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Go to the Annual Night Practice

Every training camp the Steelers hold one night practice at Memorial Stadium in downtown Latrobe.

It is always on Friday of the first full week of camp and it breaks up the grind of practicing at St. Vincent. It also takes players and coaches back to their youth when nothing was bigger than Friday nights under the lights. If the players, at least the younger ones, don’t have a little extra adrenaline when they board the buses for the night practice they surely have it by the time they reach Memorial Stadium.

Fans line the streets that comprise the winding route to Memorial Stadium, waving Terrible Towels and cheering the buses—even the one with the reporters and ball boys—as if they were carrying a combination of the Rolling Stones and a liberating army.

The scene is even more raucous at the stadium where fans pack into the bleachers and stand two and three deep at the chain-link fence that frames the field. The crowd notwithstanding, the night practice is a good place to get autographs.

The heavy hitters are generally among the players who sign for an extended period before stretching starts and Bill Hillgrove cranks up the volume in the press box.

Hillgrove, the longtime play-by-play man for Steelers radio, calls the action on the field, adding to the atmosphere that is unlike any other practice at camp.

The fans are usually treated to 11-on-11 drills but the best part of the practices usually takes part in the north end zone. That is where the coaches and players both feed and feed off the crowd in the back on ’backers competition.

This mano a mano drill is a favorite of Tomlin’s because it is a portal to a player’s competitive soul. The linebacker has to try to overpower the running back or blow past him on the way to the quarterback. A linebacker who can’t do that consistently is not going to inspire much confidence that he can get to the quarterback in a live game.

The backs, meanwhile, are at a clear disadvantage since they have to lock down a player who has a running start and could be coming from either side once the whistle blows. But life in the NFL isn’t fair and the quickest way for a young back to earn the trust of his coaches and quarterbacks is to show he can pick up blitzing linebackers.

The coaches and players crank up the energy and testosterone as the drill progresses and the popping of pads gets louder and louder. The drill is as entertaining as any and can lead to some memorable scuffles.

In 2014, Vince Williams ran over Le’Veon Bell near the end of the drill and stayed on top of him. Bell took exception to it and the two started to grapple. LeGarrette Blount, who was still more than three months from quitting on his team, jumped in to help Bell. Outside linebackers coach Joey Porter tried to pull Blount off Williams and that almost led to blows.

Can you imagine Joey Porter and LeGarrette Blount duking it out under the lights? Fans weren’t that lucky as the scrape was quickly broken up but that scene alone made it worthwhile for those who attended the practice.

Crowds for the Friday night practice usually exceed 10,000 people and the stadium always looks like it is about to burst. But former Latrobe High School athletics director Gary Garrison always had the same answer when asked during a Steelers practice if that was the largest crowd ever at Memorial Stadium: negative.

Garrison, a longtime athletics director who passed away in 2015, always pointed to the 1956 WPIAL Class AA Championship Game, which put two future Steelers standouts in the 1960s on opposite sides: Myron Pottios of Charleroi and Dick Hoak of Jeannette.

The late November showdown drew such a crowd at Memorial Stadium that Jeannette’s band did not arrive until halftime because the traffic on the way to Latrobe was so snarled. A crowd of just over 12,800, according to Trib Total Media, braved cold weather and fans saw a classic.

The game was tied at 13 late in the fourth quarter when Hoak intercepted a pass and then drove Jeannette down the field. Hoak, the quarterback, got Jeannette to the 8-yard line before misfiring on a pass in the end zone with less than 10 seconds left on the clock.

Hoak couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw his backup running onto the field. He started to reluctantly head for the sidelines but his understudy told Hoak he had entered the game to hold for a last-second field goal attempt.

“Back then nobody kicked field goals and we were at a [bad] angle, left hash, I think,” Hoak recalled almost 60 years later. “He lines up and kicks it with about seven seconds left and we won the game.”

Hoak and Pottios became friends and first teamed up in a Western Pennsylvania all-star game that year before heading off to Penn State and Notre Dame, respectively.

They became teammates again in 1961 when the Steelers drafted Pottios in the second round and Hoak in the seventh. Each made the Steelers’ All-Legends team (pre-1970s) when the Steelers celebrated their 75th anniversary in 2007.

Hoak and Pottios stay in contact to this day—the latter lives in California—and they still hold the unofficial distinction of the Steelers who performed in front of the biggest crowd at Memorial Stadium.

This excerpt from The Pittsburgh Steelers Fans’ Bucket List by Scott Brown, is presented with the permission of Triumph Books. For more information and to purchase a copy, please visit www.triumphbooks.com/steelersbucketlist.

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