Early agate
ON THIS DATE
May 21
1951 – Don Smith pitches a three-hit shutout as Trinity blanks Burgettstown 2-0 in a WPIAL baseball playoff game at Wash High.
1959 – Canonsburg Joint High School hires former Steubenville College coach Hank Kuzma as its new head basketball coach.
1959 – Formation of Washington’s first slow-pitch softball league, the Ten Mile Valley League, is announced. It will be an eight-team league.
1966 – Beth-Center’s Pete Zaharoff, the defending state champion in the pole vault, breaks his own WPIAL record by clearing 13-8 3/4 at the WPIAL Championships in Baldwin. The previous record was 13-6.
1968 – The Pittsburgh Penguins acquire Jean Pronovost and John Arbour from the Boston Bruins for cash.
1970 – North Texas State’s Bill Schmidt of Muse wins the javelin competition and sets the meet record with a throw of 280-7 at the California Relays in Modesto.
1972 – Canon-McMillan clinches the Section 3 baseball title with an 8-1 win over Avella. Winning pitcher Chuck Yesenchak has three hits and drives in three runs.
1982 – Ringgold, in its second year of girls varsity softball, advances in the WPIAL Class AAA playoffs with a 5-0 victory over Elizabeth Forward in a game played in Perryopolis. Stacy Bores pitches a two-hit shutout.
1986 – Jeff Jento steals home with one out in the sixth inning to break a tie and give Jefferson-Morgan a 3-2 victory over Charleroi in the WPIAL Class AA baseball playoffs at Ringgold High School.
1987 – Charleroi manages only four hits but takes advantage of nine Fort Cherry errors to defeat the Rangers 13-6 in the WPIAL Class AA baseball quarterfinals. The playoff contest is played at Veterans Memorial Field, Charleroi’s home field.
1987 – Joe Haering, former defensive coordinator of the Pittsburgh Maulers of the defunct United States Football League, is named head coach of the Pittsburgh Gladiators of the new Arena Football League.
1993 – Bill Everly pitches 8 1/3 no-hit innings and lays down a squeeze bunt that scores Chris Whipkey in the 12th inning as Carmichaels defeats Charleroi 3-2 in a WPIAL Class AA baseball playoff game played on the Cougars’ home field.
1991 – McGuffey hires John Brown, formerly of St. Francis High School in Pittsburgh, to be the Highlanders’ girls basketball coach. Brown led St. Francis to the WPIAL Class A championship two months earlier but the school closes after the 1990-91 school year because of dwindling enrollment.
May 22
1957 – John Dutton of Claysville, a school that doesn’t have an organized track team, wins three events and finishes third in another at the Washington-Greene Class B Track Meet at Canonsburg. Dutton wins the javelin with a meet-record throw of 160-8 1/2, more than 21 feet farther than the old record.
1965 – Beth-Center’s Pete Zaharoff and West Greene’s Doug Crouse set meet records at the PIAA Track & Field Championships at Penn State. Zaharoff wins the Class A pole vault by clearing 14-1 and Crouse wins the Class B mile run in 4:20.9.
1968 – Willie Stargell of the Pittsburgh Pirates hits three home runs, a double and a single in a 13-6 victory over the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field. Stargell’s double just misses going out, as it bounces off the railing of the left-field bleachers.
1976 – Gina Piatt of Trinity is a double-winner at the first PIAA girls track and field championships in Shippensburg. Piatt, who is the only gold-medal winner from the WPIAL, finishes in first place in the discus (135-3) and shot put (41-8 1/4).
1986 – Dave Clark’s two-out, three-run homer – his second three-run shot of the game – in the bottom of the seventh inning gives Fort Cherry an 8-5 victory over Carmichaels in the WPIAL Class AA baseball quarterfinals at Charleroi.
1987 – Chartiers-Houston’s Mark Simpson successfully defends his Class AA javelin title at the PIAA Track & Field Championships in Shippensburg. Simpson, in fourth place at the time, wins the title on his final throw, a toss of 211-2.
1994 – Lance Armstrong of Austin, Texas, wins the Thrift Drug Classic cycling race in Pittsburgh for the second year in a row.
1995 – Toni Zimmer scores on a sacrifice fly by Joanne Schade in the bottom of the eighth inning to give Ringgold a 2-1 victory over Butler in the first round of the PIAA Class AAA softball playoffs.