BY ERIC KNOPSNYDER AND MIKE MASTOVICH
Johnstown High’s wrestling legacy took center stage in Altoona on Saturday night, as three of the school’s legendary figures were inducted into the District 6 Wrestling Hall of Fame.
The 12 members of the Class of 2010 will be honored again before the Class AAA finals on Feb. 27 at the Altoona Fieldhouse.
There was a chain of succession at the local school in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The late John “Skip” McCray, who won the Trojans’ first state championship, served as an inspiration to former Johnstown High teammate George Azar. A few years later, a young Ed Zimmerman found a hero of his own in Azar, who grew up in the same Walnut Grove neighborhood.
‘We looked up to Skip’
McCray won two District 6 titles, one at 154 pounds in 1956 and another at 165 in 1957. He captured a Central Northwestern Regional crown en route to his state championship in 1957, when he became Johnstown High’s first PIAA wrestling champ with a 6-5 victory over Allentown’s Al Rushatz.
In an interview with former Tribune-Democrat sports writer Jim Siehl after the 1957 title run, then-Trojans coach Milan Svitchan called McCray “the smoothest” and “probably the best all-around wrestler” he coached.
Azar agreed with his former coach’s assessment.
“He was just a very smooth, strong wrestler,” Azar said. “He was very calm, one of the calmest people you would ever see. Skip was a wrestler who took advantage of an opponent’s weakness. Skip always had a counter for whatever someone was trying to do. We all looked up to Skip. That was a great, great accomplishment.”
McCray went on to Michigan State on a wrestling scholarship.
He worked for the City of New York’s department of social services for 30 years and held other positions counseling those in need after his retirement. He died of cancer in January 2006.
‘The epitome of a good athlete’
Most people remember Azar kicking his game-winning field goal in the 1958 WPIAL championship game as Johnstown High beat Clairton 3-0 in front of 11,000 fans at Pitt Stadium.
Zimmerman certainly does. Zimmerman, who was an
11-year-old with a congenital heart defect at the time, was in a Johnstown hospital listening to the game on the radio while seemingly the rest of the city was at Pitt Stadium for the game.
Even Zimmerman’s parents left his bedside to see the contest, not that he blamed them.
“I guess one of the biggest sports heroes of the city of Johns-town was George Azar – for his accomplishments in football and wrestling,” Zimmerman said. “He was a Walnut Grove boy, also. He played with the older kids and I played with the younger kids. I looked up to George as my idol through high school as the epitome of a good athlete.”
Azar also made a name for himself in baseball. He held the Johnstown Junior League single-season home run record for 30 years until Keith Williams shattered the mark in 1990.
With all of his honors, Azar’s wrestling accomplishments – he won a state championship in 1959 – sometimes get overlooked.
“So many people looked at our football season back at that time in 1958,” Azar said. “But also our wrestling team was undefeated that year (1958-59).”
Azar was a big part of that, but he said his teammates and coaches were crucial to his success.
“Everybody thinks of wrestling as an individual sport, but I can tell you, from my perspective, it really wasn’t individual,” said Azar, who won two District 6 titles and two Central Northwestern Regional crowns.
“The team pushed me to achieve what I was able to achieve. Milan Svitchan pushed me.
“I would have to wrestle our manager, Dean Stump, for two minutes, and then I’d have to wrestle our assistant coach, Don Hartnett, for two minutes. Then I’d have to wrestle Lou Gehosky at 165 and then Jerry Davitch at 154, and I’d keep going down through the weight classes.
“Then, when we got down to about 120 pounds, the coaches would say, ‘OK, if you can pin anyone, you’re done.’ That’s after 12 minutes of wrestling, and these little guys are running around and you’re making a fool of yourself. So, it was really a team effort that got me to state.”
Azar won the state title at
185 pounds in 1959 with a 6-4 win over Latrobe’s Ed Pohland.
He went on to a successful football and baseball career at Michigan State, and eventually spent 10 seasons as a special assistant to Philadelphia Eagles President Harry Gamble in the NFL before retiring. Azar also has been inducted into the Cambria County Sports Hall of Fame (1998), AAABA Hall of Fame (2006), Delaware Valley Sports Hall of Fame and Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame (2009).
For love of the sport
Though they grew up in the same neighborhood, Zimmerman and Azar were as different as their alphabetical listings.
Azar was big and brawny; Zimmerman was scrawny. Azar was a three-sport star while Zimmerman was just trying to stay healthy. A few years after Azar won his state title in wrestling, Zimmerman was happy to just get some varsity experience, even if Svitchan often put him in the lineup against the other team's top wrestler.
“Even though I wrestled all of the tough kids, he wasn’t really sacrificing,” Zimmerman said. “I knew it was a team concept.
“Back then, if you pinned in the first period, it was six points. You got five points if it was the second or third. You could save your team a point by not getting pinned in the first period.”
So that’s what Zimmerman, or “Zimmie” as he became known, tried to do. He used that same drive and determination to forge a career out of the sports world.
“I wasn’t a big, strong individual, but my goal was to go on as a phys ed teacher and a coach,” he said. “Even though I didn’t accomplish a lot on the mat, my dream was to be a coach. Not just in wrestling, but any sport. I just loved sports.”
After obtaining his teaching degree from West Chester University, Zimmerman returned to Johnstown and taught physical education at Richland. He served as an assistant coach under John Transue for a year before taking over the young program in 1969.
Zimmerman sought information from some of the state’s top coaches as to how to build Richland into a winning program.
He wrote all of those tips down in a “wrestling bible.”
Richland started elementary and junior high programs as well as a boosters club under Zimmerman’s watch, and he took an active role in the sport outside of high school as well
– he was a team leader for
10 cultural exchange teams to Hawaii, New Zealand, the Dominican Republic, Germany, England and Italy.
He led the Rams to 16 winning seasons before retiring in 2003, and lists his career record as 201-188-7.
Zimmerman coached 14 District 6 champions and six regional champions, but it was his one state champion – Eric Bowser in 1986 – that gave him his most memorable moment.
“After spending all the hours working and working and working toward (the state title), I kind of lost it,” Zimmerman said. “I picked Eric up and airplaned him around.”
Seven years after his retirement, Zimmerman is still a familiar site at wrestling matches across the state. He covered the sport for The Tribune-Democrat for five years and has broadcast it on radio and television.
“I stayed with it because I loved the sport,” Zimmerman said.
