By BRADLEY A. HUEBNER
Drive around the clean and tidy town of Williamsburg in central Pennsylvania, and you’ll see a plethora of blue lawn signs encouraging the girls basketball team, 28-1 last week and facing another true single-A power, Union High, in the state quarterfinals.
The Lady Pirates, District 6 champions, would face the 20-6 District 7 champions to reach the Class A final four. In the prior round both teams survived narrow escapes against parochial schools.
“They’re probably gonna win the state championship,” boasted former star player and coach Don Appleman of Williamsburg. “The next four or five years they’re gonna be in the state finals almost every year. The town’s crazy again.”
Appleman’s brother Jeff has already won a state title as the girls’ coach. Now he’s back on the bench assisting one of his former players in the middle of another dynastic run. And yes, the town has that familiar feel that started with the boys program when a man named Bill Casper arrived in town in the 1950s.
“A guy came from Homestead by way of Clarion State Teachers College by the name of Bill Casper,” Don Appleman recalls. “City guy. Small-town situation here. Tried to sell his program here, which was to play year-round like it was in the cities. At first it didn’t catch on. In 1954-55 he found a couple disciples, a couple of guys who were fanatics.”
Casper also benefitted from the greatest athlete in school history being on campus. Galen Hall was a great football, basketball, and baseball player. In the fall of his senior year in 1958 Hall quarterbacked an unbeaten football squad. In the winter he guided the Blue Pirates to their third-straight Class C state final, this time beating a taller Jenkintown program that had beaten Williamsburg in the 1956 state finals. In between Williamsburg lost by a point to Fleetwood in the 1957 state championship.
Appleman was in junior high during that run, keeping stats for the program when he wasn’t playing in his games. “We were absolutely fascinated by this,” he said. “The whole town went crazy for basketball. That’s all anybody talked about. We wanted to be like that.”
How did Casper arrive in town and change the sports culture so fast? To him, it wasn’t fast enough. It took a few years for players to invest the way he wanted. Casper became the alpha male, the father figure to boys like Galen Hall, whose own father had been killed in a car accident three months before Galen was born. That left Hall’s grandfather, mother, his aunt and uncle, and his cousin to share a house, an extended but supportive family. Hall wasn’t home all that much anyway. He played quarterback for the football team in the fall, basketball in the winter, and baseball in the spring.
Finally, Casper inspired several boys to commit to summer basketball workouts, and the hoops program took off.
“I think the one thing is we ran a lot,” said Hall. “We would run and shoot, and we could all probably shoot. I think he changed that style of basketball at Williamsburg. He would tell us all that we should have four shots a quarter. I don’t think that happened, but that was his motto. Back then the old courts weren’t very big. Lengthwise it’s very small. Get down the court as fast as you could. He stressed good defense and we just ended up being pretty good for that time. That’s way back now.”
The old gym where they played remains in the high school, up the stairs and straight ahead after you enter the building from Blue Pirate Street. The “room” has been freshly painted white. Wooden backboards fastened to walls just beyond the baselines bracket the court. Across the court is a stage for performances, or for more seating for basketball games. On the near side where player benches and more fans would sit, there is now a small built-in kitchen to feed students in the makeshift cafeteria. At small schools, rooms must have multiple functions.
On the other side of the wall is the newer, modern gym with has bleachers on both sides. That’s where the varsity and JV teams practice and play in the modern era. And while the amenities have improved, the teams still win in the state’s smallest classification. Other 1950s powers like Wampum High, Irwin High, and Fountain Hill High got swallowed up during the 1960s mergers and consolidation craze. Not so at Williamsburg.
From 1955-68, the boys basketball program won 12 league, 9 District 6, six western, and two state titles.
Even after Casper left the area, Dick Buckley took over in 1959-60 when the Applemans were rising (Don would school a school-best 2,100 points). In 1965-66 Buckley guided the program to a 25-0 season, capturing the second state title with a 34-point rout of Jim Thorpe High in the state final. The second state championship under a second head coach was inspired by the first one, when kids like Bill Kagerise had gotten swept up in the 1958 state title mania. Kagerise would twice eclipse scoring 60 points in a game as a player and lead that 1966 title team.
By the 1960s, Williamsburg basketball was rolling, and Galen Hall was quarterbacking the Penn State football team.
During his senior year, Hall had also been recruited by the University of Southern California, among other schools, for football.
“(Future Oakland Raiders owner) Al Davis was an assistant coach at Southern Cal at that time,” said Hall, now living in Florida. “He’s the one that probably started the national recruiting. He would send a card to all the high school coaches probably in the nation.
They wanted to know who your top player and the top player you played against were. Al called me and I visited Southern Cal. The McKeever twins showed me around. Marlin and Mike showed me around the LA area. They were freshmen there. On campus, Al was there, and he took me around places.”
A two-year NFL career with the Washington Redskins and New York Jets would follow. Hall would also coach under legends like Barry Switzer and Joe Paterno. When he became a head coach at the University of Florida, the Gators went 40-18-1. His big accomplishments all began in a small town in a graduating class of 55 students.
First, Hall took Williamsburg sports to the big time. Then Appleman took over. Blue Pirate Don Wagner would also lead the state in scoring one year as scorers appeared everywhere.
From 1963-68, Williamsburg went 121-7. Altoona Mirror reporters Jim Lane and Walt Frank wrote comprehensive feature stories about the magical run, including a chart of their yearly records during the 1950s and 1960s.
Said Appleman, “The 1964-65 team averaged 100 points per game in the regular season.”
While it’s impressive what Williamsburg accomplished in the Golden Era, many small public schools experienced at least one strong era. My book about 1950s and 1960s Class B dynasties features Wampum, Kutztown, and Fountain Hill. Along their routes to multiple state titles, they’d face great programs like Irwin, Ashley, Avalon, Columbia, Mercer, and Montrose.
In those cases, the Golden Era came and went. Basketball simmered down … or disappeared altogether. Not so in Williamsburg.
When I visited the school in March, a kind administrator shepherded me around to see the two gyms, the many trophy cases and photos, and even pointed up the hill to where Don Appleman lives. Even now, Williamsburg starts basketball players off in kindergarten, or earlier, she said. Coach Bill Casper once begged for a summer commitment. Now the Blue Pirates and Lady Pirates athletes make lifetime commitments to the program, which is why the success continues.
The school kept playing football into 2021, but that has died off, following Covid. Fielding a football squad requiring 11 men on every play through a dozen or so games isn’t easy at a school that might have 50 male upperclassmen, many of whom don’t play sports.
In basketball at Williamsburg, however, the legends build and accumulate: Hall, Appleman, Bill Kagarise. Who? Kagarise. Star of the unbeaten 1966 state champs when he tallied 843 of his 1,748 points. Kagarise became an 1,100-point scorer at Brevard Junior College in Florida, then a Division I guard at American University where he scored 557 more points.
Kagarise wasn’t as lithe and rubbery as the best athletes of his day, but he consistently found the net on his outside shots. He sacrificed as much as anybody to become a Williamsburg legend. Though his father had to relocate for a job in Virginia during Bill’s high school years, he and his mother stayed behind so he could compete for the Blue Pirates. That decision aided a perfect state-championship season in 1966.
The best pure basketball player in Blue Pirates history was likely either Don Appleman or Kagarise. The best all-around athlete? Hall, of course.
“He had a baseball tryout with Cleveland,” said Appleman. “He hit eight or nine balls out of the stadium, and they wanted to sign him.”
The Appleman family has seen just about everything in their little community.
“I followed those teams in the 50s,” said Don. “I played in the 60s. I coached in the 70s 80s, 90s, and the 2000s. I’ve been around the program 60, 70 years.”
His son Christian is one of the 1,000-point scorers on the banner, too. Now the locals are putting their faith into the girls program, which appears ready to hoist a few more banners for the Lady Pirates.
On Saturday, they led by 10 points at halftime before losing to another Class A power, Union High, by six. Union High had been the power that challenged Wampum out west during the 1950s and 1960s. This year the Scotties’ football team reached the state final, and their boys and girls teams both have advanced to the state final four.
At some places–like Williamsburg–that small-town sports dream remains. Even if the Lady Pirates didn’t capture the state title this season, the town and the school and the programs remain. There’s always hope for another title run, a luxury many other small schools no longer enjoy.
