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My high school Alma Mater has really fallen on hard times

Look at where I grew up. Har-Brack was Harrison Township and Brackenridge together and they produced three players in the ‘50s that made it into professional football:

Cookie Gilchrist – Member of the All-Time AFL team, 4x AFL All-Star, Buffalo Bills Wall of Fame, AFL’s first 1,000-yard rusher, led the AFL in rushing twice, AFL MVP 1962, set single game rushing record with 243 yards against the NY Jets

Dick Modzelewski – 2x All-American at Maryland, Outland trophy winner, CFB HOF member, set NFL record with 180 consecutive games played

Ed Modzelewski – All-American at Maryland, Sugar Bowl MVP, 1st round draft pick of the Steelers and sixth overall pick in the NFL draft.

In the '60s, the district has expanded to become Highlands adding Fawn Township and Tarentum and thus you have a larger population to draw from for athletics. Since then, if I’m not mistaken the only player to do anything of significance at the Division-I level has been Matt Bonislawski at UConn and he played quarterback when they moved their football program to Division I. There is a kid now at Highlands that’s walking-on to play at Penn State this coming year but other than that, I don't know of anyone else.

They became a bigger school district with a larger enrollment, and no one has come close to reaching the NFL let alone do much at the Division I level.
Lee Hetrick started at Pitt at LB in the mid 80's.

On that note, look at the entire AK Valley. From Kittanning to Oakmont, how many D1 players do they produce anymore? This entire area is really down for football, even more so than the Northern/Southern suburbs of Pittsburgh.
 
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Hetrick - played at Pitt awhile ago
Stroud - played at ND
Pawlak - basketball at Duquesne
That's right. Cliff Stroud was Gatorade PA player of the year, during ND's best years (The Holtz Era) obviously he was before Rivals recruiting rankings, but he would have been a top 50 kid on Rivals. Tore his knee up in the Big 33 practices and never really regained his quickness.
 
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The schools that have a good coach ,and decent assistants seem to do well.I know of a school in A ball that was down to 13 kids years ago.Then they got a young energetic coach and within 2 years had 38-40 kids.Kids want to play but not to be led by a boob
 
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Hetrick - played at Pitt awhile ago
Stroud - played at ND
Pawlak - basketball at Duquesne

I forgot about those guys. It's hell to get old. Thank you for listing their names. I know Micah Mason went to Drake and then ended up at Duquesne. I think he was the leading scorer in WPIAL hoops one year.
 
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