Aug 18, 2024 By Joe Tuscano 4 min read

The biggest battle West Greene High School might have this year is handling graduation.

The team that went 6-1 in the Class A Tri-County South Conference and 8-3 overall was senior laden and it’s the job of head coach Beau Jackson and his staff to plug the holes and get the next group ready for game action.

“Honestly, there are a lot of question marks going into camp,” Jackson said. “We have to see how guys are going to fill in. Unfortunately, we lost a lot of players with a big senior class. Fortunately, we have a lot of good players coming back.”

Graduation decimated the Pioneers’ backfield. The biggest loss was arguably Colin Brady, who despite an injury-plagued season rushed for 1,089 yards. Brady gave way to Billy Whitlatch, who filled in nicely. Whitlatch rushed for 1,440 yards in his senior season. Brady and Whitlatch combined for 2,529 yards and 31 touchdowns in the run-heavy offense. Another player lost to graduation this year was fullback John Lampe, who gained 443 yards and scored 13 touchdowns. Whitlatch finished sixth out of all Class A rushers while Brady was 13th.

“That’s one of the question marks we have,” Jackson said. “We lost our entire backfield from tailback to fullback. And we lost our linebacking corps also. But the good thing is we have four starting linemen coming back.”

And a fifth lineman who got a lot of playing time.

They include junior Colin Whyte, senior Brennen Crawford, sophomore Mason Ansell, junior Hunter Gorby and senior Levi Smith.

Parker Burns returns at tight end for his senior season so Lane Allison should feel well protected from his starting quarterback position. Allison completed 55 of 115 passes for 984 yards last year. He had 16 touchdowns and six interceptions. Those statistics put him 12th in Class A.

“We’re pretty excited to see what he does this season,” Jackson said. “He didn’t throw a heck of a lot but when we did, he went deep. He had good yards per attempt.”

“I feel we just have to practice harder,” Allison said. “We need to get as prepared as we can. I feel a little bit more pressure. Now that Colin is gone and Billy is gone, we need people to step up.”

Jackson has a plan to shore up the running game.

“What we’re thinking about is we had Patrick Durbin play some wide receiver. We’re going to try to move him back to tailback,” said Jackson. “We might split reps with Jackson Grimes and with Austin Pettit. They’re going to be athletes. We’re going to move them around from running back to receiver.”

At wide receiver, Jackson gets a boost from the return of Jacob Orndoff, who didn’t play last year, Grimes and Matt Wassil.

Crawford, Smith, Gorby and Ansell will provide the muscle up front on defense.

“We’re going to experiment a little bit with Colin Whyte at linebacker,” Jackson said. “We’ll have Brice Smith, who didn’t play last year, paired with Whyte.”

Allison and Orndoff will handle the safety positions while Burns and Grimes will take care of the cornerback spots.”

Durbin returns to manage the placekicking responsibility but the punting and kickoff chores will be up for grabs in camp.

Maybe the best thing that happened for the Pioneers came with realignment. Avella was put into the Tri-County South and perennial power Monessen was moved out.

“Avella is going through some pretty good athletes right now,” Jackson said. “You can expect them to be on the fringe of a playoff team. Jefferson-Morgan is getting a lot of kids back and I think that they will be a top-tier team. And California is always strong.”