Bill Beckner stories, Page 7

When he was in middle school, Mark Katarski sharpened his No. 2 pencils and kept score for the Mt. Pleasant boys basketball team. He reveled in the details, the facts and figures that go into a game. “It was the 1990-91 season,” Katarski said. “My senior year, in 1995, I...

“New” is the theme for the 5th annual Tre Cunningham Memorial Basketball Tournament set for Thursday through Saturday at the Jeannette elementary and high schools. New coaches and new teams will greet attendees at an event that honors late Jayhawks great Tre Cunningham, a three-sport standout who died in a...

Mt. Pleasant will vote Wednesday to hire recommended candidate Mark Katarski, a Vikings alum, as boys head basketball coach. Katarski most recently served as interim boys basketball coach at Hempfield during last season’s investigation of former Spartans coach Bill Swan. He will replace Annie Malkowiak, who was not retained after...

Covering more ground than the sun some days, Jack Whalen has been a sure out in center field for Seton Hill baseball. His play has been golden. The junior was rewarded for his effort by being named to the American Baseball Coaches Association/Rawlings Division II Gold Glove Team. He is...

One of the WPIAL’s top big-play threats last football season is beginning to draw NCAA Division I college attention. And he wants more schools to know his name. TyVaughn Kershaw, a rising senior running back at Monessen, has his first FCS offer after Tennessee at Martin reached out this weekend....

Player of the year Cam Ponko Sr., 3B, Penn-Trafford Tears welled up in Cam Ponko’s eyes as she reflected on a banner season. A championship season. A career season. A player-of-the-year type of season. The Penn-Trafford third baseman was flooded with emotion after a total recall of her accomplishments —...

Posthumously, the late Zach Washington became the fifth former Jeannette standout to be inducted into the National High School Hall of Fame. Washington’s children, Zach Washington Jr. and Laurie Washington, spoke on behalf of their father last weekend at a ceremony at Umstattd Hall in Canton, Ohio. Washington was 80...

Norwin will remember the 2025 spring sports season for its impressive wins, highlight performances and gold medals. There was plenty to talk about at year-end banquets. Track and field was the standard bearer after a banner season. The boys and girls teams won WPIAL Class 3A championships, the boys celebrating...

Despite a number of high-end scholarship offers from Power 4 and Group of 5 schools, Brock Heisler has opted to play college football in the nonscholarship Ivy League. Don’t be too quick to judge the big bruiser from Hempfield. A 4.0 student-athlete, he probably knows something the rest of us...

After Penn-Trafford won the PIAA softball championship Friday at Penn State, Warriors coach Denny Little had his players take photos with some younger fans celebrating from the bleachers at Beard Field. He said it would be nice to make it a tradition. The next generation of girls will have a...

Rising redshirt senior Ian Korn, who had an exceptional season for Seton Hill, is transferring to West Virginia for a season of Division I baseball. Korn, the NCBWA Division II National Pitcher of the Year, went 11-2 with a 1.81 ERA and 83 strikeouts in 84 innings this year. Opponents...

Mario Cavallaro was a sophomore in 2022 when he played a key role in Norwin’s PIHL Penguin Cup championship run. He scored the game-winning goal in the finals on an assist from his brother, Anthony. But Super Mario was far from finished. Cavallaro went on to play for the South...

Jaymier Austin began showing up on the college football recruiting radar last summer when three Division I programs — Purdue, Youngstown State and Marshall — offered him scholarships. The rising senior at Franklin Regional continues to garner interest, with eight total offers on the table for the 6-foot-4, 180-pound wide...

UNIVERSITY PARK — Giuliana Youngo might have played her last softball game Friday night. The Penn-Trafford senior right fielder, though, probably will be back at Penn State’s Beard Field, the site of the Warriors’ 2-0 win over Greencastle-Antrim in the PIAA Class 5A championship. She has enrolled at Penn State....

UNIVERSITY PARK — Penn-Trafford has won two PIAA softball championships without ever winning a WPIAL title, and that is just fine with coach Denny Little. “Sometimes you have to eat your dessert first,” Little said Friday night after the Warriors captured their second state title in six years with a...

Fox Chapel’s Harran Zureikat, the No. 1-ranked kicker in the country by Kohl’s Kicking Camps, made a verbal commitment Thursday to Georgia. The five-star rising senior chose the Bulldogs of the Southeastern Conference over offers from Pitt, Penn State, Akron, Boston College and Maryland. He received the offer from Georgia...

Class 5A Penn-Trafford (23-3) vs. Greencastle-Antrim (22-3) 4 p.m. Friday at Beard Field at Nittany Lion Softball Park, Penn State District-place: Penn-Trafford 7-2; Greencastle-Antrim 3-3 PIAA titles: Penn-Trafford 1 (2019); Greencastle-Antrim 1 (2009) Road to State College: Penn-Trafford — Defeated 6-1 Central Mountain, (3-2), 3-1 Red Land (6-5) and 7-3...

Former Penn-Trafford outfielder Brooke Cleland recalls catching the final out at Beard Field and squeezing her glove around the softball. It was like time stopped for a millisecond. Then, in a rush of emotion and noise unlike anything she and her teammates had ever experienced, it became official: The Warriors...

If you hit, you play. That is Denny Little’s mantra for the Penn-Trafford softball team, and the ninth-year coach has an abundance of talented hitters to pencil onto his lineup card. “You take your nine best hitters, and you find a place for them,” Little said, not giving away any...

Rising sophomore quarterback Anthony Smith is leaving Southmoreland after a record-breaking first season. Smith, who became the second freshman in WPIAL history to pass for more than 2,000 yards last fall, has enrolled at Seton LaSalle. He was with the Rebels on Wednesday for a 7-on-7 workout at Woodland Hills....

Seneca Valley star pitcher Lexie Hames was named the Gatorade Pennsylvania Softball Player of the Year for the second straight season. Hames, a Clemson commit, led the Raiders to a WPIAL 6A runner-up finish, their fourth consecutive finals appearance. The two-time WPIAL champion went 17-3 with a 0.49 ERA, a...

Penn-Trafford senior softball players Kylie Anthony and Cam Ponko have made tweaks to their swings this season. Anthony has embraced “sighting,” a timing approach that she and her teammates learned from former Warriors standout Emma Little. Ponko is focused more on “slugging,” which also shortens the swing and gets the...

Vanessa Abel is taking her coaching experience to a larger program. The Southmoreland graduate, who spent the last six seasons as an assistant women’s basketball coach at Duquesne, was hired as an assistant at St. John’s. Abel was an associate head coach for the Dukes this past season. Abel, a...

PIAA softball playoffs Class 6A Semifinals Hempfield (23-1) vs. Nazareth (21-4) 4 p.m. TUESDAY at Norco Park Softball Complex, Fayetteville District-place: Hempfield 7-1; Nazareth 11-2 Winner plays: Winner of 3-3 Central Dauphin (19-3)/1-3 Perkiomen Valley (21-4) in the championship at 4 p.m. Thursday at Nittany Lion Softball Park, Penn State...

Luke Williams is hitting reset on his college baseball recruiting. The rising senior shortstop at Franklin Regional committed to Virginia when he was a freshman and has remained loyal to the Cavaliers. But a coaching change has disrupted his plans. Williams opened his recruitment and is looking for a new...