Upper St. Clair inducts 11 into Halls of Fame
Mike McHugh, who was drafted by the Texas Rangers and now lives in California, played baseball for Jerry Malarkey, who recently retired after 37 seasons as USC varsity baseball coach.
Oren Eschenasy and Mike Kopp played tennis at Upper St. Clair and both were recently inducted into the high school’s athletic Hall of Fame.
The mere mention of Mike McHugh brings back many fond memories. For nearly a decade, he was a familiar face at Upper St. Clair High School sporting events.
His career started around 1983 along the sidelines. He, Brian Schipani and Danny Lawlor served as ball boys for Jim Render’s successful football teams.
McHugh, however, never played football. He excelled in soccer and baseball, winning WPIAL titles in both his senior year of high school. The 1992 USC graduate also dabbled in basketball as the Panthers’ point guard.
So it was delightful to catch up with him last Friday evening when he was inducted into the school’s hallowed Halls of Fame. McHugh was one of two former standouts enshrined in the athletic Hall of Fame, while others were installed in the academic and arts wings.
McHugh was one of the many memorable characters encountered during my career as The Almanac’s sports editor. During those early days, sometimes parents offered rides to faraway places. Pat and Vicki Schipani, Brian’s dad and mom, were such a couple. Somehow, McHugh would be along for the ride, too.
The laughs were many as McHugh regaled us with his adventures. He was also invited to social functions, from birthday parties to bar mitzvahs. Victories were aplenty back then, but it was the loss to Plum during a playoff game that hit hard and stuck in one’s memory forever.
Once McHugh entered high school, the fun continued. He dominated the pitch, leading USC to a WPIAL title. Although he broke his leg in a playoff game, he eventually came back to the basketball courts that winter. In the spring, he was the winning pitcher of record in the WPIAL championship game, and this say-hey kid from USC played center field, too. Never does one watch “Major League” without thinking of the superstitious McHugh and the Trolls he and his teammates, kept in the dugout.
And, some 20 years later, time seems to have stood still as he and the rest of the inductees accepted their plaques for their achievements. Long after he graduated from Penn State University and played three seasons in the Texas Rangers’ organization, McHugh continues to excel and accomplish great things.
He and his wife, Lisa, are proud parents of five children, some of them budding actors; Flynn, 16; Logan, 15; Shea, 12; Leah, 10; and 6-year-old twins Gavin and Brayden. McHugh and two of his brothers, Brian and Brad, work for Fujifilm SonoSite Inc. McHugh is the regional business director for the company and live in Kirkland, Wash. His two other brothers are Sean, who had already been inducted into the USC Hall for his swimming achievements and is located in Atlanta, and David, who lives in Memphis, Tenn. His parents remain in the area but have relocated to North Strabane Township.
For the past three years, McHugh has been named the Regional Business Director of the Year. He has been invited six times into the President’s Club.
Equally successful has been Oren Eschenasy. The 1987 Upper St. Clair graduate dominated the courts, winning WPIAL tennis titles and PIAA championships for the Panthers. His coach, Rich Saccani, pointed out that “Oren maybe had a handful of losses in his career.”
A National Honor Society member, Eschenasy played tennis at Notre Dame, where he majored in marketing and minored in economics. He earned an MBA in international business from Duquesne University.
He began his career with Electrolux as a sales manager, directing multinational operations in Europe, Central America and the Caribbean. He worked in the appliance industry for Electrolux and Whirlpool, where he led product development, sales and merchandizing. After three years as country manager for Panama, Nicaragua and Venezuala, he currently manages the corporation’s interests in Costa Rica. He and his wife, Alina, live in Miami.
While they were inducted into the arts and academic Halls of Fame, respectively, Anthony M. Jeselnik, Mike Kopp and J.J. Plecs also competed in a sport during their scholastic years at USC. Jeselnik competed in lacrosse and Kopp in tennis. Plecs was a member of the rifle and fencing teams.
A valedictorian of his class, Plecs attended the Governor’s School. He was a National Merit Scholar. He graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University with a degree in physics. He earned a master’s degree from the University of California at Berkeley. From 1999-2003, he was a postdoctoral researcher with the Mayo Group. For the next 12 years, he returned to the East Coast and served as a senior associate for McKinney and Co. in New Jersey and for Pzier in New York City. After two years as an independent consultant for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, he has returned to San Francisco, where he is the director of product strategy for Roam Analytics.
A 1997 USC graduate, Jeselnik earned a degree in literature from Tulane University in 2001. He then went to Los Angeles to embark on his career in comedic writing and performing. He was the first writer hired by “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.” In 2015, he hosted NBC’s “Last Comic Standing.” He has appeared on shows hosted by Fallon, Jay Leno, Jimmy Kimmel, Conan O’Brien and Carson Daly. His most recent work is “Thoughts and Prayers, a Netflix special.
In addition “to lettering four years in tennis, Kopp was a four-year member of the choir. He was the National Fast Serve Champion, clocked at 141 mph in Maui. Later he became an actor and a professional voiceover artist. He is currently head of The Food Network, and his first movie credit was opposite Meryl Streep and Steve Martin in “It’s Complicated.” Kopp lives in New York City, where he conducts Vog Productions.
Among the other Arts Hall of Fame inductees were Chelsea Baratz and Benny Benack III as well as Earl “Bud” Marlett as a staff inductee. Baratz is a jazz musician. The tenor saxophonist has performed on Jimmy Fallon and David Letterman. She has appeared in some of the world’s largest music festivals, from South Korea and Indonesia to Pittsburgh. Benack is an accomplished trumpet player, pianist, singler and male lead. He was admitted to the Manhattan School of Music, where he earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree. He has appreared in Jet magazine and has performed at Lincoln Center.
In addition to Plecs, Karen S. Ho and Mahesh Krishnan were inductee into the Academic Hall of Fame, along with staff inductee Todd Ollendyke.
Ho was a U.S. Presidential Scholar and editor of The Montage at USC. She graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Washington University, with a degree in biochemistry. She studied genetics at Cambridge University in England and worked on her postdoctoral studies on sleep and neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania. She is principal scientist and adjunction assistant professor in pediatrics at the University of Utah. Ho is the chief officer of the NGLY 1 Foundation, a non-profit organization that helps children with a rare genetic disorder.
Krishnan was the salutatorian of his 1988 graduating class and the editor of the Clairvoyant. He was a national merit scholar. He attended Penn State and later became a resident in nephrology at Georgetown University. He also earned master’s in public health and in buiness administration from Johns Hopkins University Medical Center. He is a recognized expert in anemia of renal disease, end-stage renal disease payment policy and medical data analysis and systems. Currently, Krishnan is an international chief medical officer and group vice president for research and development for DaVita Healthcare Partners, which oversees medicine in 12 countries. He lives with his wife and two children in McLean, Va.