Long ago, Willie Pegram helped deliver Reading High’s first district three-peat
By Tony Zonca — MikeDragoSports.com senior contributor
The current group of Red Knights became just the second big-school team to capture three straight District 3 basketball championships.
The first? Coach Bill Horine’s 1956-57 Reading High squad.
That team featured a deliberate style of ball and its suffocating man-to-man defense left opponents looking like a Macy’s Day balloon the day after the parade — deflated.
It averaged just 53.4 points a game but allowed just 40.2 a game. It went 16-0 in the demanding Central Penn League after losing two of its first five non-league games, including a 24-point loss to Allentown High.
After that it went on a then-record 20-game winning streak that ended in a 52-46 loss to — who else — Chester in the state semifinals. It had knocked off Boyertown and Hanover to capture the historic district crown.
It is incredible that the record three-peat lasted so long. Not even those fantastic Carlisle teams featuring Jeff Lebo and Billy Owens could accomplish the feat.
Jack Slusser, who officiated in Berks County for 37 years, was a junior on that team and a sub guard.
“I don’t think we realized the accomplishment of winning three straight district titles,” Slusser says today. “The fans were just as avid as they are today. For the (second) York game (at Northwest Junior High) they lined up out the door and up and down the street.”
The star of the team was Willie Pegram, a 6-3 senior leaper who also was its defensive stopper. An AP first-team All-State pick, Pegram averaged a modest 14.4 points a game, but he also pulled down 14 rebounds a game.
He stood tall and sturdy as a lighthouse on a moonlit night, steering his teammates to safety. He had springs for legs and could dunk the ball from a standing position. Defensively he was quick and persistent. Against the Canaries he held All-State forward Butch Heffner to 10 points, 19 below his average. Pegram also schooled Heffner with 22 points and18 boards.
If Pegram had one flaw it was foul shooting. He shot just 57 percent from the line and finished with 375 points for a 26-3 team.
At the end of the season Horine told the Reading Eagle, “Willie is the most coachable player I’ve ever had. I don’t think he knows how good he really is.”
Horine, who coached one more year at RHS, giving up the reigns to Pete Carril, went 17-5 the following season. He would leave a 60-13 record behind, along with those two district titles. Charlie Dunkelberger, 144-82 in 10 seasons at the high, was responsible for the first of the three straight district titles.
Horine’s assistants were Dewey Boltz and Jut Missbach, whom Jim Gano succeeded as head coach.
The 1957 team went just six deep. Pegram was its tallest player. The others were 6-1 junior Chris Hiotis (10 ppg.); 5-9 senior point guard Sammy Preston (7.3 ppg., 5 assists); 6-0 senior Jerry Jankans, who, despite shooting an anemic 37 percent from the foul line, averaged 7.1 points and 6.4 rebounds. The others were 6-2 junior Norm Bautsch and 6-0 junior Bill Ruoff.
Just as the Red Knights were limited last season with the injury loss of Daniel Alcantara in district play, the 1957 team was not the same after Preston suffered a foot injury in the next to last game of the CPL season.
Slusser enjoyed playing for Horine, a former Red Knight who went on to a two-sport career at Muhlenberg College. He was inducted into the college’s athletic Hall of Fame in 1990.
“He was a disciplinarian and a nice man,” Slusser says about Horine.
In a previous piece in the Eagle, Slusser said: “Willie Pegram was the most underrated player in Reading High basketball history. He was also one of the nicest guys I ever met.”
Pegram ruled playground ball in the summer, playing mostly at Front and Schiller. However, he never went on to play college ball. He reportedly moved to the Washington, D.C. area where for many years he worked for the postal service.
Still delivering.
