Thursday, September 9, 2010

Legends of the Fall, Chapter 5


Charleroi High School is one of three area schools with a football team that has won 500-plus games. (Monessen and Washington are members of the 600-win club.) The Cougars are 522-389-60 since starting football in 1905. The list of legends to have played at Charleroi Stadium, which is supposed to be in its last year, is extraordinary.

One of those players is Carl Aschman, a Charleroi graduate who was a tough-as-nails center. Aschman landed at Washington & Jefferson College, where he earned All-East honors and played in the 1929 East-West Shrine Game.

That same year, Aschman was hired as the football coach at California High School and it was in the coaching profession where Aschman truly made his mark. He coached California from 1929-33 before coaching at Brownsville from 1934-40. In 1940, Brownsville won the WPIAL Class AAA title. From there, Aschman moved to Aliquippa where his name remains part of the Quips mighty mystique.

From 1941 to 1964, Aschman coached Aliquippa to a 189-88-10 record with WPIAL titles in 1952, 1956 and 1964.

A month after Aschman's death in 1971, Aliquippa named its stadium after the coach. To this day, "The Pit" still bears Aschman's name.

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