Aug 23, 2016 5 min read

How the PIAA’s decision earlier this year to expand to six classes in football affects the 29 high schools in the area figures to vary widely. Given that there’s no avoiding realignment, most people have found nice things to say about it by now.

The majority of area teams reside in the smaller classes, AA and A, though there are local representatives across all six divisions.

Peters Township is one of the members of 6-A. This season will be T.J. Plack’s first as the Indians’ head coach. His previous head coaching job was a five-year stint at South Fayette from 2002-2007. Speaking on the eve of heat acclimation practices, Plack, perhaps jokingly, wished that he hadn’t agreed to a season-opening Aug. 26 against Chartiers Valley.

“We really got ourselves in a bind picking this,” Plack said. “I wish we didn’t have that. I wish we had another week of camp instead.”

But the decision is final, so Plack said he and his coaching staff used August to work through the playbook, just like every other team. Also reassuring is that the Indians have two non-conference matchups to begin the regular season.

“We do have time before our first conference game to work out any bugs,” Plack said. “That’s heavily a concern of mine, getting stuff in, getting it in appropriately and not trying to rush stuff.”

Entering his eighth season at Washington, Mike Bosnic hasn’t thought much about the adjustment or what it means for the strength of the Prexies’ new conference because most of the opponents will be new to the schedule. Many of the teams in the Interstate Conference – the Prexies’ old home – migrated up a level. Washington has returned to the Century Conference, with former rivals Bentworth, Beth-Center, Burgettstown, Charleroi, and Chartiers-Houston.

“I do like the geography of our conference,” Bosnic said. “I think the games will have a little more meaning with the kids being able to relate to more local teams.”

Without traffic, each of Washington’s conference road trips should take less than an hour, while at least two previous away commutes took a hour or more.

Bosnic also noted that some people who might not have paid attention to solid Class A programs Frazier and Beth-Center in recent years could be surprised by their ability.

Beth-Center has a new coach in Joe Kuhns, who returns to his alma mater after four seasons as an assistant coach at Waynesburg University. Though he’s been off high school sidelines for a little bit, having last coached in the WPIAL in 2011 with Waynesburg, Kuhns didn’t avoid watching WPIAL football. After dropping off his high school-age daughter at games in recent years, Kuhns often stayed to follow the action on the field.

“I love football, but some of those games were so hard to watch because there’s no competitiveness to it,” Kuhns said.

The imbalance of the previous conference alignments had a clear effect on fans too, who would only get up for a couple of games at most every year, he said.

“There’s just no excitement aside from one or two games a year,” Kuhns said. “I think this is really going to help.”

Lack of energy definitely won’t be an issue for his team on one regular season date. After a hiatus, Beth-Center and Brownsville will meet again this fall, which makes Kuhns, who played on Beth-Center’s 1986 WPIAL Class AA runner-up team, happy.

“BC-Brownsville, back when I was in school, that was a violent rivalry.” Kuhns said. “We saw them a few times this summer. They have a ton of athletes. That’s going to be a good rivalry.”

California will no longer play Beth-Center or Frazier after both moved up a class, which disappointed second-year Trojans coach Darrin Dillow. But the resulting parity is a plus when not much existed before, he said.

“In our conference (Tri-County South), most of the teams are going to be competitive amongst each other,” Dillow said. “If you make some mistakes in the conference, I think you’re going to pay for it.”

While the loss of certain matchups is a clear negative, players at Fort Cherry are excited about facing unfamiliar competition, according to coach Jim Shiel, who cited Avella, California and Monessen.

“And I’m excited to get out of the Black Hills Conference,” Shiel said, laughing.

With good reason.

“The last, four five years the Black Hills Conference was just brutal,” Shiel said. “We went from Clairton winning four state championships in a row, then they moved to the Eastern Conference, and then we picked up Avonworth and North Catholic.”

Four of the teams from the old Black Hills Conference, including Cardinal Wuerl North Catholic and Avonworth, have joined Class 2-A. Class A has shrunk from 34 members a year ago to 26 with the playoff field holding steady at 16. Shiel can do the math.

“Increases your odds of getting into the playoffs,” he said.

Fort Cherry’s new reality contrasts with that of Trinity and Ringgold, because though the Hillers and Rams moved up a class from 3-A to 4-A, everything is pretty much the same for them, in the regular season at least. The one new conference addition is Greensburg Salem, which takes the place of Elizabeth Forward and Yough.

“There’s not a lot of surprises,” said Nick Milchovich, Ringgold’s third-year head coach.

But even if there were, Milchovich stated the mindset most area teams will no doubt adopt as the season approaches.

“We’re not going to let who we play dictate what we do.”

Observer-Reporter assistant sports editor Joe Tuscano contributed to this story.