I had been told the basketball program had not had a winning season in 20 years. It became obvious quite early that this small school, graduating 80 to 90 students per year, was committed to football and wrestling. Now, for the rude awakening...

Prior to the 1st day of practice, I wanted to meet with the team in a classroom setting to introduce myself and share with these fine young men my expectations. Eight (8) students showed up for this meeting on the first day of practice. I asked my assistant coach, who had served his 1st year as an assistant the previous year, "Are they always late?" He calmly replied; "This is it." Needless to say, my heart fell to my feet. Eight players were to fill both a Junior Varsity and Varsity team. EIGHT! You can imagine the emotion. Your first coaching experience and not even enough to scrimmage.

Turning it Around
I convinced two football players into playing basketball and I brought four freshmen up from the Junior High to play JV. In short, the season of 1990-1991 in Blairsville was an enormous success! We won our section with a record of 11 wins - 1 loss. We lost at the buzzer in the Conference Championship and we went to the District Finals and dropped a close game to a much more talented and veteran team. It was Blairsvilles first-ever trip to the PIAA-AA State Tournament. We advanced all the way to the State quarterfinals before losing to the eventual State Champions. Our final record was 23 wins - 6 losses.

Staying on Top
Since then, we've been playing Championship basketball year in and year out, finding ourselves in the State Rankings each and every year. In the past eight years, our accomplishments include two District titles, four Conference titles, and six section titles, along with six State Tournament appearances. Our season records are listed below: