Bill Beckner stories, Page 177
Latest Penn State Behrend Hall of Fame class rich with WPIAL talent
Of the nine inductees in the 2020 Penn State Behrend Athletics Hall of Fame class, five have ties to the WPIAL. The class will be honored in the spring. The honorees who first made their mark in the WPIAL include: • Kayla Frost — The 2010 graduate out of Peters...
WPIAL football changes scuttle marquee matchups for Westmoreland County teams
Week Zero, as a name, never seemed to carry much clout in the WPIAL. The moniker was met with a lukewarm reaction and did not make sense to many people when it became a thing several years ago. Many teams just decided to use the opening week for a second...
Ligonier Valley has extra challenge moving to WPIALVideo
Jude Grzywinski, Jr., the latest hulking lineman looking to make his mark at Ligonier Valley, just wants an opportunity to play football this season. The year 2020 — the dreaded number on the calendar that will pockmark troubling times shaped by a global pandemic — is supposed to be a...
Fall coronavirus cancellations affecting small college basketball too
The Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference earlier this week decided to shift most of its fall sports to the spring, a move not altogether shocking considering the volume of local college conferences doing the same thing. But when the AMCC listed the affected sports, alarm bells went off for some coaches....
A day after his twin brother received one, Penn-Trafford’s Nate Frye gets offer from Butler
One day after his identical twin brother received a scholarship offer from Butler, Penn-Trafford’s Nate Frye netted the same arrangement from the same school. Could a package deal be in the works for the talented siblings? A running back and free safety, Nate Frye recorded 74 tackles and returned an...
Franklin Regional product Todd Summers leaving Villanova
When the Colonial Athletic Association decided to move football to the spring because of health and safety concerns over the coronavirus outbreak, it virtually stamped out the final days of Todd Summers’ college career. At least his days at Villanova. A Franklin Regional graduate, Summers would have been a senior...
Penn-Trafford’s Mason Frye grabs Division I-FCS offer
Mason Frye is expected to line up at receiver and also play a key role in the secondary for Penn-Trafford this football season. Frye went from being another key returning two-way starter to a Division I prospect in one tweet Wednesday night. The 5-foot-8, 155-pound senior announced a scholarship offer...
West Penn Amateur champion Katie James doubles down with state am title
Katie James pulled off the amateur double. A junior-to-be at Southern Methodist and Shady Side Academy graduate, James held back a talented field of some of the state’s better players to capture the 84th Pennsylvania Golf Association Amateur Championship on Wednesday at Lebanon Country Club. James, who recently defended her...
River States Conference to play fall sports as scheduled
While most small-college conferences have taken a cautionary approach to fall sports by postponing the season until the spring, one area conference is staying the course. The NAIA River States Conference will buck the trend and have a fall season, leaning on a crutch of guidelines and protocol to play...
Westmoreland County American League names all-stars
After a mostly flawless regular season and a strong start to the playoffs — a fine summer baseball run, all things considered amid the covid-19 pandemic — the Westmoreland American League stayed the course with another tradition by naming its all-league teams. The league, which normally is known as District...
Belle Vernon soccer teams cancel Paul Sasko Kickoff Classic
With the start of the WPIAL season pushed to Sept. 14, Belle Vernon was left scrambling to find a time and date for one of its marquee events, the Paul Sasko Kickoff Classic. After exhausting all possibilities of working the boys-girls soccer tournament into the revised schedule, officials were left...
Westmoreland County high school notebook: Colleges courting Franklin Regional midfielder
Zach Lorenz is on the path to a Division I soccer career, but he likely will have to score a scholarship with limited highlights and contact with coaches. Covid-19 crossed out most of the annual cup season, so Lorenz, an incoming senior midfielder at Franklin Regional, was not able to...
Covid-19 scare turns out to be Lyme disease for Franklin Regional soccer coach
Rand Hudson had a scorching fever. He felt achy, his joints hurt and he was tired. Something wasn’t right. “Oh no, I have it,” Hudson said he thought to himself while trying to enjoy vacation with his family last month in Ocean City, Md. But while he had symptoms consistent...
Soccer coaches learn to work with sport-specific coronavirus protocols
Soccer isn’t considered a full-fledged contact sport — some teams would beg to differ, based on playing styles — but the game has had to adjust to safety guidelines just like others to help slow the spread of covid-19. Health and safety guidelines were put in place weeks ago as...
Norwin’s Nick Fleming commits to Mount St. Mary’s baseball
The timing wasn’t exactly precise, not like he had envisioned, but Nick Fleming still was all smiles Friday night after deciding on his baseball future. The senior-to-be at Norwin announced a verbal commitment to Mount St. Mary’s of the NCAA Division I Northeast Conference. “Well, obviously I didn’t expect to...
Penn State branch campuses shut down fall sports
Another lower level college conference is bagging fall sports. The Penn State University Athletic Conference, home to 14 Penn State branch campuses, announced Friday it is postponing fall athletics — soccer, cross country, golf and women’s volleyball — due to the covid-19 pandemic. The decision, made by the conference’s executive...
Katie James repeats as Women’s WPGA Amateur championVideo
The only player in the 18-player field under par Tuesday, Katie James made it a runaway repeat at the Isaly’s Western Pennsylvania Golf Association Women’s Amateur at Green Oaks Country Club in Verona. James, an incoming junior at Southern Methodist and a Shady Side Academy alum, carded a 6-under-par 67...
Local players guide summer baseball team to regular season title in Johnstown collegiate league
They go by the name Paul Carpenter Capital Advisors, but today they’re known as the regular-season champions of the Johnstown Collegiate Baseball League. Behind a strong local contingent, Paul Carpenter captured its second straight title — and third in four years — when it downed Martella’s Pharmacy Tuesday, 5-3, at...
D-III football players have long wait ahead of them
Dom Eisaman is waiting for a chance to play quarterback in college, but he is beginning to wonder if that day will ever come. “It definitely feels like I haven’t been on the field in an eternity,” said Eisaman, a Greensburg Central Catholic grad who has two seasons of eligibility...
CMU’s Michelle Karabin recipient of NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship
Michelle Karabin found a way to marry academics and athletics in near perfect fashion in her time at Carnegie Mellon, and the NCAA took notice. Karabin, a senior and a graduate of Greensburg Central Catholic, was chosen to receive an NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship for her efforts in the classroom and...
Norwin overcomes logistics, selects smaller, all-female hall of fame class
Tom Shirley is used to getting things ready for the Norwin Athletic Hall of Fame banquet. He has been helping to coordinate inductees, logistics and meetings since 2009. But 2020 offered new challenges for organizers, with the covid-19 pandemic limiting gatherings and former hall of fame chairman Brandon Rapp, Norwin’s...
Longtime coach Sonny Thomas could be on brink of final season on sideline
Could it be one last year in the sun for Sonny Thomas? Maybe so. The longtime local football coach is on board for at least one more season with his son, Marko Thomas, the fourth-year coach at Connellsville. If the elder Thomas decides to retire as his son is hinting,...
Football players pine for usual 7-on-7 tournaments
Brett Birch is a regular on the 7-on-7 football travel circuit. The incoming junior wide receiver at Jeannette plays for 412 Elite out of Pittsburgh, an independent organization that went to tournaments in Michigan and Delaware before its schedule was shut down over coronavirus concerns. Still, “I feel like I...
Division III’s Middle Atlantic Conference postpones fall sports
The walls continue to close in on college athletics. The Middle Atlantic Conference became another Division III league to postpone fall sports — with the intention of playing them in the spring, pending improvements on the coronavirus front. The move also will delay the start of winter sports to after...
Presidents’ Athletic Conference postpones football, most other fall sports
The NCAA Division III Presidents’ Athletic Conference is postponing “high- and medium-contact” sports including football, men’s and women’s soccer, women’s volleyball and men’s and women’s cross country, to the spring because of the coronavirus outbreak. Women’s tennis and men’s and women’s golf, considered “low-contact” sports, are allowed to continue in...
