Into the Hall: Pete Smith
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High school athletes dream of leading their team to a WPIAL championship.
Pete Smith accomplished that goal in not one, but two sports in the same year.
The Uniontown graduate was the point guard on the Red Raiders boys basketball team that won WPIAL and PIAA championships in 1962 and also was the quarterback of the Red Raiders’ 1962 WPIAL championship football team.
Smith, who went on to play basketball at the University of Pittsburgh, is part of the Fayette County Sports Hall of Fame Class of 2025.
“I was surprised,” Smith said of his reaction to hearing of his impending induction on Hall of Fame co-founder George Von Benko’s Sports Line Talk Show on WMBS Radio recently. “I’m very appreciative of it. The older you get the more you appreciate everything that happens.”
Smith joins a host of Uniontown graduates in the Hall of Fame.
“I’ve played with most of the people from Uniontown that are in the Hall of Fame and I’m well aware of all the former athletes that have been inducted,” Smith said. “It’s a nice list of people that have been in Fayette County and through the Uniontown area.”
Smith lauded the linemen in front of him while he played football for the Red Raiders.
“There were always a lot of very good athletes and a lot of the people didn’t get the notoriety,” Smit said. “Usually you would have the backs and the ends and the wide receivers, but the linemen never really got the wherewithal that they should’ve gotten from that standpoint. There were some very good linemen that did very well during that time, too.”
Smith reflected back to the year before Uniontown won the district football championship.
“When we were juniors we were like 8-0 going into the Mt. Lebanon game and we had a drive near the end, we were going to try to score a touchdown and then I can remember I was the one that threw the interception and we lost,” Smith said.
Smith wouldn’t repeat that mistake a year later.
“Next year we were at Mt. Lebanon and were like 8-0 and it was going down to the last four or five minutes and we took the ball all the way down, we didn’t throw the ball the whole time,” Smith said. “We got the ball to the 25 or 30 yard line. We had a fourth and one and we got it and then we took it the rest of the way down.”
Smith recalled a Mt. Lebanon player “who became a good friend of mine” discussing the game years later. “He said we look back on that game all the time and we kept asking was there somebody up in the press box telling you what to do each time because we were really frustrated. We couldn’t stop what was going on.”
Uniontown ended up as the WPIAL champion with a 10-0 record.
Smith was a three-year starter at quarterback under legendary coach Bill Power.
“He was a very good teacher,” Smith said of Power. “He was a very good person and the other coaches that he had were very good people. He just knew how to handle people. He wouldn’t get upset. He tried to handle everybody the way they should be handled. He did a great job from that standpoint.”
Smith recalled the Red Raiders championship run in basketball under coach Abe Everhart.
“If you remember back at that time the first-place team in the section was the only one that qualified for the playoffs,” Smith said. “Monessen beat us in the first game of the section then we beat them the next time and we had to go to the Field House and we ended up beating them (in a tiebreaker game). From that point on in the WPIAL playoffs and state playoffs it was very positive all the way through. We had very good games.”
Uniontown won the district and state titles, finishing with a 29-2 record.
“I would say Monessen was probably one of the top five teams in the state and they didn’t even make the WPIAL playoffs,” Smith said.
Smith enjoyed his time playing under Everhart.
“He handed the players the same way that Mr. Power did,” Smith said. “He never really got upset. He told you what you were supposed to do and you had to do it.”
Smith recalled the great support Uniontown had in both sports he played.
“That’s what the Uniontown community was all the time, whether it was football season or basketball season, those stands were always packed from people that were very appreciative,” Smith said.
Smith was a product of the famous playground system, of which Bus Albright played an integral part of, in Uniontown.
“When we were growing up the only thing we did from fourth grade to fifth grade on is we went to playgrounds and we would play basketball, baseball or football,” Smith recalled. “We didn’t have camps or anything like that. We came from families that didn’t have a whole heck of a lot. You stressed your academics, too. That was a big thing back then. I remember I was in fourth or fifth grade and remember people coming from out of the area like Jerry West.”
Smith recalled Von Benko’s aunt, Ruby Laskey, helping out tremendously at a time when he worked at the playground.
“I worked with her and Kenny Misiak. They did a great job. Lincoln View playground was like the hub from that standpoint and all the other playgrounds worked from that,” Smith pointed out. “She had everything coordinated all the time.
“That was a big thing back then. That’s what the kids used to do. You’d go from morning to night. We weren’t going on computers and the phones.”
Smith had plenty of college offers in both football and basketball.
“There were a lot of schools. When we were in high school, Ron Sepic and I were both very good friends. We had always indicated that until basketball season was over we weren’t going to take any visits for colleges,” Smith said. “When you’re a young kid like we were it was a big thing to get on a plane and go visit all these schools. There were like 40 or 50 schools and I narrowed it down to eight or 10.”
Smith strongly considered Vanderbilt but opted to stay close to home and chose Pitt for football, but an injury would eventually steer him to the hardwood.
“At a fall camp scrimmage I got hit on a punt return,” Smith remembered. “I blocked somebody. I was out for about three or four weeks. When I came back it was like I wasn’t even there.
“Well, Bob Timmons had recruited me for basketball also. He said, ‘Pete, if you just want to switch to basketball you can do it. You can just start as a sophomore the next year.’ I did that. He was a very nice man. His last year was my last year when I was a senior.”
Smith went on to play 68 games with the Panthers, scoring 447 points and grabbing 164 rebounds.
Hall of Fame festivities will be held on June 20 beginning with the annual golf outing at 8:30 a.m. followed by the luncheon and inductions at Pleasant Valley Golf Club in Connellsville. Golfers can register and luncheon tickets can be purchased by contacting Katie Propes by phone (724-415-2211) or email (kpropes@occluss.com).