His school record of 42 points in a Hempfield game now stands for 27 years. And David Shearer won’t lie: he’s proud of it.
Long angered by his lack of recruiting by college coaches, Shearer, 45, is humbled by such an impressive high school accomplishment.
“That thing is still hanging,” he said.
But Shearer is quick to note that Leon Agnew scored 41 in a game for the Spartans before going on to play four years at West Virginia. Meanwhile, Shearer’s only college offer was from Westminster (Pa.), then an NAIA school that would become an NCAA Division II member, where he spent three seasons before eventually settling in Division III.
“I was recruited by a coach (Ron Galbraith) who ended up leaving, and the new coach (Jim Duffler) didn’t want me,” Shearer said. “I went to WCCC (Westmoreland County Community College), which didn’t have a basketball program. I was just working out at the gym and made my own highlighter tape and sent it to schools.
“The only one that gave me an offer was Clarion.”
Imagine this. On April 26, Shearer will be honored at the NCAA Division II school, now officially known as PennWest Clarion, with his induction into the Clarion Sports Hall of Fame.
He is one of six new members of the class.
“It’s a nice achievement. I’m really happy about that,” Shearer said.
From 1999-2002, Shearer helped the Clarion men’s basketball team compile a 73-36 record. In his junior year, he helped the Golden Eagles win their first Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference championship, leading the team in steals (83) and earning Division II All-America honors.
Then-coach Ron Reiter said of Shearer, “He does the little things that don’t show up on the stat sheet.”
Apparently, the 6-foot-4 Shearer has done the “big things” as well. He is 12th all-time in scoring (1,248 points) and seventh in rebounds (794) and is just one of five Clarion players with 1,200 career points and 700 career rebounds.
He also recorded more than 200 steals in his career.
“There was this misconception about David that he was just a tough guy,” said former Butler star Aaron Epps, Shearer’s teammate for two seasons at Clarion. “But he was a skilled basketball player. He was a great mid-range shooter and could get into the paint and cause problems for opponents.”
Other inductees are Barbara Buck (1984-87), women’s volleyball; Jeff Golias (1979-82) and Alfonso Hoggard (2007-10), football; Diane (Picking) Watson (1977-79), women’s swimming; and Mike Kalinowski (1987-92, 1997-2023), radio play-by-play.
Golias literally wears the nickname of his college alma mater on his sleeve as the owner of North Huntingdon-based Golden Eagle Equipment, an outdoor power equipment dealer.
A product of Chartiers Valley, Golias played center for then-NAIA Clarion from 1980-82 before signing a free agent contract with the Pittsburgh Steelers, who released him to camp following an injury.
While Shearer’s name at Hempfield is among the leaders in most statistical categories, it was his unsympathetic approach on the basketball court that sometimes stood out the most.
“Dave always had a chip on his shoulder,” said Epps, a point guard. “He was an under-the-radar guy in Hempfield, very underrated.”
Shearer said, “I didn’t even start on my ninth-grade team at Hempfield.”
But he turned out to make quite an impression with the Spartans, scoring more than 1,000 points in his career.
As a senior, he was the only WPIAL player at a Class 4A school (then the PIAA’s largest classification) to average at least 20 points.
“I had all the accolades, but all I saw were guys around me going to play college ball,” said Shearer, whose final season saw Hempfield settle for a 22-6 record after losing to Franklin Regional in the WPIAL semifinals .
Current Hempfield coach Bill Swann, then an assistant at Connellsville, remembers Shearer as “one of the most competitive, toughest kids to ever play at Hempfield.”
Shearer, who is employed as operations manager at McKees Rocks-based NCCM Co., carried that attitude to Clarion, where he entered his freshman year wondering what role he would play.
“They just brought in two transfers from Hartford, which was Division I at the time,” Shearer said. “I remember calling my dad and saying, ‘I have no idea if I’m going to play licks.’ Not five minutes had passed when my name was called. I went in there and had six points and 12 rebounds in 12 minutes. The next game they started me and the two Hartford guys ended up leaving.”
Shearer won PSAC Freshman of the Year, even though his numbers weren’t impressive.
“We were the 13th-placed team then, but my stats were very modest,” Shearer said. “I didn’t blow anything up, but I hit all the boxes.”
Shearer’s biography in the Clarion Hall of Fame dispenses such adoring labels as “very talented,” “physical” and “hard-nosed.”
“He was a great player and they had a lot of good teams in Hempfield at the time,” said Swann, who is in his second year coaching at Hempfield.
Epps, who received multiple Division I offers but was homebound, first attending Clarion and then transferring to Slippery Rock, had no problem recalling his time with Shearer during those first two fleeting years.
“The only time (Butler) played Hempfield was in the playoffs. We didn’t play the Westmoreland County schools a lot,” Epps said. “But they caught us and Dave was a great player back then. He was even more impressive in college.
“He was stubborn.”
Dave McCall is a writer for TribLive.
