Sep 22, 2020 5 min read

Is it still early in the high school football season or is it getting late?

It depends on which way you look at the season.

Most teams have played two games, some have managed only one game, but it’s late September and that’s usually the midpoint in the season. And after this weekend, there will be only four weeks remaining in the season, so it’s time to make a playoff push.

Whether it’s early or late, two weeks is still enough time to make some observations about the season:

1. Schedules get old quickly – For the third consecutive week, at least one local game has been postponed because of COVID-19 situations. This week’s casualty is the Canon-McMillan at Baldwin game in the Class 6A Quad County Conference. The game was actually postponed last week, when Baldwin’s program’s was shut down for two weeks after an assistant coach tested positive for the coronavirus.

That left Canon-McMillan athletic director Frank Vulcano scrambling to find an opponent for this week. He thought he found one in Elizabeth Forward, but there was one problem. EF already had a nonconference game scheduled for this week at Beth-Center. The WPIAL said EF had to play Beth-Center instead of Canon-McMillan. Thus, C-M has an open date this weekend.

South Fayette was in a similar situation two weeks ago when the Lions’ opener at Peters Township was postponed. South Fayette was able to find a last-minute opponent in Dover (Ohio). That same week, Chartiers-Houston was able to fill an open date on its schedule and opened the season at Yough because the Cougars’ game against Elizabeth Forward was canceled.

The message here is, many of those schedules that were released by the WPIAL in late July have not aged well. They seem to change on a daily basis.

2. Look who’s 2-0 – Only four local teams are off to 2-0 starts: Belle Vernon in Class 4A, McGuffey in Class 2A and Carmichaels and Avella in Class A.

Avella is the most surprising of the group. The Eagles entered this year having lost 15 of its previous 17 games, but head coach Ryan Cecchini was confident that this year’s team could contend for a playoff berth in the Tri-County South Conference because of its defense. So far, he’s been right. Avella has allowed only 15 points through two games, wins over Monessen and Jefferson-Morgan.

Avella is 2-0 for the first time since 2013, when the Eagles went 6-4 and lost at Sto-Rox in the first round of the WPIAL playoffs.

Avella will play Thursday night at West Greene, which is one of three area teams with 1-0 records, the others being Peters Township and California.

The Avella-West Greene game is one of two Tri-County South games this year that had to be moved from the traditional Friday night spot because of a shortage of officials.

3. Belle Vernon’s defense is good – Perhaps it is because he is a former college quarterback that Belle Vernon’s Matt Humbert has the reputation of being an offensive-minded head coach. That’s probably not a fair evaluation because Humbert has put together some very good defenses at Belle Vernon.

The one the Leopards have this year might turn out to be the best under Humbert, and that’s saying something because last year’s Belle Vernon team made it to the WPIAL Class 4A championship game by giving up an average of only 9.6 points per contest to opponents not named Thomas Jefferson.

This year, the Leopards opened the season with an impressive 20-0 win at McKeesport, which was dropping from Class 5A. That’s the same McKeesport team that scored 49 points last week against New Castle. Belle Vernon shut out a bad West Mifflin team, 45-0, last week. The Leopards have outscored their opponents 65-0.

Up this week for the Belle Vernon defense is Thomas Jefferson.

4. Streakbusters – You can call them streaks or you can call them trends, but you really have to call them meaningless this year. Only two weeks into this season there have been some longstanding streaks that have ended and trends that have been bucked.

For example:

McGuffey’s win over Washington in the season opener was the Highlanders’ first over the Little Prexies since 2009. McGuffey head coach Ed Dalton said before the game, “I think we’ve beaten them something like three times since the Eisenhower administration.”

Last week, Canon-McMillan put together a remarkable comeback after trailing 17-0 in the third quarter, scoring 24 unanswered points to knock off Mt. Lebanon. It was the Big Macs’ first victory over Lebo in 13 years.

Also last week, Bentworth won 14-6 at Monessen. It was the Bearcats’ first victory over the Greyhounds since 2001, though there were a few years in there when the teams did not meet.

5. Going to need more time – The WPIAL still has the regular season scheduled to end Oct. 23 but it seems likely that an extra week will need to be added to the season, especially in Class 6A. There are only eight teams in Class 6A, and two of them, Baldwin and North Allegheny, have yet to play a conference game because of COVID-19 situations. There are only five more Friday nights left in the regular season.

In the Class A Tri-County South Conference, the West Greene-California game last week was postponed. It could need to be played to determine a playoff berth or two.

South Fayette and Peters Township were able to reschedule their postponed season opener in the Class 5A Allegheny Six Conference because the teams each had nonconference games originally scheduled for this Friday. That’s a scenario that cannot play out in most conferences.