Fewer games, but there were many reasons to cheer in 2020
Eleanor Bailey/The Almanac
Peters Township team captains Corban Hondru (10) and Donovon McMillon (3) accept the WPIAL runner-up trophy while their teammates look on after a 35-0 loss to Pine-Richland in the Class 5A. It was an otherwise successful season for PT, which had its first undefeated regular season since 1975.
Marc Billett / For the Observer-Reporter
Waynesburg’s Wyatt Henson reacts after winning the Class 3A 138-pound state championship with a 4-3 decision over Sam Hillegas of North Hills in the finals March 7 in Hershey.
Eleanor Bailey/The Almanac
Trinity’s Eden Williamson fights for the ball against Hallie Cowan of Chartiers Valley during the WPIAL Class 5A championship game at the Petersen Events Center.
Holly Tonini
Holly Tonini/For the Observer-Reporter
Carmichaels fans don’t let seating limitations inside the stadium stop them from enjoying the football game as they gather outside the school’s property fence behind one end zone.
Eleanor Bailey/The Almanac
Zack LaValle (16) rips his jersey off in celebration of his golden goal as the Peters Township defense reacts in shock to its double-overtime loss, 4-3, to Seneca Valley in the WPIAL Class 4A boys soccer final.
Holly Tonini/For the Observer-Reporter
Holly Tonini/For the Observer-Reporter
Trinity’s Tysean Lacks leaps after scoring a touchdown to give the Hillers a 13-0 lead over Washington at Hiller Field. The two city schools met on the football field for the first time since 1999.
Unique, odd, lousy, forgettable. They are all adjectives that can be used to accurately describe 2020.
You know it’s a bizarre year when the top local sports story is notable for what didn’t happen rather than what did transpire on the field of play.
To nobody’s surprise, the coronavirus’ impact was voted the top local sports story of 2020. There wasn’t much to debate.
Because of the pandemic, it was a year when we learned to play basketball while wearing a face covering, that playing in a bubble had nothing to do with soap and that a positive test was actually a negative for sports teams. We saw people sitting outside stadium fences to watch high school football games – not because the games were sold out but because of capacity limitations – and we saw sports played in front of cardboard cutouts of fans. Some seasons were canceled and several of the area’s favorite sporting events were moved, postponed or held without fans in attendance.
It was a sports year like no other. Here’s hoping 2021 is better.
The top 10 local sports stories of 2020, as chosen by the Observer-Reporter sports staff:
1. COVID-19 pandemic alters sports
Hours after the Trinity High School girls basketball team routed Great Valley in the second round of the PIAA Class 5A playoffs in Chambersburg last March, the sports world, both locally and globally, began to change. Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for COVID-19 before a game and the NBA immediately shut down its season.
The next day, sporting events began falling like dominoes. College basketball was stopped as its postseason was just getting started. Locally, high school basketball, swimming and hockey postseasons were suspended and eventually canceled, leaving many athletes wondering if their only chance at a state championship was lost.
The growing pandemic extended into spring and the PIAA, the governing body of high school sports in Pennsylvania, announced that all spring sports seasons would not be held. There was no high school baseball, no softball, no track and field.
The high schools were not the only ones impacted. The Frontier League, which includes the Washington Wild Things, announced that it would not play in 2020, and for the first time in its history the Pony League World Series was canceled. Many youth leagues opted not to play in 2020.
The Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference announced that it would not play fall or winter sports. The Presidents’ Athletic Conference, meanwhile, moved fall sports seasons to the spring of 2021 and is planning a delayed start to winter sports.
Late in the summer, the PIAA said fall sports seasons could start but would have to follow the state’s gathering limits and other health guidelines. The WPIAL shortened its seasons but made it to the finish line without excessive disruptions.
Winter sports teams began practicing as the daily coronavirus case numbers in Pennsylvania hit record numbers. The regular seasons began Dec. 11 with several basketball teams playing but the season-opening Chartiers-Houston wrestling tournament was canceled. The next day, Gov. Tom Wolf’s three-week shutdown of high school sports began. The popular Powerade Wrestling Tournament, which had already been moved from Canon-McMillan High School to the Monroeville Convention Center, had to be shifted from December to late January.
2. Peters Township football
Peters Township football afforded fans a season rarely seen before.
Actually, two seasons rarely seen before.
The Indians marched to the WPIAL championship game in both seasons, coming up one point short against Gateway in last year’s final and losing to eventual state champion Pine-Richland this season.
The most dramatic win of the season came in the Class 5A semifinals, where the Indians wiped out a 19-0 lead by Gateway and took the lead with four seconds to play on a scoring pass from Logan Pfeuffer to Corban Hondru and the extra-point kick by Andrew Massucci.
Led by Hondru, a Miami of Ohio recruit, and Donovan McMillon, who is headed to the University of Florida, the Indians won the rugged Allegheny Six Conference and finished with an 8-1 record. It was the first undefeated regular season for Peters Township football since 1975.
3. Two state champions
Canon-McMillan’s Gerrit Nijenhuis had a much easier time winning a second state Class 3A wrestling title than the first.
There were no controversial bouts with the like the one with Carter Starocci of Erie Cathedral Prep in the finals of the Powerade Tournament. There were no injuries to deal with and no lingering doubts about how good Nijenhuis could be.
There was history but that turned out to be a good thing as Nijenhuis defeated Peters Township’s Donovan McMillon, 6-0, in the 182-pound finals in Hershey. It marked the first time two Washington County wrestlers met in the state finals in the tournament’s history.
Nijenhuis committed to Purdue before the season and left Canon-McMillan as the WPIAL’s winningest wrestler with a 181-16 record. He finished his scholastic career with 47 straight wins.
The road to a Pennsylvania Class 3A state title was a long one for Wyatt Henson. He began his career as a freshman for Waynesburg, moving into the school district after his father was hired as wrestling coach at West Virginia University.
Henson then moved again and spent his sophomore season in Missouri. He returned with his family to Waynesburg and won the 138-pound Class 3A title for Waynesburg in March.
Henson defeated Sam Hillegas of North Hills, 4-3 in the finals to win the gold. It was the same score Henson defeated Hillegas, a previous state champion, by in the WPIAL finals.
4. Waynesburg wrestling
Waynesburg made its first trip to the PIAA Class 3A Team Tournament a memorable one, taking second place to Nazareth after a 38-21 loss to the top seed.
The Raiders earned a trip to the finals with one of their biggest victory in the program’s history, 33-31 over Bethlehem Catholic in the semifinals. The key bout came at 113, where Bethlehem Catholic was called for a slam against Nate Jones. That gave Waynesburg six team points when Jones couldn’t continue.{/span}{/span}
Waynesburg also brought an end to Canon-McMillan’s dominance in Section 4 when the Raiders won by the 10th tiebreaker, ending the Big Macs’ 16-year reign.
The Raiders also won their first WPIAL team title in 31 years.
5. West Greene basketball
For three months all the West Greene girls basketball team did was win.
And boy did they win big.
And win impressively.
West Greene went undefeated in the regular season, reeling off 22 victories with only two opponents able to come within 10 points of beating the running-and-pressing Pioneers, who were supposed to be in a rebuilding season with a lineup dominated by underclassmen. West Greene finished the regular season extending its winning streak in section play to 45 games.
The Pioneers defeated Avella and Sewickley Academy in the playoffs to improve to 24-0 and advance to the WPIAL championship game for the third consecutive year. But the WPIAL championship remained elusive as the Pioneers lost to Rochester, 59-43, then were ousted in the first round of the PIAA playoffs for the second year in a row by Kennedy Catholic, 52-38.
West Greene’s 24 wins are a school record.
6. Trinity-Wash High series resumes
The city football series between Washington and Trinity high schools was back on in 2020.
For one year.
The once-thriving rivalry, if not dead, had at least been lulled into a deep slumber when the series was stopped following the season-opening game in 1999.
After 20 years of following each other from a distance, Trinity and Washington met on the football field Oct. 9 in a nonconference game at Hiller Field.
The game came about because of a series of odd circumstances, including the coronavirus pandemic, an open date on the schedule for Washington and Uniontown’s decision to not field a football team this fall.
When the WPIAL released football schedules for its members in January, Washington was given an open date Oct. 9 because of an odd number of teams in the Class 2A Century Conference. The Little Prexies were the only team in the WPIAL that did not have a game scheduled for that weekend. Washington athletic director Mike Bosnic said he searched for an Oct. 9 opponent for months, even advertising the opening in other states but without success.
Then, when Uniontown’s School Board voted late in the summer to not field teams in the “contact” sports of football and soccer, it left Trinity with an open date in football and two in both boys and girls soccer. Trinity was to play a conference football game Oct. 9 at Uniontown and the cancellation had Hillers athletic director Ricci Rich scrambling to find an opponent.
It didn’t take long for Rich and Bosnic to work out the details for a game that gave each team a full seven-game schedule.
What the game had in hoopla it lacked in drama as Trinity rolled to a one-sided 41-0 victory.
7. Trinity girls basketball
The Trinity High School girls basketball team was playing its best last March, and there’s no telling how far the Hillers could have advanced in the postseason.
Sadly, the Hillers will never know.
One day after Trinity dismantled Great Valley 47-28 in the second round of the state Class 5A playoffs, the PIAA suspended its basketball tournaments, and eventually canceled them, because of the spreading coronavirus.
The Hillers finished the year with a 21-5 record and an empty feeling.
Trinity began the season with a new coach, Kathy McConnell-Miller, a former head coach at the NCAA Division I level. Led by a pair of Division I recruits, Riley DeRubbo and Courtney Dahlquist, Trinity rolled to the Section 1 championship and defeated Gateway and Woodland Hills in the WPIAL playoffs. That set up a game against undefeated Chartiers Valley in the finals. It also created a rare coaching matchup as Chartiers Valley is coached by McConnell-Miller’s brother, Tim McConnell.
Chartiers Valley defeated Trinity, 58-40, but the Hillers advanced to the state tournament. In PIAA play, Trinity routed Penn Hills in the opening round and overwhelmed Great Valley with suffocating defense in the second round. A quarterfinal game against Gettysburg was never played.
8. Monessen football forfeits
Monessen, one of the most successful and storied high school football programs in the area, forfeited its final three games, citing a shortage of players, and finished the year winless.
Monessen, which had been in the WPIAL Class A playoffs only two years ago, lost its first four games this season, then forfeited a game against Tri-County South Conference rival Carmichaels.
A week later, the school district announced in a news release that it was forfeiting its final two games, at West Greene and at home against California.
First-year head coach Shane Swope resigned at season’s end and the future of Monessen football has been cast in doubt.
9. Girls volleyball COVID-19 issues
There weren’t too many things that could get in the way of the volleyball teams at Carmichaels and Fort Cherry.
But coronavirus issues within the programs proved to be stronger. Fort Cherry, the No, 2 seed in the WPIAL Class A tournament, was forced to forfeit to Beaver County Christian after a 3-0 win over South Side Beaver in the opening round.
Top-seeded Bishop Canevin went on to win the Class A title.{/span}
{span}Carmichaels, the No. 9 seed in Class AA, never got out of the gate, forfeiting in the first round to No. 8 seed Shenango.{/span}
North Catholic won the Class AA title.
10. Peters Township boys soccer
Two inches to the left and Peters Township would have been the team celebrating rather than watching Seneca Valley share the warm greetings, hugs and high fives of winning a WPIAL championship.
The soccer ball was on the foot of Andrew Massucci, the Indians’ leading scorer and best player. The opening of the net was right there, albeit on an angle. Massucci’s shot with 7:36 to play in regulation slammed into the post and riccocheted back into the goal box.
Instead, it was Beaux Liznewski, who scored his third goal of the game in double overtime to give Seneca Valley a 4-3 victory and the WPIAL crown.
Seneca Valley, which allowed only 10 goals total all season, trailed 3-1 at halftime. But SV tied it on goals by Nathan Eastgate and Liznewski, Peters Township, which was the top seed in the Class 4A playoffs, finished the season at 13-3-1.