District College category, Page 5

A month into his stint as football coach at The Kiski School, Aaron Smetanka has set two clear objectives. First, and most importantly, he wants to help grow better men for the future, to make sure his players have a solid life path for whenever they graduate. “The academic standards...

Trent Bielak went nearly 120 at-bats before his first collegiate home run. Bielak, a Highlands grad and junior at Pitt-Bradford, finally hit one March 6 in the Panthers’ win at Elmira. In the top of the third, with one out and Max Rogers on base after a single, Bielak launched...

Saint Francis men’s basketball coach Rob Krimmel has decided to retire from coaching, the university announced Thursday. Krimmel, 47, led the Red Flash to their first NCAA Tournament appearance in 34 years last week after Saint Francis won the NEC Tournament title. Saint Francis then lost to Alabama State, 70-68,...

Basketball season is over, but there is a different kind of March Madness brewing at Saint Vincent College. The excitement level is just as grand for the women’s bowling team, which is NCAA Tournament-bound for the first time. “We have nothing to lose and everything to gain,” senior bowler Sabine...

A week after playing in just its second NCAA Tournament, Saint Francis’ decision to reclassify its athletic program to Division III and join the Presidents’ Athletic Conference in 2026-27 has sparked a mass exodus of men’s basketball players. Six more from the Northeast Conference school, including leading scorer Riley Parker,...

Montrell Johnson decided it was time to raise his grade point average. The Highlands senior spent a lot of time working to bring his average up to close to 3.0. When he verbally committed to play football at Saint Francis University last week, Johnson believed he had everything in place...

Saint Francis is reclassifying its 22 athletic programs from NCAA Division I to Division III, the university announced Tuesday. The news comes on the heels of an NCAA Tournament appearance by Saint Francis’ men’s basketball team, the university’s first since 1991, as the Red Flash won an automatic bid by...

Pitt-Greensburg softball coach Chuck Myers reached a milestone when the Bobcats defeated Chatham in the first game of a doubleheader. UPG won both games 6-2, with the first going into the books as Myers’ 100th career win. The sweep was the first of the season for the Bobcats (5-9). In...

Talk with Justin Turcovski, and it quickly becomes clear that he is a thoughtful, quiet young man of great faith. So when asked about an injury he suffered during his sophomore season with the Pitt-Johnstown baseball team, Turcovski looked at it simply as part of a larger plan from a...

Madison Gardner appeared to be on her way to a stellar freshman season with the Pitt-Greensburg softball team last spring when disaster struck. The Bobcats were playing their first (technically) home doubleheader of 2024 on March 24 at Seton Hill. Late in the second game against Kenyon, a shallow pop...

The former Butler BlueSox, a summer league team for college baseball players, is moving to Natrona Heights after many years at Pullman Park. The team has a new home — the ballfield at Highlands High School — and soon a new nickname that’s still to be determined, said Mike McNabb,...

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...

DAYTON, Ohio — Amarr Knox’s layup with a second left lifted Alabama State to its first NCAA Tournament win Tuesday night, 70-68 over Saint Francis in a matchup of No. 16 seeds at the First Four. Knox scored 16 points to help the Hornets (20-15) earn a date with No....

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,...

In his fifth year with the Waynesburg baseball team, Mike Bell had to start over. A grad student coming off a season in which he earned his first Presidents’ Athletic Conference postseason award — honorable mention — Bell and the rest of his returning teammates had to adapt to a...

There’s a good chance Tatiana Holt won’t be listening to Taylor Swift on anymore training runs. Holt, a Kiski Area grad and freshman runner at Slippery Rock, was a little over a mile into a workout during the early stages of cross country season. She was listening to Swift on...

The Saint Francis men’s basketball team won’t have to wait long to play its first NCAA Tournament game since 1991. The Red Flash will play Alabama State in a First Four game at 6:40 p.m. Tuesday at UD Arena in Dayton, Ohio. The game will be televised on truTV. No....

Thiel junior Hayden Wightman wasn’t sure she was even going to attend college. If Wightman did go, she wasn’t sure she wanted to follow the family tradition of playing lacrosse. While Wightman was in high school at Shaler Area, she didn’t play any varsity sports. But once her dad took...

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...

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...

Saint Francis junior guard Chris Moncrief saw Daemar Kelly practice the situation he found himself in during the Northeast Conference championship game hundreds of times. There weren’t always cameras or opponents around, but Kelly wanted to be the guy who could make big shots. Kelly, a Penn Hills graduate, stuck...

Seton Hill will play in the NCAA Division II women’s basketball tournament for the first time in 15 years. Accepting an at-large bid Monday, the third-seeded Griffins (23-6) will begin play at noon on Friday against No. 6 Kutztown (22-11) at Edinboro’s McComb Fieldhouse in Erie. Seton Hill beat Kutztown...

A pair of local products claimed major awards in Presidents’ Athletic Conference basketball. Grove City senior guard Mara Polczynski (Norwin) was named the conference defensive player of the year, while Washington & Jefferson freshman guard Cam Rowell (Franklin Regional) claimed newcomer of the year honors. Polczynski, known for her ability...

Kassidy Wittig spent her entire freshman season in the Seton Hill softball team’s dugout. It was a fate she could have accepted if she’d been sitting because other players had proven themselves to be more capable. But Wittig didn’t even get a chance to show what she could do in...