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A lack of rich history in the Cambria Heights football program did not serve as a deterrent to Jarrod Lewis during his junior year of high school two decades ago.
The current Highlanders coach made a proclamation that he would lead his school to heights it had never reached when he was asked a question for his yearbook.
“The question we were asked was what we saw ourselves doing in 20 years,” Lewis said. “There were some funny comments in there looking back (like Ted Gunther declaring he’d be foiling evil plans with household items like MacGyver), but I was dead serious. I look back now, and I forgot I had said it, but a guy that played football with me called me this summer and said he was looking through our yearbook, and he said, ‘do you know what you said you were going to do in 20 years?’ He showed me that I had said I wanted to lead Cambria Heights to its first undefeated season. It’s always been a goal of mine, believe it or not.
“I told the kids that it’s crazy I wrote that back then, but it was always a goal of mine. I really wanted to be a football coach, and I was hoping I would be fortunate enough to be a head coach, especially at the school I graduated from. Looking back in high school, I had some great coaches who were great influences on me with Dave Caldwell and Tank Miller. Those guys made me want to be a coach and hoped I could have an impact on a later generation of players.”
Cambria Heights finished off its first perfect regular season in school history with a victory over Purchase Line last week and stands at 9-0 heading into Saturday’s Appalachian Bowl matchup with WestPAC champion Windber.
“He told us Monday in practice about (the yearbook),” Cambria Heights senior fullback Ryan Haluska said. “We didn’t believe him, so he actually brought his junior-year yearbook, and it asked where they saw themselves in 20 years, and sure enough, he said ‘coaching Cambria Heights to its first undefeated season.’ It’s surreal and special. I couldn’t be prouder of this team for accomplishing what we have so far and helping make it come true.”
The Highlanders, who just moved into the Heritage Conference this season, won what may have been the school’s first outright conference title, but ironically this year’s team has plenty of similarities to the first Heights team that was part of a championship in 1965.
Where it started
Cambria Heights’ football schedule looked a lot different in 1965 than it does in 2021. This year’s Highlanders don’t have many common opponents with that team beyond Northern Cambria and Homer-Center (then known as Laura Lamar). But the game Larry Cicero, a 1967 graduate who was a junior halfback on that 1965 team, remembers the most vividly was against Cambria Heights’ opponent Saturday in the Appalachian Bowl — Windber.
“It was a great season,” Cicero said. “We went 8-2. We played Windber, of all teams, for the Mountain Conference championship. We squeaked out a 21-20 win over them. Windber may be a little bit this year like they were way back then, because my biggest memory of that game was that was the hardest I have ever been hit in my football career.”
Cicero said both teams turned to their star players.
“We had a wide receiver by the name of John Wagner, and Windber had a running back named Billy Hunter,” Cicero said. “It was kind of the Wagner-Hunter show, actually. Wagner scored three touchdowns, and Hunter scored three touchdowns. We happened to convert our extra point where they missed. We had a hard-nosed football team. At the time, Windber was always tough, so we knew it was going to be a battle going in, which I really think it’s going to be the same this coming Saturday.”
In 1965, Cambria Heights was playing just its sixth year of football since a jointure of Hastings, Patton and Carrolltown High Schools in 1960. The Highlanders were coached by Stephen “Guz” Bakajza, who played college football for Oklahoma A&M, now known as Oklahoma State, in the 1946 Sugar Bowl. Bakajza, who died in 2000 at the age of 78, was recognized as an NCAA champion for his efforts on that team in 2016 when the American Football Coaches Association declared his 1945 Oklahoma A&M team the college football national champion.
Twenty years after being a player on a title-winning team, he led Heights to a share of its own championship.
“In the yearbook it says they shared it,” Lewis said. “If they won it, it was shared. For the conference record, I think Cambria Heights was 4-0, and Somerset or someone, I’m not sure exactly, was 5-0, and they were undefeated while Cambria Heights that year was 8-2. So, I don’t know if they had an overall tiebreaker or they got a share of the conference title. At best, they shared the title.”
Cicero said conference championships didn’t have the same meaning when he played as they do now.
“It wasn’t back then the way it is today,” Cicero said. “The emphasis was certainly not on the conferences the way it is today. We found ourselves in a position to be playing for the Mountain Conference championship. It wasn’t something we had our goals set on from the beginning of the season. It kind of presented itself to us, and we went into the game that week knowing we would be playing for it.”
More similarities
There’s a good chance Ryan Haluska will be carrying the ball on Saturday considering he’s rushed for a team-high 892 yards on 167 carries so far this season. In 1965, there was also a Haluska lining up at fullback — senior Thomas Haluska.
“Tom was a contributor,” Cicero said. “Ryan is Gary Haluska’s grandson, and I think Gary and Tom were cousins. I’m not sure of that, but Tom was a hard-running fullback in those days, just like Ryan is now. I think there’s a lot of pretty cool tie-ins with this team and our team.”
The current senior fullback was caught off guard when asked about another Haluska in the backfield of a championship Heights team.
“That’s special, I didn’t know that,” Ryan Haluska said. “Wow. It’s crazy how things can connect like that sometimes.”
Neither squad looked too far ahead during their championship season.
“You don’t really think about making history prior to the season,” Lewis said. “We were coming into a new conference and didn’t know a lot of the teams. We were looking at trying to win each week. When we got to the River Valley game, we knew if we won, we won the conference outright. That’s when the kids really started to think about it. Having the chance to win a conference title was something that was very motivating to us. We were happy to take care of business.”
Cicero, who has attended every Cambria Heights game this season except the Purchase Line game, said the approach has reminded him of his own team.
“Coach Lewis seems to be doing a really good job at keeping these kids focused on taking things week to week, which is what we did also,” Cicero said. “Our head coach was Coach Bakajza, who was more laid back and took care of the micro game, and (assistant) Coach (John) Nevins was the get-people-fired up coach. They had us ready to play each week.”
Claiming the ‘Coal Bowl’
Cicero, who scored a key touchdown in Heights’ season-opening 12-7 win over Adams-Summerhill in 1965, said one of his team’s best wins came in a 26-0 triumph over rival Northern Cambria.
The schools, separated by around 10 miles, played annually in a game dubbed the Coal Bowl prior to the teams entering different conferences, which made it impossible to play the game unless both schools missed the playoffs.
“There’s no comparison between the Northern Cambria game today and what it was back then,” Cicero said. “The Northern Cambria-Cambria Heights game throughout my high school career was akin to the Pitt-Penn State game at the collegiate level back then. The rivalry kind of fell away when the conferences were developed. The kids today have no idea what it was like back then. It was intense.
“The 1964 Northern Cambria team had the Nastasi twins (Joe and Tony), Greg Kuhn and Frank Frontino and were state champions in basketball. They were just a butt-kicking team in football that whole year as well. We lost to them 40-something to 6 or whatever in the 1964 season, so it was great to come back and beat Northern Cambria in 1965.”
Now that both the Colts and Highlanders are in the Heritage Conference together, the rivalry resumed this season. Cambria Heights won 35-0 to expand its lead in the overall series to 24-21-1.
“They tried holding the Coal Bowl at the end of the season for a couple years, but with teams going into the playoffs, it just wasn’t working out,” Cicero said. “We did have that a couple times in the past few years, but it just wasn’t the same. With them back in the same conference, I hope it can be rekindled. I’d love to see it get back, even close to what it once was.”
Lean years
Following the 8-2 finish in 1965, the Cambria Heights football program struggled to string together wins. It took the Highlanders more than 30 years to win some form of another championship.
“There’s also some speculation around 1996,” Lewis said. “Cambria Heights won Section 1 of the Laurel Highlands, and they moved playoffs up, so they were declared co-champions. There’s speculation around that team, but I would say we are definitely the first Cambria Heights team to outright win a conference title. For whatever reason, there are no banners up for either of those years, and there are banners up there in other sports for winning the Mountain Conference and Laurel Highlands, so I’m not real sure. Before I got here, the history of Cambria Heights was not kept very well.”
When Lewis was hired before the 2011 season, Cambria Heights had not won more than five games in a season since 1998 when he was still in high school. The Highlanders went 5-5 that season, which was considered a breakout year for the team.
“We were coming off nine wins in nine years when I took over the job,” Lewis said. “But I believed in the kids at Cambria Heights. I was coaching junior high at the time. I thought we just needed some stability. We had so many different head coaches throughout the years, and I was hoping that when I got hired that I could maybe do it for five years and provide some stability. In addition to having great kids, I was able to get fantastic coaches. This is my 11th year, and a lot of my coaches have been with me for 11 years, and I think that’s crucial as well. My first staff, I had three former head coaches in Dave Caldwell (who coached the 1996 Heights team), Darren McLaurin and Tank Miller, all Cambria Heights guys. In addition to that, Drew Thomas, who has been at Cambria Heights for 25 years, came back on my staff. It was a special thing, because they all helped a new generation of Cambria Heights athletes.”
Windber rematch
Fifty-six years after Cambria Heights defeated Windber during a championship season, the Highlanders will try to do it again Saturday when they take on the Ramblers at Penns Manor in the annual Appalachian Bowl that pits the Heritage Conference champion against the WestPAC winner.
“We’re very honored to be part of the Heritage Conference,” Lewis said. “We’re very honored to be part of the Appalachian Bowl, and we’re happy to represent the Heritage Conference this year. The kids are very excited, because you are pitting two undefeated teams against each other. Windber is going to be a great challenge. They return 20 or 21 starters from last year’s team that gave a very good Chestnut Ridge team all they could handle in the District 5 playoffs. They have great size up front and great skill position guys. Obviously, their offense is a challenge to stop, and their defense is big, strong and physical. We know they are going to provide a challenge. It’s going to be a battle.”
Windber enters the game 8-0 and is coming off a 62-7 victory over a solid Portage team after not playing two weeks ago.
“Nine times out of 10, when we have a bye week, we just don’t play well the next week,” Windber coach Matt Grohal said. “Teams want to keep momentum going, but we certainly needed that week to get healthy going into the Portage game. We were firing on all cylinders, and we’re pretty healthy for it being Week 10. We’re excited for where we’re at, and we have a great opportunity on Saturday.”
Grohal is impressed with Heights.
“They are a handful up front,” Grohal said. “They are big and physical. They like to play smash-mouth football. Defensively, we’ve been pretty good, but they are certainly going to push our limits. Haluska has had a great season for them, and their quarterback (Ty) Stockley does a great job. They have a bunch of great skill players, and they can go on a lot of long drives. We have to try and get them into some three-and-out situations and keep that potent offense off the field.”
Changing the culture
Regardless of the outcome of Saturday’s game, Cambria Heights is no longer a team overlooked by anyone in the area.
The Highlanders were competitive in the ultra-tough Laurel Highlands Athletic Conference under Lewis and made it to the District 6 Class 2A championship game last season for the first time in school history.
“Making it there last year was a program-changer,” Haluska said. “We just want to get right back to where we were last year. We know what it felt like to play in that game, and we want to go right back. Our goal was to win the conference and get back to the District 6 title game. We want to keep that train going and get there.”
Cambria Heights will be either the top seed or the No. 2 seed in this year’s postseason based off the results of this week’s games.
“When you get to the playoffs, everybody is good,” Lewis said. “Only eight teams make it in a very competitive 2A field this year. Every team is very capable. We may be on a different side of the bracket this year, but a number of times in the past, we were the underdogs and won games. You see that every year where there are lower seeds that are battle tested. Ultimately, you want to be playing your best football at the end of the year.
“Our community is excited about the chance to have a home playoff game. That’s something that’s never been done, but we know from our own experience that once you get into the playoffs that anything can happen. All of these programs in the Class 2A field have strong histories, coaches and rosters.”
Lewis is proud to be part of a turnaround that perhaps only he saw coming as a junior in high school, but he doesn’t want people to forget about the teams that came before this year’s championship squad.
“We have always kind of gotten a bad reputation with Cambria Heights football for not having a rich program history,” Lewis said. “Some years, we’ve earned it. But we’ve always had tough kids, and a lot of times those tough kids have competed and did some pretty good things that sometimes are forgotten.”
One thing is certain — the players who came before this year’s team at the small school in Patton certainly appreciate the history being made.
“When they won the Heritage Conference, they came home to a firetruck parade,” Cicero said. “I just swelled with pride to even see that. It means a lot to this area to see them do what they’re doing, and I hope they go all the way.”
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