There was a time when college basketball coaches didn’t need much convincing to come to Western Pennsylvania looking for girls basketball players.
They already knew where to go.
Penn Hills. Aliquippa. North Catholic. McKeesport. Monessen. Oakland Catholic. Blackhawk. Seton LaSalle. West Mifflin. Sacred Heart. Mt. Alvernia. Upper St. Clair. The list went on.
Long before girls basketball recruiting became dominated by national AAU circuits, shoe-company tournaments, social media highlights and recruiting rankings, Western Pennsylvania had built something special.
We had players. We had coaches. We had summer basketball. And most importantly, we had competition. For a stretch covering the 1980s, 1990s and into the early 2000s, Western Pennsylvania girls basketball wasn’t simply good locally.
It was a legitimate basketball hotbed.
Look at the Championships
The easiest place to start is with the hardware.
Beaver Falls won a PIAA championship in 1985. North Catholic won in 1988. Aliquippa won back-to-back state championships in 1989 and 1990. Sacred Heart won a state championship in 1989. Penn Hills won the largest classification in 1990. Oakland Catholic became state champion in 1993.
And those are only some of the championship teams that came out of this area.
The WPIAL has produced more than 50 PIAA girls basketball state champions since the state tournament began. But championships only tell part of the story. Look at the players.
Penn Hills Was Loaded
It’s difficult to talk about that era without starting with Penn Hills.
From 1986 through 1992, Penn Hills won seven consecutive WPIAL championships.
Seven. Think about how difficult that would be today.
The 1989-90 Penn Hills team might have been the best of the bunch. They finished 32-1. Their only loss came against a strong team from New York. They won nine WPIAL and PIAA playoff games by an average of almost 26 points. In the state championship, Penn Hills destroyed J.P. McCaskey, 86-39.
But here is the number that really tells you what Western Pennsylvania girls basketball was producing: Five players from that Penn Hills team went on to play Division I college basketball.
That’s not an AAU team assembled from five different states. That’s one high school team from Penn Hills, Pennsylvania.
Jenine Joyce was one of its stars and went on to play at Pitt.
Penn Hills wasn’t just winning championships. It was developing college basketball players. Kim Calhoun. Monique “Missy” McCoy. LynnDee Howell, to name a few.
Aliquippa Had Its Own Dynasty
Drive down Route 51 and another powerhouse was being built at the exact same time.
Aliquippa won four consecutive WPIAL championships from 1987 through 1990.
During one four-year stretch, the Quips went an incredible 112-13. They won consecutive state championships in 1989 and 1990.
And leading them were two players who both scored more than 2,000 career points. Mona Gaffney finished with 2,038. Carrie Bordas scored 2,658 and graduated as the WPIAL’s all-time leading scorer.
In the 1989 state championship game, Bordas and Gaffney combined for 44 points and 29 rebounds as Aliquippa beat Trinity, 57-47. A year later they did it again. This time Bordas and Gaffney scored 34 points apiece as Aliquippa beat Trinity, 89-62.
That’s 68 points from two Western Pennsylvania high school girls in a state championship game.
Aliquippa wasn’t playing girls basketball at a high level “for a small school.” They were playing basketball at a high level. Period.
And Then There Were the Individual Stars
The talent didn’t disappear when those dynasties ended. If anything, the names became even bigger.
Gina Naccarato came out of Monessen and scored 3,364 career points.
Then came Swin Cash at McKeesport.
If you want evidence that national college basketball programs were paying attention to Western Pennsylvania, Cash might be the ultimate example. Connecticut wanted her. Tennessee wanted her. Georgia wanted her. North Carolina wanted her. Penn State wanted her. Virginia wanted her. Pat Summitt wanted Cash badly enough that the legendary Tennessee coach came to McKeesport and spoke at the girls basketball banquet during Cash’s junior year.
Cash eventually chose UConn.
Think about that.
One of the greatest coaches in women’s basketball history was coming to McKeesport, Pennsylvania, trying to recruit a Western Pennsylvania high school player.
Cash went on to become a national champion, WNBA champion, Olympic gold medalist and Basketball Hall of Famer. And she wasn’t the only one.
Tanisha Wright came out of West Mifflin and finished her high school career with 2,477 points, 1,100 rebounds and 594 assists.She went to Penn State, scored 1,995 collegiate points, became a three-time Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year and eventually spent more than a decade in the WNBA.
Katie Bulger came out of Oakland Catholic and went to West Virginia. Her sister Meg followed.
Tionda Jennings was a star in the city league for Westinghouse and played at Duquesne.
Cindy Dallas starred at Schenley before playing at Illinois and eventually reaching the WNBA.
Kamela Gissendanner of Clairton developed into a standout for the Penn State Lady Lions, becoming an All-Big Ten performer.
And you can keep going.
That’s what made the era different. The stars weren’t coming from one school or one part of Western Pennsylvania. They were everywhere.
The Summer Basketball Scene Mattered
There was another important piece to this basketball culture that shouldn’t be forgotten.
The girls played in the summer.
In 1984, Don Barth founded the Top Cagers Girls Summer Basketball League in Turtle Creek. It eventually grew to 46 teams and more than 800 players and, at different points, became the largest NCAA-sanctioned women’s summer basketball league in the country.
Read that again.
The largest NCAA-sanctioned women’s summer basketball league in America was operating in Turtle Creek. That tells you everything you need to know about what girls’ basketball once meant around here.
College coaches didn’t have to wonder whether Western Pennsylvania had players. There was an entire ecosystem producing them.
High school basketball mattered. Summer basketball mattered. Fundamentals mattered. And when great players competed against other great players year after year, everybody got better.
You Had to Earn Your Name
That’s another thing I think gets lost when we talk about past generations.
There wasn’t Instagram. There wasn’t Hudl. There weren’t thousands of highlight clips being posted every weekend. You couldn’t become known because one crossover went viral.
Your reputation was built in gyms. People heard about you because somebody saw you play. Then somebody else saw you. Then a college coach heard about you. And eventually those college coaches started showing up.
Western Pennsylvania had enough talent that being one of the best players in the area actually meant something nationally.
Look at a Post-Gazette Fabulous 5 from the late 1990s and the names tell the story. Swin Cash. Cindy Dallas. Katie Bulger. Tanisha Wright. Jess Strom. Kamela Gissendanner. Gina Naccarato.
And many others.
These weren’t social-media prospects. They were basketball players whose games created their reputations.
What Happened?
That’s the question worth asking.
Western Pennsylvania still produces good girls’ basketball players. There are still excellent programs, excellent coaches and Division I prospects.
But there was a period when the depth felt different.
When Penn Hills could have five future Division I basketball players on one team. When Aliquippa could have two 2,000-point scorers playing together. When a summer league in Turtle Creek could attract more than 800 players. When Pat Summitt was coming to McKeesport trying to land Swin Cash.
That’s a basketball hotbed.
And maybe the better question isn’t whether Western Pennsylvania still produces talented girls.
Of course it does.
The question is whether we still have the basketball ecosystem that once allowed so many of them to develop together. Because there was a time when Western Pennsylvania wasn’t an afterthought in girls’ basketball recruiting.
College coaches knew exactly where we were.
They came here looking for players.