Thursday, September 8, 2011

Quick hits

Washington High School will honor its 2001 PIAA Class AA championship football team before Friday night's home opener against Apollo-Ridge.
Those Prexies remain the only team from the Observer-Reporter's coverage area to have won a state championship in football. They finished 15-0, and were loaded with talent and colorful characters.
Wash High athletic director Joe Nicolella said things will get underway at approximately 7:05 p.m. When I spoke with him Wednesday afternoon, he said about 15-20 former players were expected. Later in the night, I talked briefly with Guy Montecalvo - Canon-McMillan's athletic director and the man who coached Wash High to the title - and he believed around 25 were expected.
Montecalvo does plan to attend before heading back to Memorial Stadium for the Big Macs' home opener against Latrobe.
It will be interesting to see who comes back, and to get a chance to talk with the most accomplished football team from this area.

* Charleroi will play its first football game at its new on-campus stadium Friday night against Brownsville.
For more on the facility and the plans, click http://www.observer-reporter.com/or/sports11/09-08-2011-scholastic-notebook---charleroi-stadium.
The Cougars were hit hard by injuries in their opener at Mt. Pleasant. The same thing happened to the team a year ago.

* Several football teams failed to call in games last Friday night. The culprits were Ringgold, Charleroi, Carmichaels and Waynesburg.
Like every newspaper, it's impossible for the Observer-Reporter to staff every football game. That makes calling in results essential to provide readers with information on the game. The company even has a toll-free number set up for calls. It's 1-800-222-6397.

* You won't notice any statistical leaders in Friday's edition this week. The reason? Only Jefferson-Morgan, Avella, Mapletown, Carmichaels, Chartiers-Houston and Trinity reported their official Week 1 statistics to the O-R as of Thursday morning.
Stat guys and coaches, you can email stats to mkovak@observer-reporter.com or let us know if you post them on a site like MaxPreps.

* Carmichaels football coach John Menhart became the Mikes' all-time wins leader last Friday. Menhart, one of the more colorful characters around, picked up his 91st win - a 25-0 victory at Leechburg. There aren't many people out there as loyal to a place as Menhart is to Carmichaels.
Refreshing to see.
For more on Menhart's milestone, click http://www.observer-reporter.com/or/story11/09-07-2011-football-notebook--menhart-.

* There's a trend developing for athletes at Monessen, and it's rather unique. A growing number of football players, guys like Chavas Rawlins, are also playing soccer.
Anyone else think it's a good thing to see?

4 comments:

R. Keith Taylor said...

I think kids playing two sports at once is stupid. The only exception I would allow is for kickers and punters. Otherwise, it increases the risk for injury, takes away from sleep, but whats most important, is it takes away from the academics. It hard enough to go to school from 7-2, got to football until 5:00 go to soccer and then go home eat dinner and study. However, if the students can balance the load, so be it.

Anonymous said...

Mike, saw your question on the side of the blog that asked if people had a problem with a team pulling its starters if they were way ahead and the opposing team leaving their starters in. Here is another quesiton you should ask. Do people have a problem if a team is up 50-0 and leave their starters in to "run up the score"? A team like Clairton is in a no-win situation. They get accused of running up the score if their starters play in the 2nd half, they get accused of showing teams up if they take a knee on point after conversions, then they get labeled as whiners if they put their freshman in and the opposing team lets a 245 lb 18 year old senior D-1 player run roughshod over their 14 year olds. Please explain to me how Clairton can ever win this argument?

DietCoke said...

anonymous,
sorry, they won't look like the good guys as long as they are whipping everyone's behind. It's not right, but that is the only way opponents can feel vindicated after constant beat downs. Clairton's best way out of this is to play up a classification like Aliquippa and Jeanette. Obviously, they would still win their share of blowouts, but the bottom feeders aren't as bad as the low-end single A schools are.

Joey Niklas said...

AA would be a tough task just because of numbers. I think Clairton can compete w/ the best of 2A across the board. But only dressing 25 players right now, Clairton would be 1 injury away from just being an average team. And why move to 2A just to have a possibility of being average? Why risk the opportunity of being a State or WPIAL championship? If Clairton had 45-50 kids on the roster I'd absolutely agree. Heck the Bears are really only dressing 7 maybe 8 linemen. Fact is we're a 1A school. I know its a tough task for some schools, but I think schools round here needs to step their games up. It wasn't too long ago Fort Cherry and Char Houston beat Clairton. This run won't last forever.

Now I do wished the PIAA would Split Class A into Class 1A and Class 1B. That way we could have less games between the Clairton's and Avella's of the world. I think we all can agree that if we can say Clairton is 60 points better than them now, that game shouldn't be played. But I do give credit to Avella for coming out and trying to compete. Those Eagles have a lot of heart yo.

As for anon, I really didn't have a problem w/ Washington playing its starters. I flip flopped on that issue all week. I see both sides of the argument.