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The Athletes of the Week - one boy and one girl - are chosen from teams in the WPIAL and City League by the Post-Gazette scholastic sports staff. Athletes of the Year: Bernard Lay, Aliquippa - Cassy Rochards, Winchester Thurston
Sunday, June 25, 2000 By Mike White, Post-Gazette Sports Writer
Aliquippa football and basketball coach Mike Zmijanac regularly talks to his players about the glorious athletic tradition at the school. He tells them about the many past championships and about the great Aliquippa athletes.
Zmijanac brings up guys like Mike Ditka, Sean Gilbert and Ty Law. Zmijanac, 56, knows a thing or two about former Quip stars. He is an Aliquippa graduate and has coached football or basketball at the school for a few decades.
"I tell the kids that Aliquippa won a lot before they got here," Zmijanac said. "Aliquippa will win after they leave, too. But I tell them that while they're here, they might as well do it all."
Bernard "Josh" Lay apparently has listened.
Lay is a 6-foot-2, 180-pound junior at Aliquippa High School. Maybe he hasn't done it all, but he sure is doing enough to make him one of the elite athletes in Western Pennsylvania.
Lay is a football and basketball star for the Quips, a quarterback-defensive back in football and a guard in basketball. There are other football-basketball standouts in Western Pennsylvania, but not at Lay's level. He was a Post-Gazette Fabulous 22 selection in football and a PG Fabulous 5 pick in basketball.
Since the Fabulous 22 was started in 1980, only three other athletes have been picked to both the football all-star team and the Fabulous 5 in the same school year. Brashear's Major Harris was selected in 1985-86, Perry's Darelle Porter in 1986-87 and New Brighton's Gabe Jackson in 1990-91.
"That's some pretty good company," Zmijanac said.
Lay's first name is Bernard, but he is known in Aliquippa as Josh.
"My mom liked that name from the bible," Lay said. "She has always called me Josh, but my dad's name is Bernard so that's my real name."
Lay is the Post-Gazette's Athlete of the Year for the 1999-2000 school year. The award takes into consideration all athletes in the WPIAL and City League. Lay will be honored at next year's Dapper Dan sports banquet.
"I'm never going to say he's the best athlete ever at Aliquippa because that's stretching into some amazing company," Zmijanac said. "But he certainly is a wonderful athlete with untapped potential and he has to be considered among the best at Aliquippa."
Lay, the son of a former Aliquippa quarterback and basketball player, has been on Aliquippa's varsity football and basketball teams since his freshman year. In football, he was the team's leading receiver as a sophomore, catching 29 passes for 637 yards and also intercepting seven passes from his defensive back position.
Lay moved to quarterback his junior year and excelled. An elusive runner and scrambler, Lay was the master of the big play. He completed 76 of 161 passes for 1,463 yards (19.3 average). He set a school record with 19 touchdown passes and averaged 31.7 yards on those passes. He was excellent at cornerback.
In basketball, Lay averaged 18 points a game as a sophomore and 16.7 as a junior. Although his average dropped this past season, he did a little bit of everything for the Quips, averaging five assists, five rebounds and five steals a game.
The most impressive Lay statistic may be the number of times he put Aliquippa teams in the win column. The football team was 11-1 and made it to the WPIAL Class AA semifinals. The basketball team was 25-7, won the WPIAL Class AA championship and made it to the PIAA semifinals.
The combined records of the teams was 36-8 (.818 winning percentage).
Lay, a young man of few words, won't say what sport he likes better.
"When I was younger, I used to think my best sport was basketball," Lay said. "Now it seems football is coming on more than basketball."
Lay's work ethic seems to be coming on, too.
"The thing about Josh is he's just now starting to realize that if he works harder at things, his potential is unlimited," Zmijanac said.
For example, Lay is lifting weights almost every day this summer.
"He would lift before, but it was kind of an afterthought," Zmijanac said. "Sometimes it takes a while to dawn on someone that maybe all this natural ability can be pushed further."
Lay's future may be in football. A number of Division I colleges are interested in him. Pitt has offered a scholarship. Lay would have more offers, but some schools are waiting to see his grades and SAT scores. Lay most likely won' t make a college decisions until after his senior season.
Lay is an exciting quarterback, but he likely will play on defense only after high school. He is excellent in man-to-man coverage.
"I think football is where he has the ability to play at a higher level," Zmijanac said. "His potential actually is limited in basketball just because of his size. In football, if you're 6-2, there's no limit to what you can do."
With one more year left at Aliquippa, Lay could do plenty.
"I expect him to keep his head on straight because fame is fleeting," Zmijanac said. "On July 15th, when we go into the gym and start really working hard for football season, he belongs to me and Aliquippa High School, until he moves to the next level. We talk a lot about the tradition at this school. We want him and everyone else to uphold it."
You've heard the story countless times, of the star high school athlete who was a child prodigy, showing special ability in just about any sport she tried in her formative years. Then there is Cassy Richards, the best girls' long jumper ever in the WPIAL, the best high school jumper in the country this year and one of the best hurdlers in the state.
It wasn't long ago that Richards wanted nothing to do with track and field because, to be blunt, she was no good. Her story was one of tears for fears. Richards used to cry at the thought of more practice and more meets. Why? She was afraid of falling over another hurdle and afraid of losing yet another race or long jump competition.
"I got her into track and field when she was 11, to try and help her with her coordination because she was goofy," said Cassy's father, Frank. "She used to cry about track all the time, but she had no choice to keep going because her daddy was making her."
Now look at Cassandra Nicole Richards. A junior at Winchester Thurston School in Oakland, she has WPIAL and PIAA gold medals, records in two different events and recently jumped well enough to be mentioned in the same breath as famous U.S. track and field star Marion Jones.
For her efforts, Richards has been selected the Post-Gazette Girls' Athlete of the Year for the 1999-2000 school year. The award takes into consideration all athletes in the WPIAL and City League, and Richards will be honored at next year's Dapper Dan sports banquet.
In mid-May, Richards won WPIAL Class AA championships in the long jump and 100-meter hurdles. A week later, she won both events at the PIAA championships and set records in both. She won the long jump with a leap of 19 feet, 103/4 inches, smashing the old record by more than nine inches. Then she won the hurdles in a record time of 14.37 seconds.
She did this despite being bothered by a right hamstring injury.
Three weeks after the PIAA championships, the 5-foot-7 Richards jumped off the state track and field map and into national prominence. She won the Golden West Invitational in Sacramento, Calif., with a leap of 20-63/4 inches. It was easily the best jump every by a WPIAL girl and the No. 1 leap in the country this year.
The Golden West Invitational is a 41-year-old event for many of the best track and field athletes in the country. Former Golden West participants have won 57 Olympic gold medals, including 30 golds. The only other girl to jump farther at the Golden West meet was Jones, who leaped 20-9 in 1993 while attending Thousand Oaks (Calif.) High School.
To put Richards' jump in perspective, consider it would have won the WPIAL Class AA boys' championship and been good enough for fifth at the boys' Class AAA meet.
Richards thinks back to her humble track beginning, chuckles and says, "I didn't think I'd ever get this far."
Six years ago when Richards was 11, her father decided to sign her up with the River City Elite track club. Richards had never before participated in any sport.
"For the first two years she cried about it," Frank Richards said. "I wanted to help her with her coordination, plus I thought she could be good someday. She was always pretty fast, but she couldn't run straight. She was never able to stay in a straight line."
The River City Elite club was coached by Alonzo Webb and it certainly had some elite athletes. One of them was Heather Hanchak, who attended Ellis School in Shadyside. Frank Richards used to read newspaper stories about Hanchak and Webb. Richards had been a runner at Central Catholic High School, so he decided to get his daughter in the club.
In the spring and summer, the club practiced five nights a week at Schenley Park.
"I don't know if I ever wanted to quit," Cassy Richards said. "I cried because I kept getting hurt in the hurdles. I always fell and I didn't like that. I was long jumping, too, but I wasn't that good. I just didn't like losing in everything all the time."
But after two years, something started happening to Richards. She became much more coordinated. Then she started to enjoy some success in district meets. Then there were victories in regional meets.
"It was a result of a lot of hard work," Frank Richards said. "Ninth grade is when we knew we had something. She was good enought to compete in some competitions against college girls."
There was a problem with Winchester Thurston, though. The school wasn't in the WPIAL or PIAA. Cassy had attended Winchester Thurston since kindergarten and, after her freshman year, the school joined the WPIAL and PIAA.
"We had a meeting with some people at Winchester Thurston and we told them we needed to be in the WPIAL," Frank Richards said. "We had been approached by Shady Side Academy. They told us they could do more for her as an athlete at Shady Side. It didn't take long for Winchester Thurston to figure out they'd better do something or they were going to lose her."
Richards still has one more year left at Winchester Thurston, one more chance to add to her collection of records and medals. This weekend she is competing in Junior Nationals in Denton, Texas. The long jump is definitely her best event, and finishing first or second at Junior Nationals will put her on the U.S. team for the World Junior Games this fall in Chile.
A good student with a 3.4 grade-point average, Richards resides in Oakland with her father, a city policeman, and her mother, Aleta, a manager for Bayer Corp. Cassy is enthralled with track and field these days, but would someday like to be a psychologist.
"I think I'd just like to give something back to the community," Richards said. "I don't know to explain it, but I've always wanted to work at a center to help women, like prostitutes or those who have been in prison."
As for her track and field future, she will certainly get a college scholarship. Beyond that?
"You know, she really doesn't talk much about that," Frank Richards said. "We just assume she wants to do well."
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