High School category, Page 551
Penn Hills wrestlers make strides during nontraditional season
Penn Hills wrestling coach Jeremy Packer enjoyed having a different type of schedule this season. Due to what the Indians thought were going to be low numbers, Penn Hills focused on competing in individual tournaments and building up the skills of wrestlers in a program filled with inexperienced grapplers. Entering...
Penn Hills notebook: Indoor track team looks to build speed, stamina
While Penn Hills indoor track coach Lee Zelkowitz like to use the winter season as a program builder for the fall outdoor season, the Indians would like to build some momentum by sending a few athletes to the state meet. But first, the Indians had to have athletes qualify for...
Pine-Richland sophomore makes name for herself at WPIAL gymnastics meet
Annamaria Samuels has a unique first name and sometimes it’s accidentally misspelled, which was the case on the WPIAL championship results sheet. Don’t expect to see many misspellings in the future, because Samuels certainly made a name for herself with her performance at WPIALs. Samuels, a sophomore at Pine-Richland, took...
Breakout regular season leads Pine-Richland girls into playoff matchup with rival North Allegheny
The first two meetings with North Allegheny provided lessons for the Pine-Richland girls basketball team. The third meeting yields an opportunity to pull an upset. Pine-Richland received the seventh seed in the WPIAL Class 6A playoffs and will travel to No. 2 North Allegheny for a first-round matchup at 7...
Gateway bowlers earn trip to regional championships
The youthful Gateway boys bowling team collected 2,561 pins through three games and finished 15th out of 24 teams at the WPIBL boys team championship tournament Feb. 15, at Sims Lanes in Beaver Falls. Junior Alex Keeling-Oliver led the Gators with games of 165, 210 and 168 to finish with...
Shaler notebook: Titans make themselves at home in playoffs
This winter, making the playoffs was standard operating procedure for the Shaler athletic department. The Titans saw plenty of teams earn a chance to move on to the next level of competition. The Shaler boys basketball, girls basketball, boys bowling, girls bowling and two unified bocce teams all earned spots...
Westmoreland high school athletes of the week: Week ending Feb. 19, 2023
Melina Stratigos School: Belle Vernon Sport: Swimming Year: Junior Claim to fame: Stratigos helped the Leopards to a 67-47 victory over Steel Valley as she won the 200-yard freestyle and 100-yard butterfly and swam legs of the winning 200 medley and 400 freestyle relay teams. She also won a pair...
A-K Valley athletes of the week: Fox Chapel’s Anna Troutman, Freeport’s Michael Braun
Anna Troutman Class: Junior School: Fox Chapel Sport: Track and field Report card: Troutman finished first in the high jump at the Tri-State Track Coaches Association championship meet Saturday at Edinboro. She cleared the bar at 5 feet, 5 inches, bettering the next-closest competitors by 4 inches. She also finished...
High school scores, summaries and schedules for Feb. 18, 2023
High schools WPIAL championships Boys Class 6A Quarterfinals Friday’s schedule Norwin (14-8) at New Castle (20-2), 7 p.m.; Butler (14-7) at Mt. Lebanon (15-7), 7 p.m.; Seneca Valley (9-12) at Upper St. Clair (14-8), 7 p.m.; Baldwin (12-10) vs. Central Catholic (13-9) at Gateway, 7 p.m. Class 5A Quarterfinals Wednesday’s...
Big day for Canon-McMillan at TSTCA indoor track championships
Rose Kuchera won a pair of events, the 60-meter hurdles and long jump, to headline a big day for Canon-McMillan at the TSTCA indoor track championships Saturday at Edinboro. On the girls side, Bennett Pidro won the 60-meter dash and the 4x200 relay team also finished first. In boys competition,...
WPIAL Class 2A wrestlers begin postseason quest at section tournaments
Every wrestler who takes the mat wants to win. That doesn’t always happen, but this is the time of the season when individuals are in survival mode. Missing out on first place at this stage doesn’t mean the end of any and all hopes. WPIAL high school wrestlers in Class...
High school roundup for Feb. 18, 2023: Keystone Oaks holds off South Park in Class 3A first round
Eriona Neal scored 26 points as No. 7 Keystone Oaks held off No. 10 South Park, 61-57, in a WPIAL Class 3A girls basketball first-round playoff matchup Saturday at Peters Township. Laney Wagner added 18 points and Bailey Rieg had 11 for Keystone Oaks (16-7), which led 42-25 after three...
No. 11 Mohawk upsets No. 6 Apollo-Ridge in 1st round, gets rematch with Neshannock
The Mohawk girls basketball team had a long ride home from Apollo-Ridge after a WPIAL Class 3A first-round game Saturday afternoon. But the nearly 90-minute trip back to the New Castle area was a joyous one. Three players landed in double figures as the No. 11-seeded Warriors came away with...
Fast start lifts No. 5 OLSH to 1st-round win over Mt. Pleasant
Falling into an early hole in the WPIAL basketball playoffs is often a bad sign, especially for a lower seed. It certainly didn’t help Mt. Pleasant in its tournament opener. While the Vikings chipped away at a double-digit deficit, they spent the afternoon feeling remorseful about the opening minutes and...
22 WPIAL football players picked for Big School East-West all-star game
Pine-Richland teammates Ryan Palmieri, Jake Beam, John Rottinghaus and Matt Nicely, who won a state title together in December, were among 22 WPIAL football players chosen for the Big School East-West all-star game. The East-West event consists of two games May 21 at Bishop McDevitt in Harrisburg. The big school...
North Hills ‘workhorse’ to play college ball at Cal (Pa.)
Logan Greer’s hunger has paid off. Greer, a senior offensive and defensive lineman for the North Hills football team, recently committed to Cal (Pa.) to continue his academic and athletic career. “It felt like family,” said Greer, a three-year starter for the Indians. “I really liked the coaching staff and...
Powerful Obama Academy ready for challenge from scrappy Allderdice in City League girls title game
Obama Academy girls basketball coach Monique McCoy has stressed to her team nothing will be easy against Allderdice in the City League championship game Sunday at UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse. The Eagles have dominated the Dragons over the past three seasons, winning seven consecutive games, six of which were by double...
North Hills girls take significant step forward
The 2022-2023 North Hills girls basketball season was one built around learning. That includes the team’s players, as well as its new coach. But those lessons — even the tough ones — paid off late in the year and could have the Indians’ program bound for something much bigger in...
North Allegheny notebook: Tigers runners shine at indoor meet
North Allegheny’s girls mile relay team re-set their school record Feb. 12, at a Tri-State Track Coaches Association indoor track and field meet at Edinboro. Members of the 1,600-meter relay — Isabella Costa, Chloe Reed, Ginger Tegtmeier and Mackenzie Winning — won the event in 4 minutes, 9.51 seconds. Maya...
North Allegheny girls regroup during long layoff before WPIAL Class 6A playoffs commence
WPIAL schedule-makers gave the North Allegheny girls almost two weeks off before the basketball playoffs, but the Tigers didn’t take a vacation. There were 11 days between the team’s regular-season finale and its playoff opener Feb. 23. Whether that downtime was good or bad for a team depends on what...
Franklin Regional boys swimmers win 27th section title, turn focus to WPIALs
The Franklin Regional boys swimming team captured its 27th section title with a victory against Latrobe on Feb. 9. Now the boys turn their focus to the WPIAL individual swimming and diving championships. The diving portion is Feb. 25 at North Allegheny. The swimming side is March 2-3 at Pitt’s...
Family motivates Fox Chapel junior in quest for postseason wrestling success
Josh Alexander had one of his brothers work on lighting a fire underneath him. With the Alexander family, there is a lot of successful family history on the wrestling mat. Both of Alexander’s brothers wrestled at Maryland, and his father competed at Clarion. The 139-pound Fox Chapel junior who is...
Fox Chapel swimmers stay motivated to collect more medals
Fox Chapel swimming coach Dan Taylor wants to make sure every year that the swimming team finds different ways to challenge its athletes. Fox Chapel has a high percentage of kids who seldom leave the pool, taking part in club competition as well as high school events, so it is...
WPIAL Hall of Fame induction a bittersweet moment for Bethel Park’s Emily Carter
Emily Carter seems like a humble person. In the pool, she became resolute. Thanks in large part to her talent and tenacity as a Bethel Park swimmer, Carter will be inducted into the WPIAL Hall of Fame this spring as part of the 2023 class. She competed for four years...
Bethel Park sophomore earns high marks at WPIAL rifle championships
Bethel Park’s Freddy Mach proved to be a top marksman at the WPIAL rifle championship Feb. 9 at the Dormont-Mt. Lebanon Sportsmen’s Club in Canonsburg. Mach, a sophomore who was born in Japan, finished as the WPIAL runner-up with a score of 200-18x and five center targets in the co-ed...
