Former Yough High School standout basketball player Ben McCauley remembers the abuse.
McCauley, Western Pennsylvania's High School Player of the Year in 2005, played basketball for North Carolina State in the rugged Atlantic Coast Conference.
Outside of his tenure with the Wolfpack, when he scored 1,102 points in his collegiate career, what remains in his memory are trips to Durham, N.C., to face the cross-state rival Duke's Blue Devils in Cameron Indoor Stadium.
McCauley laughed when recalling the Cameron Crazies, a sea of blue-faced fans, more energetic and fiercely loyal than rowdy.
And the Crazies in part owe their reputation to Manor-born and Irwin-raised Edmund McCullough Cameron, who spent 46 years on Duke's campus, from 1926 to his 1972 retirement, as football and basketball coach, and athletic director.
"Being a visitor in Cameron is like being the oddball at a party or gathering where you don't fit in," said McCauley, who, after playing professional basketball last year in France, is playing for Dexia Mons-Hainaut in Belgium. "Because everyone is focused on you and your every move, as soon as you do something wrong, whether it's shooting an airball, turning the ball over, or getting scored on, you will hear it from the fans. And they don't stop. You can't look at them or else they win. You must stay focused on the game and what you need to do to get a win or else they will pounce on you and not let up."
Well-prepared students
McCauley found out firsthand about the research abilities of Duke's fans.
"I can remember one specific time during my freshman year, I wasn't playing a lot, but they still knew everything about me," he said. "They do their research. They were making fun of my high school, which a lot of people do because of how we pronounce the name and that it's relatively in the middle of nowhere.
"I felt cool because they knew about Yough. And I didn't focus on it at the time, but apparently I had long sideburns, because during warm-ups all I heard was, 'Shave your sideburns McCauley, it's not the 1970s!' So after the game I went home, took a look in the mirror, and starting cutting."
In terms of capacity, with 9,413 seats, Cameron Indoor Stadium does not rank among the top 50 college basketball arenas in the nation. (First: Carrier Dome Syracuse, 33,000; 50th: Cleveland State's Convocation Center, 13,610.)
Even so, Cameron Indoor Stadium, which officially opened as Duke Indoor Stadium on Jan. 6, 1940, is considered one of the most intimidating home courts in the nation. The Blue Devils' home-court 83 percent-plus winning percentage is one of the best in college basketball.
Swissvale native, former Pittsburgh Pirates shortstop and 1960 National League MVP Dick Groat, an All-American basketball player at Duke in 1951 and 1952, said, "There is not a coach who has ever gone into Cameron Indoor Stadium who has not said it's the most difficult place to play and coach."
Although Groat graduated in 1953, two decades before the arena was renamed and the Cameron Crazies evolved, he considers himself, laughing at the thought, an alumni Crazy.
"In addition to talented players and excellent coaching at Duke, the Cameron Crazies are very much a factor for Duke's success at home," Groat said. "Students paint their faces blue, wear blue clothes and create a special and exciting atmosphere cheering for the Blue Devils.
Named for Irwin native
Edmund Cameron was born in Manor, April 22, 1902, to Alexander Pollock Cameron, a vice president of the Westmoreland Coal Co., and May Roberts Cameron. Several years later, the family moved to 305 Second St., Irwin. Today it is a vacant lot, the former site of the Immaculate Conception Church rectory.
Cameron's parents are buried in Irwin's Union Cemetery.
Cameron attended Norwin High School and, according to the Irwin Republican Standard, "went out (for football) for the first time" in 1917. Game stories indicate Cameron alternated between left and right end and left tackle.
Cameron matriculated at Culver Military Academy in Indiana, graduating in 1920. At Washington and Lee University in Virginia, he was captain of the football and basketball teams. After graduating in 1924, he spent a year in the banking business with his father in Irwin, prior to becoming the football coach at Greenbrier Military Academy.
Joins Duke staff
In 1926, he became assistant football coach at Duke. He served as basketball coach from 1929-1942, compiling a 14-year record of 226-99 with conference championships in 1938, 1941 and 1942. He assumed the head football coaching duties from 1942-45 when head coach Wallace Wade served in World War II.
Cameron's football teams won three conference championships, compiling a 25-11-1 record. He led Duke to its first bowl win, 29-26, over Alabama in the 1945 Sugar Bowl. When Wade returned, Cameron relinquished his head coaching duties and took over as director of athletics.
Cameron's basketball team won the first game played in Duke's new basketball stadium, over Princeton, 36-27, Jan. 6, 1940.
Several months prior to Cameron's Aug. 31, 1972 retirement, Duke Indoor Stadium was renamed Cameron Indoor Stadium. Cameron told Duke archivist Bill King it was "his most cherished honor."
On May 1, 1952, Groat's uniform, No. 10, was the first to be retired in the rafters of Duke's basketball arena. It was the only jersey to be retired by the school until 1980.
"I remember Eddie Cameron very well," Groat added. "He was one of the finest people I've ever known. He was a class gentleman in every sense. Eddie was a special person to work with. He treated me and everyone wonderfully and everyone thought the world of him. And I am proud that he was from Western Pennsylvania;"
Student perspective
While McCauley, who scored 15 points against the Blue Devils at Cameron as a senior, and his Wolfpack teammates were on the receiving end of the Crazies' rants, 1999 Hempfield Area High School grad Sara Coury, a 2003 Duke grad, had a different perspective - as one of the Crazies.
"My most special memory of Cameron Indoor Stadium is that the students get the best seats," said Coury, a lawyer in Seattle whose mother, Pat, teaches social studies at Norwin.. "Unlike other arenas where I've been, Duke's students are right there in the front rows, literally on the floor. It's an intimate setting with a fabulous energy."
Painting one's face blue for the games apparently originated in the mid-1960s,
"I never painted my face completely blue," Coury said. "However, I painted "our house" across my face, which is what we chanted towards the end of games. What I remember is the face painting and that Duke students stand throughout the entire game. "
In 1999, Sports Illustrated ranked Cameron Indoor Stadium the fourth most prominent sporting venue of the 20th century, behind Yankee Stadium, Augusta National Golf Course and West Point's Michie Stadium, and ahead of Fenway Park, Wrigley Field and Notre Dame Stadium.
Visionary leader
The legend goes that Cameron and Wade designed the new stadium on a matchbook. "It is definitely a true story," said Cameron's daughter, Sybil Cameron Schiffli, 82, of Charlotte, N.C.
While Cameron's contributions to Duke -- which include overseeing construction of a new football stadium and a new aquatics center along with development of a highly acclaimed golf course -- are legendary, his influence extended beyond the Durham campus. He was "one of the nation's most influential athletic administrators," King added.
One of the founding fathers of the Atlantic Coast Conference, Cameron was chairman of the Southern Conference and ACC basketball committees, and proponent of post-season conference tournaments. He was a member of the selection committee for the National Football Hall of Fame and served on the board of directors of the National Olympic Games Association. Cameron had a role in authoring the grant-in-aid program for student-athletes, the forerunner of the program used by the NCAA today.
Cameron was inducted into the National Football Foundation's College Hall of Fame and the Atlantic Coast Conference Sports Writers, Duke University, North Carolina and Virginia halls of fame.
But once Cameron left Western Pennsylvania for Duke, he rarely ventured back, Schiffli said. There are no longer any family members residing in the Irwin area.
"My father made Duke his home and Duke honored him and his dedication not only by naming the stadium after him, but also with a bronze statue in front of Cameron Indoor Stadium," Schiffli added. "There is a picture in the concourse of my father mapping out the floor plans of the stadium."
Cameron's step-daughter, Martha Erwin Uzzle, 78, of Durham, began her college education at Duke in 1951. She acquired her tickets to Blue Devils' basketball games several years later, and has never relinquished the valuable commodity.
"I don't miss a Duke game," Uzzle said. "I'm keeping up the tradition Big Eddie started. He was an easygoing man and had so many contacts everywhere. People respected him everywhere he went. He was so honored when they named the stadium for him."
Cameron's son, Eddie, 72, from Morehead City, N.C., graduated from Duke before the renaming of the stadium, but admits to "still being a Crazy. I had to be," he said, laughing. "Duke's Crazies started as a small group and grew and grew. They dominate the floor. It's become a great tradition and helps preserve my father's memory."
When Cameron died on Nov. 25, 1988, his funeral ceremony was held in the filled-to-capacity Duke University Chapel three days later. Included among the 33 pallbearers were the starting five of the then-No. 1 Duke basketball team, who carried his casket from the chapel.
