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WPIAL Hall of Fame induction can’t-miss for Tanisha Wright

By: HSSN Staff
Saturday, June 2, 2018 | 10:14 PM

A day after scoring 15 points for the Minnesota Lynx, Tanisha Wright caught a morning flight to Pittsburgh, choosing to skip her WNBA team’s upcoming West Coast trip to attend Saturday’s WPIAL Hall of Fame induction ceremony.

“My team will go and handle this one without me,” said Wright, a former West Mifflin and Penn State star.

When Wright signed with the Lynx in March, ending her one-year hiatus from the league, she was clear that attending the WPIAL ceremony was a commitment she planned to keep.

“It was all put into works before I even started to talk about coming back,” said Wright, who was among eight former athletes, three coaches, one contributor, one game official and one championship team honored with a banquet at the DoubleTree in Green Tree.

“This is actually really, really cool,” Wright said, “because for me and my career, I haven’t had a lot of accolades in Pennsylvania. For me to be able to have this opportunity is nice.”

Also inducted in the WPIAL’s 12th class were Gateway’s Curtis Bray, Laurel Highlands’ Breehana Jacobs, Gateway’s Justin King, Waynesburg’s Coleman Scott, Baldwin’s Lee Shaffer, Moon’s A.Q. Shipley and Gateway’s Terry Smith, along with coaches Tom Nola, Chuck DeVenzio, Phil Bridenbaugh, official Anthony Notaro, WPIAL administrator Patrick Ratesic and the 1989 Sto-Rox softball team.

Mars wrestler Max Lamm, who lost his vision to a rare eye cancer, received the John Challis Courage Award.

Each inductee is part of a permanent display at the Western Pennsylvania Sports Museum. Bray, Bridenbaugh, DeVenzio and Notaro were inducted posthumously.

Sports broadcaster Chris Shovlin was the ceremony’s host.

Wright, a 12-year WNBA veteran, graduated from West Mifflin in 2001 with 2,477 career points, 1,100 rebounds, 594 assists and a WPIAL title as a senior. The 51 points she scored as a junior in a triple-overtime loss were a WPIAL championship record.

The 5-foot-11 guard scored 1,995 career points at Penn State, was the 12th overall pick in the 2005 WNBA draft and has since made the WNBA all-defensive team five times.

She stepped away from the WNBA after the 2016 season to coach as a college assistant at Charlotte but didn’t call it a retirement.

“I took a year off, really just time to mentally step away from the game,” she said. “I was able to get a little bit rejuvenated and really missed competing at a high level. … Once I put it out there that I was interested in coming back, I got a couple of teams interested and wanting to talk.”

In the first six games back, she’s averaged 16 minutes off the bench, 5.5 points and scored in double figures twice. She missed Sunday’s game at Los Angeles but will rejoin the lineup Thursday in Washington.

Wright is proud that the WNBA, now more than two decades old, has provided a goal for today’s high school players.

“It gives them something that they can strive toward,” Wright said. “It gives them ambition to really push their game now, so that they can get to that level. Young girls are talking about being Maya Moore and Sue Bird and people like that.”

Around Western Pennsylvania, girls in years past talked about Swin Cash and Suzie McConnell-Serio, two WPIAL stars who found much success. Nowadays, Wright joins them as another successful role model for WPIAL girls to admire.

“If they do, I’m excited about that,” Wright said. “I’m excited that I was able to help Western Pennsylvania.”

Wright was one of two active professional athletes in this year’s hall of fame class, joining Shipley, a center for the Arizona Cardinals.

Shipley was a two-sport star at Moon and later earned national football honors at Penn State. But in high school, he also played center for a Moon basketball team that won WPIAL and PIAA title in 2004, a fact his NFL teammates don’t believe, he said laughing.

“Most of my teammates look at me and say, there’s no way that he could have played basketball,” the 6-foot-1, 307-pound Shipley told the crowd. “I got the same look from Tanisha a minute ago.”

About 15 members from the 1989 Sto-Rox softball team returned home for the ceremony, coach Bill Palermo said, some traveling from as far as California. Among them was pitcher Bonnie Gasior, who threw the first no-hitter in PIAA softball championship history.

The softball team planned to gather in a hotel hospitality room after the ceremony and rewatch a 90-minute highlight video from their championship season.

“It’s nice to see them all, because it feels like we played and won it last week,” Palermo said.

Nola, who won six WPIAL football titles and four PIAA titles in 12 years at Clairton, pointed out three former Bears in the crowd: Tyler Boyd, Terrish Webb and Titus Howard, who contributed much to the team’s record 66-game winning streak.

“Every time I talked I always tried to say ‘we’ because it wasn’t my team,” Nola said, “it was our team.”

There was a Gateway-heavy contingent with former Gators athletes Bray, Smith and King earning induction.

Smith was a two-sport star at Gateway who later set receiving records at Penn State and ultimately became a successful coach at two alma maters. He and Bray, who was a national Gatorade Player of the Year and later starred at Pitt, led the Gators to a WPIAL football title in 1986.

King, who is Smith’s stepson, was the state Gatorade Player of the Year in 2004 and later starred at Penn State.

DeVenzio won WPIAL basketball titles at Springdale and Ambridge, where his 1967 team is considered one of the all-time greats. He ranks fifth among WPIAL basketball coaches in wins with a 659-255 record.

Jacobs, a 2007 graduate, won eight WPIAL track gold medals and PIAA gold six times as one of the state’s all-time best sprinters. At South Carolina, she was a five-time All-American.

Scott, a 2004 graduate and Olympic bronze medalist in 2012, won four WPIAL and three PIAA wrestling titles at Waynesburg, where his career record was 156-12. He was a three-time Big 12 champion at Oklahoma State and three-time NCAA place-winner.

Now the coach at North Carolina, Scott said he was honored to be forever associated with the WPIAL.

“This is a place that’s known for what we do best,” Scott said, “and in my mind, that’s wrestling.”

Shaffer, a 1955 Baldwin graduate, earned ACC basketball player of the year at North Carolina, was the No. 5 pick in the NBA Draft and earned NBA All-Star honors. He was unable to attend Saturday’s ceremony.

Bridenbaugh coached New Castle from 1922-55 and owns seven WPIAL football titles. His record was 265-65-25.

Notaro was a WPIAL official for 47 years in baseball, football, basketball, softball and volleyball.

Ratesic, a former athlete, coach and athletic director, rose to WPIAL president. The former University of Miami defensive back also served as a longtime football official.

“A lot of people don’t know that the WPIAL is a bigger league than some states in this country,” Ratesic told the crowd. “We have a better tournament than the state tournament — I had to get that shot in there. We do a better job for our schools and for our athletes. I’m very proud to be associated with (the WPIAL).”

Chris Harlan is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at charlan@tribweb.com or via Twitter @CHarlan_Trib.

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