Remembering the toughest loss I ever experienced in approximately a quarter-century of coaching football. George Pasierb was a great coaching adversary.
Shade-Central City High School football coach
Photo: Tribune-Democrat
No high school football fan could ask for anything better than this. On a beautiful sunny, warm afternoon on Saturday, October 30, 1982, in Nanty Glory, Pa., the battle featured a clash of two undefeated titans of the Appalachian Conference.
One was the preseason unanimous favorite to win the title, the other a veritable surprise that season, one that had built an 8-0 record entering that game.
This battle lived up to the pre-game hype, ending in a one-point decision that was not certain until the final play of the game.
I thought of this because the coach of the powerful Shade-Central City High School Panthers, George Pasierb, passed away earlier this week. He coached the Panthers for 20 years, but his best team was arguably that 1982 team that battled the Blacklick Valley Vikings on that Saturday afternoon before more than 3,000 ebullient fans.
And, the one-point loss was the toughest of my coaching career of almost 25 years.
Here is the story of that game and of how George Pasierb managed to pull out a one-point win with some cagey coaching decisions, ones that still bother me today [though I do not lose sleep over them].
What I loved about that game was that it was what high school football was all about in this country. Two groups of young kids giving their all for the right to advance to a championship game — and maybe an undefeated season.
It was a fabulous high school football game.
Background
I had taken a job teaching English at Blacklick Valley in 1979, and at the time I was in my sixth season coaching with Art Martynuska at St. Francis College. After that year, I decided to step away from St. Francis and take an assistant’s job to Coach Paul Shandor, who had just been named the head coach at BVHS.
My brother, Father Jim Conrad, told me that I was crazy, that Blacklick Valley was a “coaching graveyard.”
He was wrong, though for two years, you would not have known it. We won just three games in two years, one being a winless 0-9 season. At that point, my brother was saying “I told you so.”
Here is how bad things were that 1980 season when we did not win a game and had just 24 players. This involved Coach Pasierb, and it was one reason that on a personal level, we never got along, but on a professional level, I had tremendous respect for him.
And nothing is more important in football — or in life — than respect.
Coach Pasierb
I did not care for Coach Pasierb at all in those early years. I found him to be arrogant and somewhat haughty. In retrospect, that is common when you are destroyed by a team like we were by Shade in those first two years.
However, going into the Shade game in 1980, when we were 0-8, I told Coach Shandor that we should use the embriago.
He said, “I don’t know what the [heck] you’re talking about.”
“The muddle huddle.”
He still looked at me with a blank stare.
The short version of this was that we tried that trick play on the first play of the game against Shade, and our running back, John Snedden, scored on a play that was about 70 yards.
I think that Coach Pasierb was outraged.
After that, we were destroyed.
What I saw that night was a Shade team that came off the football and drove us down the field with such quickness and speed that we never had a chance.
In short, Pasierb’s teams were exceptionally well-drilled fundamentally. They were hopelessly outdated offensively, using a straight-T offense from the 1950s. However, what I learned was that the most important facet of a football game is execution, not fancy.
Coach Pasierb’s teams were not fancy. Just good old-fashioned hard-nosed, fundamentally-sound squads that came right at you.
The Straight-T or Split-T — I never knew the difference — meant that three backs lined up in a horizontal line in the backfield behind the line. I did not know at the time that is was similar to the wishbone that many teams were using, just moving up the fullback.
What they relied upon was tough lineman blocking the man over him. No fancy cross blocks or fancy traps. Just fundamental football, and the Shade coaches taught it well.
The game
The Panthers charged out of the gate and appeared to have a rout in progress in the first quarter as they built a 15-0 lead. Then, the Vikings started to mount some offensive yardage, narrowing that to 15-7 at halftime.
We were back in the game at that stage. However, on their first possession of the third quarter, the Panthers started a drive into our territory. In their offense, only one play was a major concern for me. They would just hand off to their running backs over and over, and then fake to him, step back and hit one of the backs coming out of the backfield.
That play did keep me up at night.
We were in a man defense for the first time all season, and our linebacker did not pick up the back. That made the score 22-7 early in the third quarter.
However, our kids were also resilient and did not quit. The Vikings scored another TD to narrow that advantage to one TD and had backed them up deep in their territory, with the ball on about the 5-yard line. Pasierb lined up his punter who would be hard pressed to get it out of there, but instead, he took a safety and stepped out of the end zone.
It was a stroke of genius. We came back in the fourth quarter and narrowed the Shade advantage to one-point, and were driving for another TD when we ran out of timeouts with the ball on the Shade 20-yard-line or thereabouts.
We never did catch them.
It was a tough loss for us, but as coaches, we realized that we had been outcoached. We felt that we had the better talent, the better team, but Shade managed to hold us at bay in what was the most exciting game in which I was ever involved.
What I learned about Coach Pasierb
Shade went on and captured the Appalachian Conference title the following week with a 23-6 victory over Purchase Line. Those Shade Panthers were tough, well-drilled, and confident, and they finally had their undefeated season.
Shade was a small school, but it had recorded undefeated regular seasons in 1977 and 1981 before losing in the title games, according to the Tribune-Democrat’s Mike Mastovich. They finally reached that goal in 1982.
Coach Pasierb was a tough, no-nonsense coach who drilled those tough Shade players into a hard-nosed aggregation. Like the teams that I coached, we relied on the sleds to develop blocking and tackling techniques. That appears to be something that coaches today do not rely on in their teaching.
Coach played at Clarion when it was still a state college and was a member of the first team they’re to win a championship of the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference.
In his interview with Mike Mastovich, Pasierb’s long-time assistant, Paul Leonard, said this,
“He was tough. He was straightforward.
“He would have broke all the live tackling limits in practice in today’s rules. I don’t know how many times I heard him say, ‘Get rid of the bags.’
“Never had a practice that you didn’t hit the seven-man sled, quarterbacks included,” Leonard said.
Mike Mastovich, “Pasierb led Shade to Appalachian Conference
success in 1980s,” Tribune-Democrat, November 10, 2020
However, his ability to use that basic offense to the best of his athletes’ abilities was evident when he called the TD pass that won the game on that late October afternoon.
Then, when he took a safety that gave us some points but still provided a margin of victory, I knew now that we were going against a very good football coach.
Coach Leonard remembered that this week,
“It may be hard for some to understand but George had a great feel for a football game as it would progress,” Leonard said. “He knew his players well. He prepared them. He cared about them and he knew what they were capable of. He had many special qualities that a scholastic football coach needs to possess. He loved to watch his young men grow into responsible adults.”
Mike Mastovich, Tribune-Democrat, November 10, 2020
Later
The following year, we went undefeated at 11-0 and captured the Appalachian Conference title. However, when we sat down after that game, Coach Shandor and I realized that we could have won that game and perhaps put together two consecutive undefeated seasons.
An outstanding coach prevented us from doing that, so in remembering Coach Pasierb, I acknowledge how great a job he did coaching the Shade Panthers.
The following year, I took the head coaching job at St. Francis, and Coach Pasierb helped me recruit his best player from that 1982 team. So, I grew to like him personally to go along with my professional respect.
Nevertheless, Coach Pasierb, losing that game to you in 1982 still hurts though our kids gave it everything they had. And we, as coaches gave it everything we had in preparation.
That game still ranks as the best game that I was ever associated with — even if the wrong team won.
My sympathy to Coach Pasierb’s wife, Dolores, and their children and grandchildren. RIP, Coach.
Comments
Post a Comment