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The defending Quad-A champs are once again the team to beat, but now they must deal directly with a team capable of dethroning them.
This new conference, a result of the Greater Allegheny more or less merging with the Keystone, per biennial district realignment, features two of last year's WPIAL semifinalists and another team that could go on a lengthy playoff run in 2012.
We're going to keep our preseason coverage going with a series of rapid-fire previews, focusing on the Parkway Conference in Class AAA, perhaps the toughest of them all. For six consecutive seasons at least one team from this section has reached Heinz Field, and quite frankly, we foresee 2012 becoming the seventh.
We're going to keep our preseason coverage going with a series of rapid-fire previews, shifting our attention now to Class AAA and looking at the Big Nine Conference. This section may have expanded, but it remains doubtful that the dominance of the conference by Thomas Jefferson will be challenged like it was in 2011.
We're going to keep our preseason coverage going with a series of rapid-fire previews, focusing now on the Interstate Conference in Class AA. The most prominent and rancorous rivalry is the one shared between Greensburg Central Catholic and Jeannette, which fell just short of a district championship in 2011. Despite a surprising coaching change at GCC, the Centurions could follow in the footsteps of the Jayhawks in 2012.
Some expensive repairs are needed in the Penn Hills School District after vandals damaged the football field and athletic building.
We're going to keep our preseason coverage going with a series of rapid-fire previews, focusing now on the Midwestern Conference in Class AA. Last year the WPIAL champions in this classification came from the MAC, which isn't anything new. It's usually one of the toughest sections in the district. What is new is the fact that biennial WPIAL realignment has left it with eight teams.
We're going to keep our preseason coverage going with a series of rapid-fire previews, focusing now on the Allegheny Conference in Class AA. Even amidst biennial realignment in the WPIAL, this league tends to stay pretty much the same, especially in terms of its unpredictability. What we can predict is, just like last fall, there are at least three teams who could seriously challenge for the conference title.
We're going to keep our preseason coverage going with a series of rapid-fire previews, moving up to Class AA and focusing our attention on the Century Conference. We can already feel the brotherly love...well, sort of. Two siblings are playing for two different teams who should challenge for playoff spots, and possibly more, this season.
After delaying a planned announcement, ROOT Sports has finally come forward with its full WPIAL football broadcast schedule for the 2012 season, as originally reported by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
A lot of eyes are going to be on this conference not just because it got tougher, but because the defending champion Clairton Bears enter the new season with four straight district titles, three consecutive PIAA crowns, and a nation-best 47-game winning streak, a WPIAL record, on the line.
A number of news outlets have published their PIAA football preseason rankings for the 2012 season, which kicks off around these parts next Friday, including brother website MaxPreps, which tabs defending Class AAAA state champ Central Dauphin as number one in the Commonwealth, regardless of classification.
The most dominant team in the history of that section, along with a typical playoff challenger, are both gone, so, to the casual observer, biennial WPIAL realignment has sucked the fun out of following it. However, with several teams now having a chance to follow in the footsteps of Frazier and end playoff droughts, there may yet be a story for which to root.
I do take one glaring thing from a nationally-televised 26-24 win over the Indianapolis Colts at Heinz Field Sunday: a blocked punt.
We're going to keep our preseason coverage going a series of rapid-fire previews, focusing this time on the Big 7 Conference in Class A. Rochester had been the traditional flag-bearer in that section for many years, but the tradition was broken in 2011 with the rise of Sto-Rox.
