WQED Weekly
Fifth Avenue High School Basketball Team
Clip | 7m 59sVideo has Closed Captions
This segment features a story about the Fifth Avenue High School basketball team.
This segment of WQED Weekly is a story about the Fifth Avenue High School basketball team. It features interviews with coach Elmer Cuckert and the players about how a recent teacher’s strike has kept the team from being able to compete, as well as their recent ranking as the second-best high school basketball team in the nation. This segment also includes footage from a game against Schenley High.
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WQED Weekly is a local public television program presented by WQED
WQED Weekly
Fifth Avenue High School Basketball Team
Clip | 7m 59sVideo has Closed Captions
This segment of WQED Weekly is a story about the Fifth Avenue High School basketball team. It features interviews with coach Elmer Cuckert and the players about how a recent teacher’s strike has kept the team from being able to compete, as well as their recent ranking as the second-best high school basketball team in the nation. This segment also includes footage from a game against Schenley High.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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The basketball season would never begin.
I have your autograph.
Senior forward Billy Clarke, six feet, seven inches, 195 pounds.
Junior forward Sam Clancy, six feet, six inches, 220 pounds.
Junior guard Warner McClean, five feet, six inches, 155 pounds.
Three good reasons why Fifth Avenue is considered the top team in Pennsylvania or was until the teacher's strike.
But that cut their season in half.
Now that the strike has ended, a lot of people are wondering if they can make up the ground they've lost.
One of those people is the coach.
Regression.
They follow shooting as an example or just playing for shooting if you don't get enough of that, and if you drop off that for a while, then you lose your touch.
It may might just be a little bit, but you lose it.
And consequently then you may lose a lot of ballgames, very close ballgames, perhaps, even though you're going to be careful to do better than you.
Really good.
Fifth Avenue High School is an important part of the Hill community, and things like basketball championships mean a lot, but the school is going to be closed down at the end of the year.
Next year, students will go to a new school in Beechview.
So that makes this season especially important.
And the teachers strike especially disappointing.
They practiced at a small YMCA gymnasium on the Hill, but only three days a week, not five.
And as the strike wore on, the team that was ranked second in the nation by a prominent basketball magazine before the season started, grew more and more restless.
Also to I know what I have to do.
Well then let's do it.
Let's do it.
If you want to play, you do it well, okay, that's fine with me.
Yeah.
That, we down, and let me tell you, it made me want to go and jump on, teachers.
And finally they send these other teams this plan they talk about they look good, but we know we better than them all.
And that's making us feel bad, you know, and don't have a chance.
Yeah.
See, we rated.
We rated the best.
But we want to get a chance to prove it.
You know, you can get rated.
You know anything.
But you got to prove it right.
Well, I know that they had set in their hearts and minds the fact that they were going out there and they they wanted to meet these challenges that we would have, they know the rating, being rated second in the nation.
They want to go out there with the intent and purpose of, showing the public that this rating was not just a random sampling of any specific team at all.
It was a bonafide, estimation of what they could do and.... - What kind of you come out on the street, you know, somebody see you walking down the street.
They say, what's the deal about, you know, the teachers and, the board, you know, you say, well, I haven't heard, you know, they say you going to get a chance to play?
You say you don't know, then you go further down the street.
Somebody else ask you, you know, same old thing.
Then you come out the next day, they ask you the same questions.
You don't know.
We just waiting to see.
Yeah.
And hoping that we get a chance to play.
The strike hurt players like Jim Wintner worst of all.
He's a senior.
And he was hoping to get a scholarship to a major college this year.
He's not the best player on the team.
So the scouts who come to see Fifth Avenue play won't know who he is before they arrive, but he's hoping they'll know who he is when they leave.
Trouble is a lot of them might not come now.
Most scouting is done in December and January, when Pittsburgh teams weren't playing.
So even though the season has finally started, it might just be too late for players like Jim Wintner.
Are you planning on going to college if you don't get a scholarship?
Well, I don't know.
You know, might go ahead and just give me a job and come back to school.
I dont know.
You know, they already got their diploma from college and all that, but we we ain't getting high from high school already.
Have you felt any animosity from the players because you're a teacher and you're on strike and you're the one who's keeping them.
I really don't think so.
The fellows, make a few comments now, and, then but I don't think they're directed at me.
At least I hope not.
I don't take it that way because, I think they know how I feel about it.
Finally, the strike ended and the basketball season began.
Fifths first game was a biggie against Schenley, the team they lost to in the finals of the Western Pennsylvania Championships last year.
Needless to say, it was a great game.
Because of the long layoff, the players were a little rusty, but you couldn't tell it by the roar of the crowd.
The Board of Education has worked out a plan that should let all the city teams make up most of the games missed during the teacher strike by sort of scrunching the three month season into really a month and a half.
So with the victory over Schenley as a start, the archers from Fifth Avenue now have the chance to prove just how good they really are.
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