The recent passing of Lou Cimarolli has brought back memories of Bridgeville’s glory days in high school football, over seven decades ago. In the 1940s Bridgeville still had its own high school, and the cultural tie between the school and the community was powerful. Pride in the high school was closely linked to pride in our home town.
High school rivalries were also community rivalries. The three-way rivalry between Bridgeville, Carnegie, and Clark (Scott Township) was particularly passionate in the Universal Cyclops Steel mill where fans of all three teams worked. Its focus was the wall of on a furnace where scores of games involving the three teams were recorded. The depth of ignominy was the requirement that a fan of the losing team be responsible for recording the score for perpetuity.
Perhaps even more passionate was the rivalry between Bridgeville and its country cousins in South Fayette, a series peppered with upsets of previously undefeated teams. Bridgeville had good teams in the 1930s and finally won a WPIAL Class B championship in 1942 with a 12 to 0 shellacking of Leetsdale. The next few years were disappointing, culminating in a perfect nine losses season in 1946.
The next year, thanks to Buff Donelli, Bridgeville High School suddenly had a new head coach, Bob Hast. Hast had played for Donelli at Columbia University. In addition to being an outstanding football lineman, Hast was an astute student of the game.
The 1947 team rewarded their new coach with a victory over Carnegie in their first game, then lost three close games in a row, before ending the season with five straight victories. From “0 and 9” to “6 and 3” was quite a turnaround. Local fans were eager for the start of the 1948 season.
Then Loyal “Joe” Brown, projected to be the starting fullback was struck down by appendicitis and lost for the season. Fortunately we had Matt Noark as a replacement. The first game was a romp over West Bethlehem, 24 to 0. Noark scored a touchdown before suffering a concussion.
His replacement was tackle Leo Maruzewski, called upon to replicate his older brother, Ed, who switched from tackle to running back to become the star of the championship 1942 team. Leo scored one touchdown, but concluded he preferred hitting people to being hit, and returned to his old position at tackle. Next up, junior Sam Patton sparked the team to an exciting 20 to 19 win over Carnegie.
Cecil and Bethel were then conquered easily, but Patton was lost because of a broken elbow. At this point Hast proved to be a genius by moving guard Lou Cimarolli to fullback. Jake Schullek moved from tackle to guard, Joe Stalma to tackle, and Anthony Capozzoli to center. The result was a powerful, well-balanced team which easily ran through the rest of the season without a loss.
Prior to Cimarolli’s move to fullback, the team’s “bread and butter” play had been LF 25-I, a trap play that seemed to guarantee six yards every time it was properly executed. Cimarolli was so quick accelerating and so adept at finding open space that it suddenly became a potential touchdown each time it was called. He scored eleven touchdowns in the final five games, which culminated in a Class B title win over Marion, 24 to 0.
Remarkably, the wonderful 1948 season was surpassed by 1949. With the exception of the Clark game, the 1949 team ran through its nine-game schedule with very little difficulty. My father said the Clark game was the most exciting one he had ever seen, at any level. With the game tied at 14 in the final quarter, Bridgeville stopped a Clark drive inside its own ten-yard line, then ran off three consecutive long runs, with Cimarolli scooting the final twenty yards for the deciding touchdown.
The Class B championship game was a farce, with Bridgeville scoring ten touchdowns to shut out Trafford 64 to 0. Cimarolli scored four times; his shortest touchdown run was sixty-five yards long!
Lou Cimarolli was the unquestionably the star of perhaps the best Class B team of all time, but only by a small margin. That team was full of stars. Center Anthony Capozzoli and Halfback Ken Beadling were also on the eleven-man Class B All-Star team that year, along with Cimarolli. Thirteen other members of the Class of 1950 contributed to the success of the team.
Lou went on to star at Pitt, with his career interrupted by a tour of duty in the Navy. He was their leading ground gainer in 1951 and again in 1955, on a team that was ranked number eleven nationally and lost to Georgia Tech 7 to 0 in the Sugar Bowl. He was drafted by the Steelers in the eleventh round but failed to make the team in 1956.
A. E. Housman’s classic poem “To an Athlete Dying Young” discusses the concept of fame and fortune at a young age followed by its disappearance as years pass, and suggests it might be better to die young and avoid this disappointment. Lou Cimarolli’s life refutes this pessimistic philosophy.
Lou was a legitimate hero in his home town while still a teenager and “front page news” in the Pittsburgh area in his early twenties, then was happy to leave the limelight and settle into a normal existence along with the rest of us. He and his high school sweetheart Thelma had a long, productive family life together. His legacy is that of a dedicated family man, good neighbor, and good friend – the legacy most of us strive for all of our lives.
We are grateful to Lou for the excitement of watching him play and the sense of pride in our community that his accomplishments generated. More importantly we are grateful that he was able to overcome the temptations of early success and to forge a life of which any of us could be proud.