Bill Beckner stories, Page 22

Sewickley Academy used lessons learned from a loss to one Westmoreland County team to beat another. The Panthers rallied from 14 down Saturday to topple Greensburg Central Catholic, 52-48, and end the Centurions’ run in the PIAA Class 2A boys basketball playoffs. Panthers first-year coach Mike Iuzzolino, a former Penn...

Everything was going well for Greensburg Central Catholic in the western final — until it went south. A 14-point lead in the first half felt more like 30 as the Centurions pulled ahead of Sewickley Academy with relative ease. Crisp passing led to uncontested layups, and defensive pressure was locked...

Jackson Mickens is only a freshman, but he already has more Division I offers than a lot of seniors. The fast-rising Southmoreland standout added a second scholarship offer last week as Miami (Ohio) reached out. Mickens, a 6-foot-1, 215-pound receiver and defensive end, received an offer from Akron in January....

David Mutter is a free agent, and a resilient one at that. The Mt. Pleasant senior and WPIAL and PIAA champion swimmer had plans to continue his career at Alabama. He signed with the Crimson Tide in November. But sweeping changes forced Alabama to make roster cuts. For 2025-26, the...

Norwin softball coach Brian Mesich also is an athletic trainer in the district. His team may have lost an abundance of talent from a WPIAL runner-up finish, but Mesich came back to tape things up and make another go at it. “Expectations are always the same,” said Mesich, who has...

Annie Czajkowski enjoyed a trip to Boston for the New Balance Nationals track and field meet. She brought home a few souvenirs, including a school record. Czajkowski set the Norwin girls indoor record with a time of 5 minutes, 3.54 seconds in the mile to finish eighth in her heat....

Norwin made the WPIAL Class 6A baseball playoffs last season and has stewed over another first-round loss to North Allegheny for nearly a year. But the Knights return nearly enough starters to fill out a lineup and start a new playoff push. Six of the eight returning starters are seniors,...

Less than two months out from the start of their inaugural season, the Pittsburgh Riveters added three more players, including two with Westmoreland County roots, to bring the pre-professional team’s roster to 21. Pittsburgh will play in the USL W League with its opener set for May 16 against the...

PIAA basketball playoffs Class 2A Semifinals Greensburg Central Catholic (26-3) vs. Sewickley Academy (23-5) Noon Saturday at AHN Arena, Peters Township Winner plays: Winner of 3-2 Linville Hill (22-5)/4-1 Northwest Area (26-3) in championship game at 2 p.m. March 28 at Giant Center, Hershey District seeds: Greensburg Central Catholic 7-5;...

Ciara Gregory didn’t make the NCAA Tournament when she played at Charlotte. She will make her second appearance in the Big Dance as a coach. The all-time leading girls scorer at Jeannette is a first-year assistant at Kentucky, which opens the tournament noon Friday against Liberty in the Spokane Region....

Take this crop of boys basketball teams — Greensburg Central Catholic, Jeannette, Northgate, Sewickley Academy and Our Lady of the Sacred Heart — and line them up. The five WPIAL teams all made the PIAA Class 2A quarterfinals. And most of them have played each other at some point this...

When Mercyhurst announced a “leadership change” in cutting ties with women’s basketball coach Brooklyn Kohlheim four days after the season ended, junior forward Bailey Kuhns scrambled to reset her future. She didn’t have to go anywhere, but with Kohlheim gone, things would surely be different in the looming offseason and...

Standouts Toryn Fulton and Ciara Camacho are finally seniors — it seems like they have been in the Panthers lineup for much longer than four years — so that means one more season of bashing softballs to the gaps and over fences. The pair of Division I recruits will look...

It is not often that a WPIAL softball team can say it has two Division I-level pitchers on the same staff. Opponents might get to see both of them in the same game. Hempfield features a high-level duo in senior Riley Miller and junior Julia Varhola, who bring a combination...

Latrobe freshman Natalia Scekeres found out only minutes before her first varsity softball game she would be leading off. She took it in stride and embraced the opportunity, and the Wildcats followed her lead. “I wasn’t nervous,” the up-and-coming shortstop said. “We know we can hit. If our bats come...

One Westmoreland County baseball team was in midseason form for spring training. Franklin Regional opened the season with a three-game sweep at the Jackie Robinson Sports Complex in Vero Beach, Fla. The Panthers (3-0) defeated Wissahickon, 7-2, in the first game as Jonah Willochell pitched five strong innings. Liam Bernadowski...

Pitt-Johnstown redshirt junior Isaiah Vance (Hempfield) finished as a national runner-up at the NCAA Division II wrestling championships in Indianapolis. Vance is now a two-time All-American. The fifth seed, Vance won with a couple of decisions and a major decision to reach the finals, then lost to Maryville’s Ryan Heerman,...

A new spring season has arrived, and a number of local baseball and softball teams made the TribLive HSSN preseason rankings. For baseball, Hempfield starts the spring at No. 3 in Class 6A, Belle Vernon is No. 3 in Class 4A and Greensburg Central Catholic is No. 4 in A....

As the late Tom Petty sang, waiting is the hardest part. Greensburg Central Catholic earned a spot in the PIAA Class 2A boys basketball semifinals but has to sit a week between games. The Centurions (26-3) will play Sewickley Academy (23-5) at noon Saturday at Peters Township in the western...

With blood dripping from his elbow, Samir Crosby had to come out of the game and have a teammate shoot the second of his two free throws late in his team’s most important basketball game of the season. “It’s always physical when we play Jeannette. Honestly, I didn’t think I...

Cam Rowell knew he wanted to make a fast impact in the Presidents Athletic Conference. An array of steals, fast-break layups and punctuation slam dunks later, the Washington & Jefferson freshman is a rookie of the year. Rowell, a Franklin Regional graduate, capped his debut basketball season by winning the...

A Norwin graduate claimed a major award in Presidents Athletic Conference basketball. Grove City senior guard Mara Polczynski was named the conference defensive player of the year. Polczynski, known for her ability to force turnovers in the backcourt, had 80 steals and led the Wolverines with 6.5 per game. She...

A section championship. A runner-up finish in the WPIAL. Another trip to the state playoffs. The Norwin girls basketball team’s season finally came to an end with a 49-38 loss at Altoona in the PIAA 6A first round. The Knights finished 15-8 a year after winning their third WPIAL title...

The Seton Hill women’s basketball team took a 15-point lead into halftime and went on to hold back Kutztown, 89-75, in the first round of the NCAA Division II Tournament at Edinboro. The Griffins (24-6), who set a single-season program record for wins since the team joined the NCAA in...

Good weather doesn’t have much of a track record at this time of year, so it was somewhat surprising that the softball season started on time Friday, a sun-splashed opening day and 70-plus-degree temperatures greeting WPIAL teams. What wasn’t surprising was Hempfield starting a new season with a victory. “It...