California University of Pennsylvania Athletics

Some students graduate from California University of Pennsylvania and never look back. They go on with their lives and careers, and they don’t spend time thinking about the university let alone helping it continue to succeed. Pete Gialames is not such a person.

After graduating in 1969 with a degree in chemistry, he kept his ties with the university. Not only is he an officer in Cal’s Touchdown Club and a member of Cal’s Alumni Board, he is also a member of the third class of the Athletic Hall of Fame.

“I wanted to stay involved with the program at California. I kept in contact. I always try to catch a few football games,” Gialames said. “The responsibilities of the Touchdown Club are just trying to organize the alumni into a viable group. We are the ones who manage the spring game and the alumni weekend that we have with the spring game.”

At Charleroi High School, Gialames earned letters in track, football and soccer. He served as a captain of the soccer team and made the WPIAL soccer all-star team. As a matter of fact, Gialames was named to Charleroi’s Soccer Hall of Fame a couple of years ago.

“In high school, I guess soccer was my best sport. I guess the reason for it was when I was a senior I got injured during my first football game. So I missed basically all of my senior year of high school football,” Gialames said.

“I had radical knee surgery in high school. They removed cartilage and I had ligament and tendon damage. My leg was in a cast for about seven weeks after the operation. That was in 1963, and the technology as far as knee surgery went was a lot more crude than it is now. Now, they do most of the stuff with arthroscopic. I have a pretty large scar on my leg from where they operated. I am fortunate because I think the guy did a heck of a job. I am still able to function really well all these years later,” he continued.

When Gialames came to California in 1964, he didn’t play football because he was still recovering from the surgery. He walked on to the team in the spring of 1965 and played for the next four years. He played many different positions including wide receiver, defensive back, kick returner and punt returner, during his tenure at Cal.

“I started out as a defensive back. I played free safety for my first year. I guess I started six out of the eight games. I intercepted a few passes and scored a touchdown against Clarion. Overall, it was a nice year, but it wasn’t one of those kinds of years that people would recognize me,” Gialames said.

“My second year I was going both ways, playing defensive back and wide receiver. Then I separated a shoulder pretty bad in the middle of the third game, so I missed about five and a half games that year. I scored a couple of touchdowns and caught a few passes in the first three games that we played,” he continued.

“Then my junior year, in 1967, I was going both ways. I hurt my ankle in the fourth or fifth game of the year. I missed the rest of that game and the entire game after that and played the last three games. But I didn’t play defense after I hurt my ankle. I led the team in receiving that year,” Gialames said.

Gialames was the leading receiver for the Vulcans in 1967 and 1968, and earned all-conference honors for those two seasons. During his senior season, 1968, Gialames caught 56 passes for 985 yards, helped the team tie for the state championship, scored 10 touchdowns and kicked five extra points.

His single-season high of 65 points remains in the record books today. Also in 1968, Gialames caught 13 passes for 226 yards against Edinboro, and that game still ranks in the record books as the best receiving performance in school history.

Gialames said that he always wanted to play college football even though he suffered a lot of injuries and didn’t have the size.

“First of all, I was a real little guy. I started defensive back against Slippery Rock, and I got on the scales before the game and didn’t weigh 140 pounds. By the time that I was a senior, I weighed 160 pounds. I had a knee operation in high school, I separated two shoulders, twisted my ankle, got knocked out and hurt my back. There were a lot of things that happened during my career,” Gialames said.

Gialames wasn’t involved only in football while he attended California. He was involved in student government, Gamma Theta Epsilon, Phi Sigma Pi and Sigma Tau Gamma. Gialames was named to Who’s Who Among College Seniors and made the honor roll several times.

After Gialames graduated from California, he went to West Virginia University and earned a master’s degree in geology in 1972.

He obtained a master’s degree because he really wanted to teach and coach at the college level. However, at that time fewer people were attending college, making faculty positions difficult to find. He entered the financial planning business.

Gialames is the president of Peter Gialames Associates, Inc., an investment sales and pension administration business. He is also the vice president and owner of the Blues Café, a restaurant and bar on the Southside of Pittsburgh. He attributes his business success to lessons he learned in sports.

“I guess being in business for yourself has a lot of pluses and minuses. The pluses are that you are your own boss and you do what you want to do. The minuses are the responsibilities. I feel that the things I learned in college and on the football field helped me achieve the degree of success that I have being in business for myself. There are a lot of times that you get knocked down, but have to get back up,” Gialames said.

Gialames believes that he is being inducted into the Hall of Fame because of his statistics, but says that there is more to playing than just what the stats say. However, he said that being inducted came as no surprise.

“As far as me being selected for the Hall of Fame, I thought that the time that I spent there and the things that I did, I felt that I belonged. It was just a matter of when I was going to get inducted. I am happy that California started something like this three years ago,” Gialames said.

Pete Gialames was a four-year starting wide receiver who played from 1965 through 1968. During his final two years, Gialames also played defensive back as well as being a standout kick and punt returner. He was the Vulcans' leading receiver in 1967 and 1968 and helped Cal achieve three winning seasons in four years. Gialames received all-conference honors both of those seasons.

In 1968, Gialames caught 56 passes for 985 yards and scored 10 touchdowns while kicking five extra-points. A two-time all-conference selection, Gialames' 65 points in 1968 remains a school record to this day. Overall, Gialames ranked ninth nationally among all small college wide receivers in '68 and he helped the Vulcans tie for the PSAC Championship. Gialames caught eight balls for 135 yards in the state championship game against East Stroudsburg. Gialames' remarkable 13-reception, 226-yard, three-touchdown effort in a 35-7 win at Edinboro during his senior year is still the best single-game receiving performance in school history.

Gialames is originally from Stockdale and a graduate of Charleroi High School. After his undergraduate days at Cal, Gialames earned his master's degree from West Virginia University and is the President of Peter Gialames Associates Inc, Investment Sales and Pension Administration. Also a member of the Cal Alumni Board and Hall of Fame Committee, Gialames is the Vice-President and owner of the Blues Cafe in Pittsburgh.

He resides in Pittsburgh with his wife Laraine and they have two children - Peter Jr., and Melissa.