Iyanna Wade has produced some ridiculous statlines in her basketball career, perhaps the most eye-popping being the WPIAL-record 65 points she dropped in a game last season.
But, as it turns out, Wade put up numbers that were even more spectacular in the one game she played for Clairton’s girls flag football team last spring.
“My statline was crazy, honestly,” she said.
Wade finished with four interceptions, including two pick-6’s, and four receiving touchdowns in a Clairton win.
Not bad for a day’s work.
Also not surprising considering her athletic ability and football genes.
Wade said she will play flag football for Clairton full-time this spring, but before then she’s hoping to break some long-standing records on the basketball court. And, more importantly, lead the Bears to their first WPIAL title in 23 years.
“If we win that, that would complete my whole resume,” Wade said, “especially since it’s been a long time since we last won a championship.”
After leading the WPIAL in scoring her sophomore and junior seasons, this scoring queen has remained on her throne this season. Wade, a 5-foot-4 senior point guard who was a PUP All-Star first-team pick last season, is averaging a WPIAL-best 40.8 points per game, this after averaging 33 as a sophomore and 40 as a junior.
“She’s been good, but she’s been good since her freshman year,” said Iyanna’s father, Clairton coach Carlton Wade. “I’m honestly just proud of her because she made the decision to stay at Clairton when she could have gone to [a private school]. She bleeds orange and black.”
Iyanna Wade, whose father said she was once again courted by private schools in the offseason, is chasing some big numbers this season. She has pumped in 2,475 points in her career, meaning she will more than likely reach 2,500 in Tuesday’s game against Avella. In recent weeks, Wade has passed the likes of Sacred Heart’s Shannon Davis and West Mifflin’s Tanisha Wright on the all-time WPIAL and City League career scoring list. And in the upcoming weeks she should surpass several more legendary players, among them McKeesport’s Swin Cash, who many consider to be the greatest player in WPIAL history.
Two of the biggest numbers Wade is taking aim at are 2,703 and 3,000. While Wade already ranks among the top 20 scorers locally all time, she doesn’t own her school record. That belongs to Kamela Gissendanner, a 2003 Clairton graduate who poured in 2,703 points, good for fifth best in WPIAL history. Steel Valley’s Jess Strom scored 2,840, but only three players have reached 3,000, a club Wade would like to join — Monessen’s Gina Naccarato (3,364), Monessen’s Charel Allen (3,110) and East Allegheny’s Brooke Stewart (3,055).
Two years after Aquinas Academy’s Vinnie Cugini broke the WPIAL boys scoring record that had stood for 30 years, Wade has a shot to break the girls mark that Naccarato set 29 years ago. But being 889 points short at the moment, Wade knows that getting that record will be an uphill battle.
“That’s really pushing it, but it’s possible with how far we go,” Wade said. “It’s not something we talk about much because it’s so far away, but anything is possible.”
Like winning a WPIAL title. Clairton has not won one in girls basketball since Gissendanner led the Bears to back-to-back titles her sophomore and junior seasons in 2001 and 2002. They reached the championship game in 2005, but have advanced to the semifinals just once since. A season ago, the Bears went 20-7, reached the WPIAL Class 2A quarterfinals, and won a PIAA game for the first time since 2005.
A season later, Clairton now finds itself in Class 1A. The Bears have gotten off to a strong start, as they are 6-2 overall and 4-0 in Section 2. Their only losses were to Thomas Jefferson, which has one of the top teams in Class 5A, and defending City League champion Allderdice. Clairton’s stiffest competition in Class 1A figures to come from two-time defending champion Union. At 10-0, the Scotties are one of only three unbeaten teams in the WPIAL.
“We really didn’t want to go down to Single-A. We wanted to stay in 2A because we thought we could compete in 2A,” Carlton Wade said. “But Single-A is wide open.”
Iyanna Wade, a two-time first-team all-state pick, scored 37 points in a 73-58 loss to Allderdice, and earned some praise from Dragons coach Ellen Guillard, whom Wade also recently passed on the all-time scoring list. Before she was married, Guillard was known as Loui Hall and scored 2,477 points before graduating from Albert Gallatin in 2003.
“She’s awesome,” Guillard said. “I graduated the same year as Kam Gissendanner. Watching [Wade] eclipse both of us has been pretty awesome. I talked to her dad a few times to encourage her. Coming from a smaller school, it’s hard to get the respect she deserves. But she never stops. Never quits.”
Clairton averages a Class 1A-best 61.7 points per game, which means Wade accounts for two-thirds of the team’s scoring. In eight games, Wade has scored in the 40s three times and in the 50s twice. She tallied 56 against West Greene and 52 against Geibel Catholic.
Wade breaking Gissendanner’s record would mean a lot to both. They have known each other for a long time and Wade said the two are “super close.” Wade used to attend Gissendanner’s basketball camps and even worked for Gissendanner the past two summers, helping to run the concession stand at Clairton Pool.
“She does a lot of everything,” Gissendanner said of Wade, whom she calls “Ya Ya”. “She takes orders, cooks, cleans. She does whatever needs done.”
Gissendanner is now a highly successful coach at La Roche. She has guided the La Roche women to eight league championships and NCAA tournament appearances in 12 seasons. Gissendanner remembers chasing the Clairton school record her senior season, a mark then held by 1999 graduate Kameico Robison (2,031 points).
“I don’t mean to sound cliche, but records are meant to be broken,” Gissendanner said. “When I was about to break Kameico Robison’s record, she was just so graceful, so classy, so encouraging. She empowered me to break that record, so why wouldn’t I do the same for Ya Ya? Her breaking that record, that would mean everything.”
To both parties.
“The past couple of years, she’s said she wants me to break it,” Wade said. “For her to say that, that means a lot to me. That’s a blessing.”
Championships and records … Wade wants both this season. And, eventually, she’d like to pick a college, too. You would think someone as skilled as Wade who averages 40 points a game would have a long list of colleges to pick from. But her lack of size has made the recruitment process a frustrating one. She holds offers from Division I schools Central Connecticut State and Mount St. Mary’s.
“It’s picking up,” Carlton Wade said. “A couple of schools are supposed to be offering. But we’ve heard that several times, and nothing has come through.”
Gissendanner, a two-time WPIAL scoring champ who later played at Penn State before playing a few games in the WNBA, was 6 feet in her playing days, so “not being big enough” was never really a knock on her like it is with Wade.
“She’s small in stature, but her heart is huge,” Gissendanner said. “Her competitive drive is just crazy. She just has intangibles other people don’t have. And, most importantly, she’s a dog. A lot of people are missing that these days.”
Wade’s high school basketball playing career won’t wrap up until March, but she already knows how she wants to be remembered.
“For the pride that I took in my city,” she said, “because I could have left and transferred. But the pride I have … I bleed orange and black. I want to be remembered for how much pride I have in being a role model for all of the younger kids coming up.”
Brad is a sports writer at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike. Email him at beverett@unionprogress.com.