George Guido: Nearly 18,000 fans watched Ken High win a defacto WPIAL title game

By: George Guido
Saturday, November 6, 2021 | 3:50 PM

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Imagine a WPIAL regular-season game drawing 17,967 fans and that same game turning into a de facto championship game more than a week later.

That’s what happened in 1946 when undefeated New Kensington and Vandergrift squared off Nov. 1 at Forbes Field. Interest in the game was so widespread that the site had to be moved.

In those days, a team had to go undefeated and untied to remain in WPIAL title consideration.

Interest in high school football was high. World War II had ended a year earlier, and life was getting back to normal as millions of troops returned from war duty. There was no television, and other than the abundance of movie theaters, people looked toward high school football for something to do.

New Kensington — affectionately known as Ken High to most anyone in the area — had been to the 1945 WPIAL Class AA title game, losing to Donora.

Vandergrift was enjoying success at what was then the highest enrollment classification. Lights had been installed at Davis Field several weeks earlier to accommodate the arrival of minor-league baseball the following summer.

Nocturnal football became an immediate hit in Vandergrift as 7,000 fans showed up for the nighttime debut, a 19-0 victory over Penn Hills. The attendance was equaled the following week in a 13-0 win over Har-Brack.

At the time, Ken High was playing home games at George Leslie Memorial Stadium in Arnold, a facility too small for the scheduled home game against Vandergrift.

The decision was made to move the game to Forbes Field. Vandergrift offered to host the game, and Blue Lancers coach John Karrs was unhappy about the move.

But it didn’t quell interest as Vandergrift brought 30 busloads of fans to Pittsburgh. Businessman Ben Namey of New Kensington also provided bus transportation by merely calling him at 5275 — only four-digit telephone numbers were necessary at the time.

Getting to the game wasn’t easy. There was no Route 28 Expressway at the time, no Parkway East, no Route 56 Bypass.

The game itself

Ken High dominated from the start. End Tony Kotowski scored on the Statue of Liberty play, taking the ball from Willie Thrower’s passing stance for an 11-yard run.

Soon after, Dick Tanburo trapped Vandergrift quarterback Jack Veitch in the end zone for a safety.

George “Cubby” France threw to Kotowski for a 19-yard scoring pass, and Kotowski caught another from Thrower later on for a 19-0 Red Raiders win to complete the regular season.

The season then was in limbo. Ken High had to wait and see what happened to the other unbeaten teams, Duquesne and Ambridge. A win by either would have forced New Ken to engage in a winner-take-all title game.

But Ellwood City pulled off a major upset over Ambridge the following Friday, and Duquesne was tumbled from the unbeaten ranks by Redstone one night later.

Duquesne then protested its loss, stating that Redstone had a 29-day teachers strike and shouldn’t have played because it would not satisfy the PIAA’s 20-day absence rule.

WPIAL officials met at Child’s Restaurant in Pittsburgh; there was no WPIAL headquarters at the time. WPIAL president Mark Funk disallowed the claim, saying “it was the most absurd protest to come before me or the decision board,” and Ken High was declared Class AA champion on the strength of beating Vandergrift.

So 17,967 fans saw what amounted to a WPIAL title game — and didn’t know it until 10 days later.