George Guido: Reflecting on last athletic events at pair of revered schools

By: HSSN Staff
Wednesday, May 30, 2018 | 12:24 AM

Two beloved high schools with glorious sports histories took their final bows 50 years ago this week.

Har-Brack and Tarentum played their final athletic events and graduated their last classes before combining forces several months later to form Highlands High School.

Tarentum, which first sponsored athletics in 1906 with a football team that went 4-3, finished its sports history June 1, 1968. The Redcats defeated Shannock Valley, 8-2, behind Fran Murar's four-hit pitching.

Jim Hirtz hit the final Tarentum home run in that one. That baseball season was plagued by constant rainfall to the point where the WPIAL extended the regular season twice.

Tarentum was the only Alle-Kiski Valley school to gets its entire baseball schedule in.

Actually, Tarentum finished with a flourish in early 1968.

The Redcats basketball team won the WPIAL Class B title at the Pitt Field House over Albert Gallatin.

Also that spring, Tarentum was in the WPIAL tennis finals. The championship match with Mt. Lebanon at Oakmont's Riverside Park was delayed one day by rain.

Tarentum's Joe “Skip” Guyaux, also the star of the basketball team, led the tennis team to the finals along with doubles partner and teammate Norm Moser.

The match had an inauspicious beginning as Mt. Lebanon's Bill Sagan had two broken strings on his racket. In a show of sportsmanship, Guyaux loaned Sagan one of his rackets and went on to defeat Sagan and his own racket 6-0 in the first set.

Mt. Lebanon went on to win the match 3-2.

Guyaux is most recently the board chairman of Highmark Health after a 40-year career with PNC.

Har-Brack High School was around for only 44 school years, fewer than the 50 years its successor school has been around.

Harrison Township-Brackenridge opened its doors in 1924, and the contraction “Har-Brack” soon became popular. The school absorbed students from the former Natrona High School, who joined students from what was then the burgeoning Natrona Heights section of Harrison.

Residential development soon came along after the original Route 28 came through Harrison in 1917.

It didn't take Har-Brack long to become a football power. The school's first team had a 7-1-1 record, with the loss to Parnassus and the tie to North Braddock Scott.

In baseball, the 1968 rains were so incessant that the final three Tigers games were washed out during Memorial Day week. When Har-Brack was eliminated from the WPIAL playoff race, it was decided that the baseball games would go unplayed.

So the final athletic event in Har-Brack history was a May 22 baseball game against Valley at Indian Park, located in the Karns section of Harrison.

The game went 12 innings before Valley, a first-year school, won 6-4.

Rich Bubash pitched the first 11 innings before turning the game over to Pat Marino.

Marino was the winning pitcher in the final Har-Brack victory, a 3-0 win over Freeport on May 17. In that game, Denny Levish hit the last Har-Brack home run.

The Karns site is now occupied by Don Bushman Stadium, a youth football venue.

Highlands not in first plan

What we know now as Highlands High School wasn't the first consolidation plan.

State Act 561 of 1961 was enacted to reduce Pennsylvania's 2,500-plus community school districts to a more manageable 500.

The original plan had Tarentum, Fawn, Frazer and East Deer forming one high school. Har-Brack and West Deer would have been left intact.

But the state Department of Education said that wasn't good enough and threatened to sue if Har-Brack and Tarentum didn't dance to Harrisburg's merger music.

Thus, Highlands and Deer Lakes were formed.

George Guido is a Valley News Dispatch scholastic sports correspondent. His column appears Wednesdays.

Tags: Highlands