes, they would become embedded in the mythology of Uniontown High School, when the school's mascot was selected. It was then the RED RAIDERS were born, and have lived on since!
But don't believe a word of that!!! Because none of it is true. My excitement over the discovery of the Conrad Richter book began to evaporate when I went to the Uniontown Public Library and located The Light in the Forrest.
    It was a book first published in 1953. It didn't hit bookshelves at least 15 years after, I would find later, The Uniontown Team would be named the RED RAIDERS. And to compound my frustration, a few people who had studied Chief Nemacolin swore he didn't have enough fellow tribesmen to launch an attack on an unmanned hitch post, let alone an entire village.
Suddenly my curiosity over the origin of those two tiny words and their place in Uniontown High School History, became the source of an all out investigation. I talked my way into the vault at the Uniontown Board of Education.
    I began feverishly pouring over minutes of School Board meetings as far back as the 1890's. The words RED RAIDERS were no where to be found. Hour after hour I flipped through page after page of hirings and firings, but not the least mention of those two words.
Each afternoon I would help close the Board of Education building at 3:00, only to rush to the Main Public Library, so that I could intensify my search there. I went through dozens of Uniontown yearbooks and at least that many reels of microfilm until suddenly I found a lead!
During the 1938 football season, without any fanfare, a writer for the Uniontown Morning Herald began using those glorious words. I soon realized that 1938 was indeed a year of great change in athletics across Fayette County.
    A.J. Everhart Sr., Uniontown's long time football coach, stepped away from coaching the football team and he had become Uniontown's full time Athletic Director. Uniontown's hated rivals, the Connellsville Cokers, began playing in a brand new cement and steel football stadium, and the highly praised Uniontown Booster's Association was finishing off its fund raising efforts to finance lighting for Hustead Field (Uniontown's Football Stadium).
    The week before Uniontown High's football team traveled to Scott High School in Pittsburgh to play their Purple Raiders a sports writer for the Morning Herald just slipped the words RED RAIDERS into his accounts of the team's preparations for the game.
But the mystery didn't end for me there. There was still no official acknowledgment of an adoption of the name RED RAIDERS to be found anywhere.
    But I did find this paragraph in the Senior High News dated September 29th, 1938: It's getting to be quite a problem as to what to use as a nick name for the Uniontown Team. One of the Local Newspapers calls them the Mountaineers and the other calls them the Red Raiders.     One of the Pittsburgh Newspapers calls them The Big High Team. As odd as the name The Uniontown Mountaineers may have seemed, it appeared in the same issue of Senior High News. Uniontown had beaten the California Cubs the week before and the headline read: Mountaineers beat the Cubs in a Hard Battle.
     Somebody must have been less than enthusiastic about the use of the term Mountaineers. By the following week's issue of Senior High News, on October 6th, 1938, every reference to Uniontown's Football Team was proceeded by the words RED RAIDERS!!! There is even more to the story. The day following what was perhaps the christening of the term The RED RAIDERS there was another big event!!! Halfback Cornelius Turpin ran 47 yards for the winning touchdown in a 7-0 victory over Redstone High School. He ran it carrying a white football.
He carried that white football because he was playing in the very first night football game in Uniontown High School Football History. The Booster's Association's lights had illuminated Hustead Field and five thousand excited football fans. Among them, a star running back for the Pittsburgh Pirates Professional Football Team named "Whizzer" White.
      Nobody in the standing room only crowd had any idea that the newly nicknamed RED RAIDER football team was playing before a future United States Supreme Court Justice, who would keep his nickname when he took his place on the highest court in America. Byron "Whizzer" White was as comfortable with his nickname as the fans of Uniontown High School are with theirs.

Some Myths Die Hard

    The legend of the RED RAIDERS would not be complete without there being a touch of a coincidence and irony to go along with it. It is widely thought, if erroneously, that the school which supposedly derived its nickname from a group of marauding Indians was, aided greatly by two Native Americans.
     The first, A.J. Everhart Sr., a supposed full blooded Native American, became a Uniontown High School coach 2 decades before the school nickname RED RAIDERS was coined. The second, his son, A.J. Everhart Jr., also became part of what, in reality, was a myth. According to Joe Everhart, the third generation of Everharts to coach at Uniontown High School, there isn't a single ounce of Native American blood running through any of the Everharts.
    The myth was created after A.J. Everhart Sr. changed his name to Hart, when he began playing professional football. The high cheeked boned, dark skinned Everhart changed his name, not to secret his lineage, but to avoid the scrutiny of his mother, who would have surely objected to A.J. playing such a brutal sport.

The Miracle Man of Uniontown
     In the spring of 1923, Uniontown High School put together its first ever State Championship caliber team. A.J. Everhart Sr. was in his first year of a coaching career that would span nearly a quarter of a century. The man who would later be nicknamed "The Miracle Man", nearly coached Uniontown High School to a miracle season before they lost in the state quarter-final game to Harrisburg Tech.
    Everhart would have to, in some ways, grow accustomed to finishing second. In 1933 his Uniontown football team would be the second best in the WPIAL. But between 1923 and 1933 "The Miracle Man", had his share of first place finishes too!!
On the morning of the 1925 State Championship game, Uniontown's men of Maroon and White were awakened by coach Everhart at 7:30.They ate a hearty breakfast consisting of grape fruit, corn flakes, poached eggs on toast and milk. The better to devour their opponent Williamsport that afternoon in the Pennsylvania State final. That despite having only scored three points in the entire first half! In fact, "The Five Horsemen", as they were called, went scoreless in the first period. Uniontown eventually won the game in a sterling rally that saw "The Five Horsemen" (Mssrs. Hackney, CeCe Connelly, Markie Rankin, Hyatt and Benny Cohen) dominate the second half. The final score: Uniontown 21, Williamsport 14.
     Three men would emerge from that season and live on as RED RAIDER legends. A.J. Everhart Sr. was the coach, Charley Hyatt was the 6 foot, one inch star and J.S. "Bus "Albright was a second stringer who would gain local celebrity away from high school basketball. In fact, Hyatt holds the distinction of having his name appear first on the list of the very first inductees in the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1959. The 1926 basketball season produced something of a milestone. Uniontown became one of the first schools to repeat as WPIAL basketball champions. Hyatt was the lone returning starter on the 1926 team. One of the other starters on the team was I.N. Hagen. If that name sounds familiar, it's because his was the mountain home built by Frank Lloyd Wright known as Kentuck Nob.
      Uniontown's entire athletic program was firmly in Everhart's capable hands in those days. Although not considered the athletic director, Everhart coached football, track and basketball. In the fall of 1938, Everhart would become The school's athletic director after coaching a number of State Champions. But the RED RAIDERS didn't make much of an impact on local high school sports after 1926 until the early 1930's.

PART TWO