![]() ![]() He’s the only player in Pitt’s long history to reach four digits in both categories. He is 12th on the school’s career scoring list (1,672 points) and first in rebounds (1,326). He picked Pitt - those dinners mattered - and turned into one of its all-time greats. ![]() When it came time to pick a college, he narrowed his choices to Ohio State, N.C. Along the way, his teams won five City League championships. If it wasn’t for her, who knows what I’d have been doing? Probably working in the steel mill with my dad.”Ĭlancy led Fifth Avenue to a state championship as a junior in 1976, and, when the school closed the next year, he was a member of Brashear’s first graduating class. “All through my professional career, I kept in touch with her. She was little, short, round woman, but she was athletic and had skills. They played one-on-one, and she was kicking his butt. I was excited about playing because she would play against the men’s gym teacher all the time after school. I want to show you something.’ She put the ball in my hands and said, ‘You should be playing this game.’ “That’s why she turned me on to basketball. “I tried to play the violin, but I wasn’t very good,” he said. He said his first basketball coach in fourth grade was Letche’s girls gym teacher, Janine Brown. “I’m who I am because of the people who were around me.” “I’m not who I am because of just (being) Sam Clancy,” he said. They said kids today don’t know their past, and I was honored that they chose me to be one of the guys to make it happen.”Ĭlancy is happy to give back to the Hill. “They want to get baseball started again. “When I grew up, everybody played baseball, except for me. “There hasn’t been baseball on the Hill for over 25 years,” Clancy said. “We felt it was only right to highlight some of the individuals we looked up to in the Hill District.”Ī street was named for former West Virginia quarterback Major Harris last year, and there are plans to honor former Schenley High School basketball star Maurice Lucas. “We came together the past couple years, to try to reunite baseball with the city,” Uptown 2.0 member Andre Hilliard said. Which is why the neighborhood group, Uptown 2.0, has decided it’s long past time for Hill District youths to have the same opportunities Clancy and his friends had in their formative years. “I also know there are a lot that fell by the wayside in supporting every kid, not just their own.” “I’ve been gone a long time, and I know there are some parents who are still trying to do that,” he said. ![]() No matter who you were, you got the love and support from that neighborhood.” “When I grew up, it was a total community involvement,” he said. “It was a special corner,” Clancy said before a ceremony in the City County Building.Ĭlancy said he had loving parents, Jerry and Rosie, who were deeply involved in his life, but they had help in raising their boy. YV9XrmK03ZĪnd so it was decreed Wednesday morning by Pittsburgh City Council that Saturday will be Sam Clancy Day, and a street sign at the corner will be unveiled in his honor at 11:30 a.m. Pittsburgh City Council honors the great Sam Clancy. They were hoping to build a connection with her son, one of the most coveted players in the country in 1977.Ĭlancy is proud to say he grew up on that street corner and learned to play basketball first at Letche Elementary School, a block and a half away, then at Fifth Avenue and Brashear high schools and, later, at Pitt. In any case, when Sam’s mom, Rosie, wasn’t serving dinner to Grgurich, she sat outside and watched legendary basketball coaches such as Bobby Knight and Dean Smith drive by the house. Or, perhaps, NCAA rules were different in those days. Luckily for the former Pitt basketball coach and tireless recruiter of the mid 1970s, the university’s compliance department looked the other way. Sam Clancy estimates that Tim Grgurich had dinner at his home near the corner of Bedford Avenue and Roberts Street in the Hill District “60 or 70 times.” ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |