Michael Love stories, Page 102

Plum and Jeannette didn’t let the threat of rain spoil their Western Pennsylvania Summer Baseball League opener Tuesday evening at Buster Clarkson Field in Jeannette. The showers that fell on the region in the late afternoon dissipated as the game began, and Plum’s experienced squad showed its strength with an...

Alaina York began a summer job Monday as a nursing assistant at UPMC Presbyterian. The next couple of months will build on her experiences studying nursing at Robert Morris. While she makes strides towards her career field, the Burrell graduate also is focused on her opportunities for the Robert Morris...

The Summer Rams, a team consisting of players from the Highlands High School baseball team, earned a top-five finish at the seventh annual Atlantic Coast Baseball Open this past weekend at Wild Things Park in Washington. “We hadn’t practiced much,” coach Jeff Campbell said. “We had gotten on the field...

John Russo has been involved with the Latrobe Little League for two decades and is in his second year as the organization’s president. Like many of his counterparts, he has been through it all the past couple of months as the covid-19 pandemic and government-imposed safety restrictions threw a wrench...

As winter turned to spring, Joe Graff was excited about how the 2020 Pittsburgh National Adult Baseball League was coming together. Then the coronavirus pandemic threw the league, as well as so many other entities, into doubt. But with Gov. Wolf putting southwestern Pennsylvania into the green phase of recovery...

On May 21, East Carolina’s athletic department announced it would reduce the number of athletic programs because of budget restructuring efforts in the wake of the covid-19 pandemic. The women’s swimming program was one of the sports affected, and it left recent Kiski Area graduate Naomee Miller scrambling. Miller signed...

The West Hempfield baseball players gathered for their first practice Wednesday. The team doesn’t have to wait long for its season debut in the Westmoreland County American League. “We’re just ready to put our cleats on and swing the bats,” said Mitch Miletics, one of more than a dozen players...

Saint Vincent College Bowling has scheduled a plastic ball tournament July 12 at Lincoln Lanes in Latrobe. The tournament is open to anyone. The format will feature individual competitors, and each will bowl four games in the qualifying rounds. The lowest score will be dropped, so everyone will have a...

First Tee Pittsburgh’s summer youth golf program will begin July 6, and families are able to register now. The sessions for ages 5 to 18 feature various classes and programs at 10 locations throughout Western Pennsylvania. The First Tee of Pittsburgh, according to president and CEO Eric Amato, is the...

A trio of WPIAL alums were among 10 student-athletes from schools in the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference selected as spring 2020 Top 10 Award recipients. Slippery Rock’s Lacey Cohen (tennis, Fox Chapel), Seton Hill’s Tommy Pellis (baseball, Greensburg Central Catholic) and Cal (Pa.)’s Nick Riggle (baseball, Keystone Oaks) were among...

With counties throughout southwestern Pennsylvania moving forward in the green phase of coronavirus recovery, next month’s Freeport International Baseball Invitational also continues to move forward with its mission to host the 26th annual event. FIBI president Chuck Sarver said Wednesday that while field locations continue to be finalized, more and...

Starting this fall, the top quarterback among schools in the WPIAL and City League will receive an award named in honor of the NFL’s first African-American signal-caller. The annual Willie Thrower Award will honor the memory of the New Kensington native who first gained local notoriety by helping New Kensington...

The Penn Hills Midget Football Association has set registration dates and times for the 2020 season. Signups for each football and cheerleading division will be June 18 and 19, from 6 to 8 p.m. both evenings, and June 20, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., at the William McKinley Citizens...

As soon as the Burrell School Board voted unanimously in March to renovate Buccaneers Stadium with artificial turf and replace the surrounding track, anticipation began. A time to begin the project was negotiated, taking into account the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, and ground finally was broken late last month....

Clinton Blazevich returned to Allegheny General Hospital on Thursday for a test to see how everything is progressing with his new heart. His numbers, he said, continue to move in the right direction. It has been a month and a half since the April 22 transplant, and the pastor at...

Despite counties in Southwestern Pennsylvania moving to the green phase of reopening Friday, racing at Lernerville Speedway in Sarver again is on hold as the track announced Friday’s Fab4 Revved Up with Marburger night of racing and Tuesday’s School Bus/Kid’s Bike/Enduro events have been called off. Lernerville made the announcement...

Add the Eastern Swim Association (ESA) to the long list of sports organizations deciding to cancel summer events in the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. The ESA decided Monday in a Zoom meeting of the 11 member clubs to call off the dual-meet schedule, set to start June 16, as...

Editor’s note: Each day, Trib HSSN will spotlight WPIAL spring athletes whose senior years were cut short by the coronavirus pandemic. Stone Ellis was a rock for the South Park boys golf and tennis teams the past several seasons. He hoped to cap his prep athletic career this spring with...

Jennifer Bruce Scott began her AAU and high school girls basketball coaching career more than two decades ago, hoping to pass along the same passion and dedication to the game that drove her to four standout seasons at Pitt in the early 1980s. The Monroeville resident started in high school...

Connor Bruce made quite a debut for the Dayton men’s tennis team during the shortened 2020 season. The Peters Township product, who graduated high school in December to get an early jump on his college career, exploded onto the Division I scene, earning five Atlantic 10 Rookie of the Week...

Editor’s note: Each day, Trib HSSN will spotlight WPIAL spring athletes whose senior years were cut short by the coronavirus pandemic. The youngest of six siblings, Joey Ferragonio saw his brothers and sisters forge successful high school volleyball careers at Norwin and continue on at their respective colleges. Mike played...

The country of Haiti is 1,550 miles from Pittsburgh, but a group of local runners who had hoped to participate in this year’s Run Across Haiti eight-day ultra-marathon were unable to travel that distance because of the coronavirus pandemic. The event, organized since 2015 by the non-profit organization Work, raises...

The Presidents Athletic Conference has begun work on a return-to-play plan for intercollegiate sports for the 2020-21 academic year. The league has approved the formation of working groups involving conference executives, administrators, health professionals and coaches to address issues and report back to the Presidents’ Council with recommended guidelines, best...

Editor’s note: Each day, Trib HSSN will spotlight WPIAL spring athletes whose senior years were cut short by the coronavirus pandemic. When schools closed in March as part of the coronavirus pandemic response, Kevan Rotthoff’s education shifted, like thousands of others, to online learning. It also opened the opportunity for...

Stasi Longo had a lot to look forward to as she promoted her latest Pittsburgh-based bodybuilding competition. The Organization of Competition Bodies (OCB) Best of the Burgh earlier this month was to be on stage at Boyce Middle School in Upper St. Clair Township. But safety regulations relating to the...