The Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association, the governing body for high school athletics in the state, has released the classification breakdowns for sports for the 2010-11 and 2011-12 school years. Here are the numbers for football:

Schools with 513 boys or more in the top three grades will be Class AAAA; 512-311 will be Class AAA; 310-185, Class AA; and 184 and below will be Class A.

As was expected, Central Valley, the merger of Center and Monaca high schools, will be in Class AAA. In fact, Central Valley, with a boys' enrollment of 339, is larger than Blackhawk (321) and not too far behind Hopewell (356).

If no school elects to play up from Class AA to AAA -- schools do not have to inform the PIAA about that until Dec. 1 -- the WPIAL will have 30 Class AAA teams. That would make for four conferences, two with seven teams and two with eight. It would just make sense for Central Valley to move into the Parkway Conference, giving it eight teams.

Laurel, located outside New Castle, has been in the Class A Big Seven Conference the past two seasons but will be in Class AA next year. Will Laurel be the school that replaces Center in the Midwestern Athletic Conference?

That would make sense because Mohawk and Ellwood City, two other Lawrence County schools, are already in the MAC.

But what happens to the Class A Big Seven Conference? It is losing Laurel and Monaca. What schools might be added to keep eight teams in the Big Seven?

How about Cornell, which will no longer be in a co-operative agreement with Our Lady of the Sacred Heart? Or maybe Bishop Canevin, which is dropping from Class AA to A? How about OLSH, which is starting a team? Or Sto-Rox, if it decides to drop to Class A?

One final note: Blackhawk, which used to be one of the larger Class AAA schools in the WPIAL for football, is now fifth from the bottom. Only Derry Area, South Park, Valley and McGuffey will be smaller next year and Valley, McGuffey and South Park competed in Class AA this season.

Fans often question why the WPIAL schedules playoff games at certain schools when there seems to be a perfectly good stadium that would be an easier drive for the teams involved.

Well, there's a reason. Schools are not always available as playoff sites.

"The reality is that this is play season," said WPIAL executive director Tim O'Malley, the man responsible for procuring neutral sites for quarterfinal and semifinal contests.

Play season?

"That's right, a lot of schools have their plays at this time of year," he said. "We were looking to hold games at Baldwin and at North Allegheny this weekend but both have school plays."

The problem is with the competition for parking spaces in school lots. So, O'Malley had to look at alternate sites.

"We were looking to have Hopewell and Hampton at North Allegheny but when that wasn't available, we had to find a place that was close for both of them," O'Malley said. "The same thing with Bethel Park and Woodland Hills. We were looking at Baldwin for that one, then got the call they have a play there this weekend."

Hampton and Hopewell will be played at Montour, which was refurbished prior to this season, and Bethel Park-Woodland Hills will be played at West Mifflin.

What O'Malley did for this weekend's eight semifinal games was get a list of 14 or 15 potential sites. He talked to athletic directors at those schools about their stadium's availability and then waited to see which semifinal matchup would fit best at which site. He then double-checked with athletic directors at site schools Monday morning to make sure everything was OK.

Surprisingly, some schools do not want to be sites for playoffs games. Also, it's difficult to have a playoff game at school that still has a team competing. Moon would have been a good site for Laurel-Clairton, but that was ruled out because of construction at Moon. West Allegheny, another possible site for Laurel-Clairton, is playing and so is Keystone Oaks. Center was a third choice.

"Then you get places that want to host games, such as Ambridge," O'Malley said. "They wanted to have Aliquippa-Beaver Falls there."

Beaver Falls High graduate Todd Thomas, a Pitt recruit who is expected to enroll there for the spring semester, had an outstanding season at Milford Academy, a prep school in New Berlin, N.Y.

Thomas played defensive back for the Falcons and was named the team's defensive MVP. He finished with 56 solo tackles, helped out on 10 others, broke up 12 passes, had four interceptions and caused a fumble. In a contest against the Army prep team he had 11 solo tackles.

At 6 feet 2 and 202 pounds, Thomas is expected to play in the Panthers' secondary. Milford finished with an 8-5 record.

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