South Xtra: Big changes confronting big schools after WPIAL realignment
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Upper St. Clair High School football coach Jim Render said one of the worst bus rides he was ever on was for a game at Plum.
"We went through McKeesport with all that traffic, and I don't know my way around there all that well, so I just sat there and went crazy," he said. "I'm pretty sure that was Sean Lee's sophomore year and we had a bus for the booster club and by the time it got there Sean had scored his first high school touchdown and his father missed it."
Thanks to the WPIAL's new football realignment, Render will get to make that bus ride, and a couple more like it, sometime in the next two seasons.
The WPIAL will go from four to three football conferences in Classes AAAA and AAA for the next two seasons. Plum, along with Penn Hills and Woodland Hills, have been moved into Section 2 -- the WPIAL doesn't use conference names -- in Class AAAA along with Upper St. Clair, Baldwin, Bethel Park, Canon-McMillan, Mt. Lebanon and Peters Township.
That means that three of the teams in the nine-team conference are in the eastern suburbs -- on one side of the Monongahela River -- and the others are in the South Hills. Trying to cross a river, any river in the Pittsburgh area, during rush hour can be a nightmare.
The move to three conferences in Class AAAA and AAA was due, in part, because schools with good teams said they were having problems finding season openers. In the past, the WPIAL allowed schools to schedule their first games then gave teams a schedule for weeks two through nine. Now, the WPIAL will supply a nine-week schedule with most teams beginning conference play the first week.
That's another thing Render, and a number of other coaches, are not thrilled about -- not having a game in which to work out the bugs before playing a conference opponent.
"There's no question the conference schedule is going to be tough and it's going to be a lot more expensive," he said, pointing out there have been discussions about Upper St. Clair not sending its band to away games at Penn Hills, Plum or Woodland Hills.
"At a time when most school districts are trying to find ways to save money, the WPIAL just made it more expensive for us to go to games."
He is not alone in his concern about getting his team to a game through rush-hour traffic on a Friday night in the fall. Plum officials have expressed the same concern about going to Upper St. Clair or Mt. Lebanon.
Render said there was a meeting of Class AAAA coaches in the fall that he did not attend because the Panthers were getting ready for a playoff game. He said maybe he should have gone to the meeting and voiced his opinion.
"Not that they would have listened to me," he said. "But we were getting ready for a playoff game and that was my priority at the time. I thought that was more important than going to a meeting."
The price of doing business in football also went up for Chartiers Valley, which was moved from the Big Eight Conference in Class AAA to the Parkway Conference.
"That's what we expected when we heard they might go to three conferences," Chartiers Valley coach Chris Saluga said. "We've played Hopewell and West Allegheny in the past. We are not that far away from them and Montour and Moon."
The addition of Chartiers Valley makes the Parkway Conference, which is already a meat grinder, that much tougher. The top five teams in each Class AAAA and AAA conference will qualify for the playoffs along with a wild-card team in each classification. Still, the sixth-place team in the Parkway figures to be a pretty good team.
Like Render, Saluga isn't thrilled with the idea of playing a conference game the first week of the season.
"But that's out of our control. It's going to our job as coaches to make sure we are ready to go that first week," he said.
The former Big Eight Conference will have nine teams next season with Albert Gallatin, Laurel Highlands, Ringgold and Uniontown moving over from the Keystone Conference. They will join holdovers Belle Vernon Area, Elizabeth Forward, Thomas Jefferson, Trinity and West Mifflin Area. Former members South Park and McGuffey have dropped to Class AA.
In Class AA, Washington moves into the Interstate Conference and will compete against Brownsville, Charleroi, Greensburg Central Catholic, Jeannette, Mount Pleasant, Southmoreland, Yough and Waynesburg.
South Park and McGuffey will be in the Class AA Century Conference with Burgettstown, Keystone Oaks, Quaker Valley, Seton-LaSalle, South Allegheny, South Fayette and Steel Valley.
In Class A, Bishop Canevin moves from the Eastern Conference into the talent-rich Black Hills Conference. The Crusaders will go against four-time WPIAL champion Clairton, Brentwood, California, Carlynton, Chartiers-Houston, Fort Cherry, Monessen, Serra Catholic and Imani Christian.
"This will be all new for us," Canevin coach Bob Jacoby said. "We have a little bit of history with some of those schools like Fort Cherry and Chartiers-Houston but that's about it."
Jacoby was totally surprised by the Crusaders shift in conferences, especially with Apollo-Ridge and West Shamokin dropping down in classification.
"I figured they would put them with teams in the North Hills," he said. "Over the years we've been one of those teams that has moved around a lot. I guess it make sense to put us with teams that are south of the city."
With Monessen moving in from the Tri-County South, the Black Hills Conference will be tough. Of the 10 teams in the conference -- Imani Christian is ineligible for the playoffs the next two years -- the only ones that were not in the playoffs last year were California, Carlynton and Serra Catholic.
First Published January 26, 2012 12:00 am
