Baldwin Highlanders - 1975 & 1988 AAA

LOWER BURRELL - Jan Battista may now know what he was getting himself into by coming back to the Penn Hills Hockey program that he and his brother Joe [you may know him as the Penn State Hockey Coach who has lead the Icers to 4 Straight ACHA Division 1 National Championships and 7 overall or maybe just Joe Ba] played for during the late 1970’s [on some pretty good Penn Hills teams by the way]. Jan inherited a Penn Hills program which has fluttered ever since Jerry ‘Dr Evil’ Bass was politically removed by a self serving group of parents, who did not have the best interest of the hockey program in mind when the ousted the coach and has suffered ever since. Anyway, Jan is doing his best to right the program, which has been around since 1971 as one of the original programs in Western Pennsylvania, since it took the ice against Churchill on March 21, 1971. Jan may want to sit and have a little chat with Bruce Cameron, who has been involved with Hempfield Hockey and more importantly given over 20 years to hockey as a teacher of the game and assistant coach for the Hempfield Hockey program and has finally taken the Head Coaching position. Bruce is a true builder from the beginning of Westmoreland Hockey during the early 80’s and a fixture at the Kirk Nevin Arena, who along with people like Dave Small, who built the Greensburg Salem program, Andy Cesarski, builder of the Latrobe program, Butch Marrietta, builder of the Greensburg CC program, Gary Swingle, builder of the Franklin Regional program are part of a group of people who served hockey for the betterment of the game of hockey. Little did I know until last night. Bruce shared with me that he was involved with my HS Hockey coach Dan Sheehy, in bringing hockey schools to Greensburg in the early 1980’s when all of the aforementioned programs began. One thing Hempfield has had over the past few years has been some prolific scoring and that has been a trademark under Bernie Piesek and Bob Morningstar through the mid to late 1990’s, but it was Penn Hills who got the early jump in this one as Eddie Obenauff scored at 13:26 and Willie Banks at 11:37 to give the Indians a 2-0 lead. Hempfield’s top line answered in the opening period as Dan Margonari and John Zurenski, scored at 8:48 and 4:55 respectively to tie the game. The Indians regained the lead as the crafty Ryan Jones tickled the twine with just 0:46 left to give PH the lead 3-2 at the break. On to the second and the game really opened up as Hempfield took the lead 4-3 on goals by Jordan Bishop at 13:36 and Brian Bittner at 11:12. Ryan Jones lit the lamp again at 7:56 of the middle period, but it didn’t last long as the Spartans Jeff Robinson and John Zurenski scored 27 seconds apart at 7:56 and 7:29 for a 6-4 Hempfield lead. Jones answered completing the hat trick less than a minute later at 6:16 and Penn Hills was within one. The backbreaking goal came with 2:48 left in the second as Margonari combined with Robinson and Zurenski to extend the lead to 7-5 for Hempfield. The game was still in reach foe Penn Hills as Eddie Obenauff missed a golden opportunity to cut the lead to 7-6, but just shot wide of Hempfield goaltender Julian Yakubisin. The Spartans smelled victory as Jordan Bishop scored on the wraparound at 12:48 and Zurenski completed the hat trick on a nice pass from Margonari at 11:46 and the rout was on 9-5. Jones added his fourth goal on the evening to cut the lead to 9-6, but Jake Belli put the exclamation point on a 10-6 victory for Hempfield and win # 1 for the Spartans and Bruce Cameron in 2003-2004.