Expect excitement and junior achievement
Baseball season is still in full swing in the area. The Pirates are on the perimeter of the wild-card playoff race in the National League, which, along with rookie pitcher Paul Skenes, put interest back into Major League Baseball in this area during the summer.
The Wild Things are again headed for the playoffs, chasing the franchise’s elusive first Frontier League championship. And the Pony League World Series concluded another exciting and successful run at Lew Hays Pony Field in Washington.
While baseball generated interest this year, the one sport that remains king in Western Pennsylvania is football. From the Steelers to the colleges to the high schools, the weekend is just better when your team wins. Football is the discussion at the office water cooler, at the dinner table and at the local bar and grill.
There is an old saying that men believe they know how to do two things: use a grill and coach football. Too often these days all of that coaching is being done from the bleachers and luxury suites.
For the 47th year, the Observer-Reporter is providing football fans with our annual football preview, complete with all your need to know about the local teams. For more than three decades, this publication has been in conjunction with The Almanac, the O-R’s sister newspaper. Over the past month, the sports staffs at the O-R, Almanac and Uniontown Herald-Standard – another sister publication of the O-R – and our correspondents have been visiting football camps, interviewing coaches and players and gathering all the information you need to get ready for the football season.
It didn’t take any kind of covert work by anybody to find out that some schools in the area will have a tough act to follow this fall. Last year was the area’s most successful ever as three schools – Peters Township, Belle Vernon and Fort Cherry – won WPIAL championships. PT and Fort Cherry advanced to the PIAA title game for the first time in school history and Belle Vernon won its second consecutive state championship.
If Peters Township and Fort Cherry are to repeat the success of last season, then they will likely be getting some junior achievement. Junior quarterback Nolan DiLucia is back at Peters Township after leading the WPIAL in passing with 3,131 yards. Matt Sieg is back for his junior year at Fort Cherry after leading the WPIAL in rushing (2,389 yards), total offense (4,059 yards), scoring (264 points) and exciting plays.
Another junior quarterback to watch is at Trinity. Jonah Williamson was the Offensive Player of the Year as a sophomore in the Class 4A Big Seven Conference. That’s an award that has been dominated for years by players from Thomas Jefferson. Last year, Williamson, like Sieg, was a 1,000-1,000 player. He passed for 1,860 yards and ran for 1,012 as the Hillers made the WPIAL playoffs..
DiLucia, Sieg and Williamson are the cover subjects of this preview edition.
The team that many people have targeted for bounce-back year is Upper St. Clair. Our sources say the Panthers are loaded and ready to challenge for championships.
On the collegiate level, Penn State begins the season ranked in the top 10. The Nittany Lions will open the season at West Virginia. Remember when Pitt, Penn State and WVU played each other every season? That was back when the wants of fans still mattered and before the almighty dollar began ruling major college football and determining which schools play in which conferences.
The Big Ten, Atlantic Coast Conference and Big XII all have new looks this year. Rutgers at Southern California? Yep, that’s a Big Ten game. So too is UCLA at Penn State. Woody Hayes and Bo Schembechler must be turning over in their graves.
The ACC has expanded to include Stanford, California and SMU. Stanford plays consecutive conference games at Syracuse and Clemson. Hope the Cardinal are getting frequent flyer miles.
The Big XII has added Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah. It should at least make postgame news conferences more interesting with Deion Sanders in the league.
As for the small colleges, California and Washington & Jefferson are trying to get back to the NCAA playoffs and have the talent to do so. The Vulcans didn’t get any help from the person who makes the schedule. Cal will play only one home game before Oct. 19.
The WPIAL has realigned its conferences for this year. No longer will McGuffey be playing in the same conference – and the same classification – as rival Washington. Class 6A has grown to seven teams and there are changes in store for Class A. Canon-McMillan has managed to keep some of its rivalry games, against Peters Township and Upper St. Clair but Bethel Park is no longer on the schedule. The Big Macs do play neighboring South Fayette.
Belle Vernon, after winning two consecutive WPIAL and PIAA Class 3A championships, has been moved back up to Class 4A and will play in the Big Six Conference, formerly the Big Seven. McGuffey will be playing in the Class 3A Western Hills Conference, along with schools in Beaver and Allegheny counties. The Highlanders will open the season against Washington and play the following week at Trinity.
Monessen has been moved out of the Class A Tri-County South Conference and shifted to the Black Hills. Avella replaces Monessen in the TCS. In Class A, only the top three finishers in each conference will be guaranteed a playoff berth. The final four spots will be wild cards chosen by the WPIAL’s football committee. That’s probably not good news for local teams.
One rivalry game is back on the schedule. Charleroi and Monessen, the most-played series involving area teams, will be the season opener after being dropped from the schedule for several years.
One tradition that never left is the O-R’s sports staff and several of its correspondents will be making their weekly football predictions again in Thursday editions. We hope this is the year Joe Tuscano finally climbs out of the basement in the picks standings.
Several high schools have new head coaches this year. Marty Spieler has a tough act to follow succeeding ultra-successful Joe Rossi at South Fayette. Greg Perry takes his passing game to Mt. Lebanon, former W&J standout Dan Lis returns to his alma mater, Chartiers-Houston. Robert Heller, a former Observer-Reporter Male Athlete of the Year, returns to his alma mater, Ringgold, and will try to re-energize the Rams.
One thing that hasn’t changed is at Mapletown, where George Messich begins his 42nd season as the Maples’ coach. Think about that for a moment. What were you doing 42 years ago?
As for the Steelers, a soft early season schedule might be just what is needed to get whoever plays quarterback in sync with the rest of the offense before AFC North games begin. Then again, the Steelers do have a knack for playing down to the level of their competition.
Observer-Reporter Sports editor Chris Dugan can be reached at dugan@observer-reporter.com.