Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania • Page 28

29 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Thursday, October 29, 1987 Pitt benefit to aid New Castle player Home has no lock on Panther's heart mm 1 By Steve Halvonik Post-Gazette Sports Writer Billy Owens, Pitt's Ail-American strong safety, grew up in the shadows of Syracuse University. He lived three blocks from Man-ley Field House and was a ballboy for the Syracuse basketball team for three years, from 1977-80. He attended Dick MacPherson's football camp, and after his all-state senior year at Christian Brothers Academy, Syracuse was the first college to offer him a scholarship. Owens turned it down. "It was a situation where you don't always need to stay in your hometown' Owens said diplomatically.

"Sometimes you have to get away to grow." Considering Syracuse had a 2-9 record in 1982, it's not surprising Owens wanted to put down roots elsewhere. But since he left town, the Orangemen have had winning records three of the past four seasons. This year, Syracuse is 7-0 and ranked eighth in the nation its best start since 1959, when it went 11-0 and won the national championship. The Orangemen play Pitt (5-2) Saturday afternoon in Pitt Stadium. Pitt, which has a modest two-game winning streak, has not beaten Syracuse since 1983, Owens' freshman season.

The fifth-year senior said he isn't keeping score. "It's something special because it's a big game for our team," said Owens, who was redshirted his sophomore year. "It's nothing special to me because we're playing Syracuse University and I'm from there. Yes, I want to beat them. But I want to beat them like I want to beat everybody else." While Owens claims no hard feelings toward Syracuse, MacPherson, medical bills.

For example, it cost $3,000 to rent the private medical airplane that flew Phillip from Virginia to Pittsburgh. "The expenses are outstanding," Charles Macri said. A sellout crowd of nearly 3,000 is expected for the Pitt benefit game. "It's a tremendous draw for a tremendous cause," said New Castle Athletic Director Angelo Fornataro. Fornataro asked Paul Evans, the Pitt basketball coach, about a benefit game last month.

Evans called the NCAA to make sure it was permissible, then said yes. "He's a real hard-nosed kid who loves the game of basketball, a real good kid," Evans said of Macri. "It's a situation where we can go out there and play and raise some money for the family. The format will be the same one used in Pitt's scrimmage Tuesday night at Freedom High, with the starters playing the substitutes. Don Ross, the New Castle basketball coach, said Macri's injury was "hard to swallow." "He's a wiry, skinny kid," Ross said, "but he had one of the greatest hearts.

His nickname was and he was one of the toughest little nuts you ever wanted to find. He has touched just about everybody in this school in one way or another. "You know, sometimes when someone is hurt like that you say maybe the Lord was trying to teacb you a lesson that you shouldn't drink and drive or whatever. But Phillip, he was an innocent. He did absolutely nothing wrong." A special fund to help cover Macri's medical expenses has been set up at Mahoning Consumer Discount 209 N.

Liberty New Castle, Pa. 16102. For details, call Richard Perretta at 658-5583. the Orangemen's coach, said he wasn't pleased to see upstate New Yorkers like Owens and offensive tackle Chris Goetz in Pitt uniforms. "It gets me sick seeing all those kids over there in Pittsburgh," he said.

Owens said he knows many Syracuse players. He met Don McPher-son, the Orangemen's starting quarterback, and John Dominic, the defensive tackle from Rome, N.Y., at MacPherson's football camp. He played against Chris Ingram, the kick returner, in high school. "It's fun playing against them," Owens said. "It's sort of like when you're in high school and playing the team from cross-town.

You know everybody there. It's no different." The Syracuse offense has scored 100 points the past two games, 48 against Penn State and 52 against Colgate, Last week, McPherson combined with wide receiver Tommy Kane to set a Syracuse record with four touchdown passes. McPherson already has thrown a school-record 14 touchdown passes, and Kane is averaging 23 yards a reception (31 for 720 yards). The Pitt secondary, which shut down Notre Dame's Tim Brown three weeks ago, will be tested again this week. "They pass well, they run well, and they have a quarterback who puts a lot of pressure on the defense," Owens said.

What will it take to beat Syracuse? "Everything we got," Owens said. Owens, a three-year starter, was named to Playboy magazine's preseason All-America team. He is Pitt's fourth-leading tackier this year with 56 stops, and is credited with two quarterback sacks and causing three fumbles. Pitt strong safety Billy Owens says he he wants to beat everybody else. By Steve Halvonik Post-Gazette Sports Writer Phillip Macri, a scrappy point guard from New Castle High School, was named most promising young player at the Sharon basketball tournament last spring.

After a swimming accident last August, the 5-foot-9, 135-pound senior is fighting to overcome a spinal injury that has left him paralyzed from the neck down. After seven weeks in a Virginia hospital, Macri was transferred recently to Allegheny General Hospital. "He's doing much better right now," Charles Macri, Phillip's father, reported the other day. "He's off the respirator and breathing on his own. He's starting to eat on his own, and in a week or two he may be transferred to Harmarville to begin rehabilitation." To help with medical expenses, the Pitt basketball team will hold a benefit game at 7 p.m.

Wednesday in the New Castle High School gym. Macri, a second-team all-section player last year at New Castle, was injured Aug. 28 while swimming at Virginia Beach. He did a back-flip into a wave, which flipped him on his head and drove him into the sand. He broke the fourth and fifth vertebrae in his back and was paralyzed.

Macri was taken to a nearby hospital, where a bone chip was taken from his hip and fused into his spine. The prognosis is that he will not walk again. "He's doing pretty good, but he really doesn't have much of a voice right now," Cyndi Macri, Phillip's sister-in-law, said from his bedside yesterday. Charles Macri is a retired steel worker from Youngstown Sheet and Tube. His medical benefits cover most but not of all of Phillip's huge where his hurt it?" It frustrated him so.

He could not run, lift weights, play football or sleep on his left side. He merely pedaled a stationary bike, getting nowhere, seething. "I couldn't take my frustration out on the practice field," he says. "I couldn't even lift to get some energy burned off, I was riding the bike from California and back each day." Bauer had hoped for national attention this season, similar to that attained last year by Shane Conlan, who, he maintains, was a slob for a roomie. Despite the neck injury and PSU's bellicose Bauer putting coaches I was a player.

Right now, not a couple years down the road. I was very impatient. The coaches didn't want me to get into fights or hurt any more guys." Just the same, whenever guard Todd Moules pushed Bauer, a row ensued. They carried it all the way to Hawaii, to Aloha Bowl practices. Bauer played on the foreign team, the team simulating the next opponent.

Moules started. "Todd had a really good year," Bauer says. "When he played well, you know, it was satisfying to me, 'cause I was, like, trying to kill him in practice." The rambunctious redshirt played Owens' contributions are not as. conspicuous as they were last season, when he intercepted four passes and returned one for a touchdown. But he is playing just as well, said Pitt defensive coordinator John Fox.

"We've kind of changed things a little bit within our schemes," Fox said. "Sometimes Billy lines up at linebacker, sometimes at strong safety. He's been very productive in what we're trying to do. The things he does are not what hits the newspapers, but we're very pleased with what he's done. Some of the things we do on defense are allowed to be done because of the people we have in the secondary." CBS will beam this week's game to a national television audience, the next year, backing up Don Graham.

Starting in 1985, he proceeded to entrench himself as a regular inside linebacker, as a star. His style -has been unmistakable, unseen since the days of mouthy Matt Millen, to whom a freshman academic adviser once compared Bauer's combative personality. The Fiesta Bowl in January, for instance. Bauer whizzed a football past a couple of Miami players who strayed into the Lions linebacker drills in pre-game warm-ups. After Miami's Jerome Brown deemed the Lions racists, Bauer replied, "That shows what kind of intellect he has." Paterno dressed down Bauer on search purposes would not mar the portrait.

When the subject finally woke up, it escaped so quickly that the cameras recorded only the southern end of the north-bound bear. Judging from the teachers' response to the presentation, Korber will be repeating his program at PTO meetings much of the winter. Copies of the book can be ordered from the University of Pittsburgh Press; call 624-4110. Elsewhere The hunting season for cottontail rabbits, bobwhite quail and ring-necked pheasants, opens Saturday and runs through Nov. 28.

Pheasant hunting is closed in Mercer County, west of Interstate 79, due to at And it means some GORDONS SHOES 6TH ANNUAL still keeping photographer busy FROM PAGE 28 Everyone got quiet in the huddle. After that point on, when the situation called for it, I wasn't afraid to say anything. If the kid had punched me in the mouth, it may have been different. I may have been like Lions comerback Eddie Johnson is here, never say anything." Instead, Bauer arrived at Penn State with the notion 1.3 would battle his way onto the team. As Paterno eloquently put it, he was "a little bit of a roughneck, in a nice way." Let us just say he became embroiled in a few scraps.

"Every day," Bauer adds. "I just wanted to prove to the Book work By Patrick McShea What type of work could possibly entail waiting for a tranquilized black bear to regain consciousness, spying on garbage can-raiding raccoons, and treeing a porcupine? If you guessed wildlife photography, you're correct. New Kensington's Hal Korber did all that and more while taking photographs for the Guide to Mammals of Pennsylvania, a backpack-size volume published in September by the University of Pittsburgh Press. The 408-page book, which includes descriptions of the physical, ecological and behavioral characteristics of 63 species of wild mammals, was produced in cooperation with The Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Joseph F.

Merritt, an ecologist who directs The Carnegie's Powder-mill Nature Reserve research facility, is the author of the guide. Although Korber's deadline for submitting pictures passed months before the book went to press, the free-lance assignment to take distinctive, full-bodied photographs of Pennsylvania's wildlife continues to provide him with work. And there are interesting stories behind every picture in the book though often the more fascinating wants to beat Syracuse just like which may be a good omen for Pitt. The Panthers are 2-0 in national appearances this year, having beaten Brigham Young, 27-17, in the opener and Notre Dame, 30-22. "Our team has a tendency to play better against better opponents and quality athletes," Owens said.

"I hope that's what happens this Saturday." NOTES Terry Wooden, Syracuse's starting outside linebacker, was on crutches Tuesday. He has a sprained knee and probably will not play this week Daryl Johnston, the starting fullback, who injured his hand after he punched out a car window following a bar incident over the weekend, has practiced and is expected to play. his neck the sideline at Syracuse Oct. 17 after the fifth-year senior directed a few choice (read: unprintable) words toward an Orangeman. Soon after Bauer convinced Paterno to let him play, Bauer approached a Syracuse lineman and introduced himself by mentioning something about that player's maternal heritage.

Curken-dall remembers the 6-foot-l, 215-pound Bauer punctuating the conversation by adding, "I'm coming to kill you." Maybe people should pardon this display, for Bauer ached for action. He had missed three games with that pain in the neck, a neck so wide even he remarked, "How the hell can you tempts to introduce populations of the Sichuan pheasant there. Only male pheasants are legal prey in a portion of Pennsylvania, south of Interstate 80. The fall turkey-hunting season also opens Saturday in seven of the state's nine management areas. Except for a single week extension of the season in Areas 2 and 7, regulations contained in the booklet that accompanies each hunting license are still in effect.

A free, two-hour program about the habits and habitat of the eastern wild turkey will be presented at nature center in Raccoon Creek State Park's Wildflower Reserve Sunday at 5 p.m. Call 899-3611. CALL 648-8300 for tickets Youth Ticket Only tS of PNC FKANCAL (0 i ('c -v 3 YOUR OLD BOOTS ARE WORTH $10 OFF ON A NEW PAIR Just wear your old leather tools Into our slore. II they're not beyond repair Uppert soles should not be ripped, lorn or split through tride them in lor 110 oil I new pair ol Timberlinoi'. Mide Irom walerprool leathers tilled with layers ol insulation, wilh solid brass eyelets, lough nylon stitching 4 rugged, long tailing soles.

Wear your Did boots in. it they we seen belter days, you won see a belli! oiler. ALL TIMBERLAND BOOTS INCLUDED IN THIS SALE mouth is a foot ailment that caused him to miss all of fall drills, Bauer rates eighth in the all-time Penn State tackling charts with 215, and stands a good chance of climbing to fourth behind Greg Buttle (343), Conlan and John Skorupan (274 apiece). NFL scouts continue to think he would make some team a nice little linebacker. Not too shabby for a coach's scrawny kid who talks a big game.

"All heart," explains Curkendall. "You know, he's not big, he's not real strong. But he'll kick you and bite you and do anything to tackle you." RETAIL PRICE M1200 GORDONS PRICE s9190 MINUS TRADE-IN '10 -Sg90 12085 Hiking. Camping. Fishing.

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After opening his presentation with slides depicting the diversity of landscapes found in Pennsylvania, Korber recounted the challenges of his unique assignment. The amusing story of his trial-and-error attempts to secure a black bear picture provided insight into his work. A Game Commission official who knew of Korber's assignment invited him to Clarion County to photograph a captured bear during its scheduled relocation release. During the two hours it took the sedated bear to revive, Korber readied his cameras for the perfect shot, positioning himself so that the ear tag attached to the animal for re- great roowau wis 'DZ Saturday! JltSlS RETAIL PRICE louu MINUS TRADE IN MO00 SQ490 V1 12281 I vs- SYRACUSE 2:45 P.M. Pin STADIUM The Orange are an Eastern football powerhouse with one of the nation top quarterbacks Don McPherson.

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