Merged '66 SA team honored

It was the first year of the merger of Glassport and Port Vue-Liberty high schools, when the football team didn't cut anyone who came out and then won a conference championship. With Glassport's Gladiator mascot and Port Vue-Liberty's blue and gold colors, the new South Allegheny team went 6-3 and won the 1966 Alle-Mon Conference title. On Friday night, they were honored before the first game of the 2010 season for the South Allegheny Gladiators at Glassport Memorial Stadium. "This is amazing," Glassport Mayor and 1966 Gladiator Michael Evanovich said. "Some of these people I haven't seen since I graduated." "We hated those guys," said John Dobies, a former Port Vue-Liberty Bulldog. "We weren't too fond of you, either," replied Bill Bogan, who had worn Glassport's red and black. It was said in fun Friday but reflected the feelings of 44 years ago. "There was some animosity between the two areas," former Port Vue-Liberty player Marty Grbach said. "I think the football team brought us together. It set the tone for the entire school year." "They were rivals before, they meshed well," said Jim Herren, a 1957 Glassport grad who came back to be line coach in 1966 after a minor league football Hall of Fame career with the Wheeling Ironmen in the old Continental League. "It was a real shock, and a real pleasure," said Pete Ballaban, who came from Monongahela to coach the Gladiators. He headed the coaching staff for three years, moved to the athletic director's job for 10 years, then was a teacher until his retirement in 1991. "We probably had 120 kids," said Rich Zukauckas, who was a student of Ballaban, then an assistant at South Allegheny in 1966. "We didn't cut anyone." "We had some really good players and we did really well," Ballaban recalled, as former players gathered around him. Ballaban's successor as coach, Zukauckas, didn't do too badly either during his 10-year tenure, which included a conference title for the Gladiators in 1976 and a WPIAL Class AA title the following year. Zukauckas also was an assistant principal and principal at South Allegheny. Herren moved to Duquesne, then 24 years at Steel Valley, 23 as baseball coach. "I had a lot of kids in college," Herren recalled. He also coached a future pro among the Steel Valley Ironmen, Curt Leskanic, who played for four major league teams. Herren's boys at South Allegheny all made memories, too, which Dobies would carry to Indiana University of Pennsylvania and Carnegie Mellon University, then into an engineering career that took him in 1976 to Kansas City. Bogan went to Washington & Jefferson College, did ambulance work, got to know morticians and eventually became owner of funeral homes in Canonsburg and Bridgeville and human and pet cemeteries in Canonsburg. Grbach called his coaches his icons and emulated them at Hempfield Area High School, where he was a teacher, assistant coach for 12 years including defensive coordinator for 10, and an administrator for 13 including principal for five years until his retirement in 2009. Evanovich was drafted and served a year in Vietnam with the 101st Airborne Infantry division. He came home to Community College of Allegheny County, carried mail for four years and went into postal management. He was postmaster in Glassport for 32 years. Chuck Coleman went from Port Vue-Liberty to South Allegheny to Midwestern University and then the University of Delaware. He was a Mellon Bank district manager for consumer lending in Delaware. He came back from Bethany Beach, Del. and said he wasn't there Friday as Hurricane Earl brushed the Eastern Seaboard.