Indiana University of Pennsylvania Athletics

 
Don't get the idea that the fact Theresa Piatak 's past and present whereabouts as listed above are one and the same connotes for a minute that she has not been a pioneer.For that's exactly the term that best describes this 1981 IUP graduate who not only established a number of milestones for her sport, and in behalf of all women's athletics, but has seen them remain largely intact. Most familiar to IUP roundball followers is that Piatak was the first woman to score more than I ,000 points.

From 1977 to '81 (long before the three-point shot went into the rule book), she tallied 1,352 points. That 's an average of 15.7 per game.Her point total and average game each still rank third on IUP's all-time lists. Her total is just 19 points shy of second place, her average one point short.A four-year starter for coach Lois Nesbitt Clark, Terri continues to hold the Crimson and Gray record for career field goals (583). Her 80 per cent free throw accuracy is an alltime second best. And, lest you get the idea that she did not share the basketball, she is on the chart of career assist leaders. Piatak's best season came as a senior, when she posted 426 points, averaging an IUP all-time third-high 18.5, thanksto 180 field goals and her team-record 89.3 foul shooting percentage. Her 33 points against Charleston are five shy of the Indian record. Her 14 field goals (scored three times) are one fewer than the team record. All of the above, though, just begins to tell the story of Terri Piatak.

For example, her basketball accomplishments were done while she completed a health and physical education major so adeptly that she graduated magna cum laude. Then,in1987, she completed a master's degree at IUP in sports sc1ences. Employed since 1982 in the Somerset County town of Meyersdale as an elementary physical education teacher, she compiled a 129-69 record as girls' basketball coach there that includes a 1994-95 record setting 25-4 season. That followed junior high championships in 1990 and '91.In '95, though, Piatak "retired" from coaching to devote more time to building an officiating career that has already seen her assigned to not only high school but college games that include Division I contests in the Northeast Conference.

This new tum in Terri's career takes her in the footsteps of her late father, Michael, a 25-year PIAA official who passed away this last summer after providing what Piatak describes as her sense of direction in athletics. She extends similar debts to her mother, Josephine, and older sister, Mary Clare, who is a teacher at Bishop McCort High School in Johnstown.