Bill Beckner stories, Page 145

An extended “dead” period in NCAA recruiting during the covid-19 shutdown did not stand in the way of the Western PA Bruins girls AAU basketball program. The Bruins continue to be a prime target for Division I college coaches who know where to take their scholarship offers. Those offers have...

Ligonier Valley is set to makes its WPIAL debut for its second stint in the league this fall. The Rams have not played in the WPIAL in 50 years. But the football team is hurting for games. The Rams will open the season — should it be played — with...

Devin Gee continued his sizzling summer on the golf course. The head professional at storied Oakmont Country Club downed five opponents to capture the three-day Tri-State PGA OMEGA Match Play Championship at Southpointe Golf Club in Canonsburg. Gee, who earlier this season won the Tri-State Open, held off Sharon’s Denny...

Olivia Kruger is new to the Pittsburgh area, but she knows a lot about Greensburg Central Catholic girls soccer. Even from halfway across the state, in Chambersburg, Kruger followed the program’s dominance in the WPIAL and PIAA. It was hard not to notice the Centurions come postseason time. “I knew...

Scott Morrison plans to take sports at Yough in a different, fresh direction. That’s not to say his longtime predecessor, Tom Evans, did not have things running smoothly as athletic director in Herminie. It was quite the contrary. Evans is well-respected in WPIAL circles for his decades-long work as an...

This dream team had to earn its distinction. When a crop of talented local basketball players were thrust onto a summer-league roster, many of whom didn’t know one another and had not played together, the thought of doing something special on the court did not exactly cross their minds. While...

Todd Summers plans to play his final year of college football closer to home. The former Franklin Regional standout who entered the NCAA transfer portal a few weeks ago with the intention of leaving Villanova has a new destination. He announced Monday he will enroll at Duquesne, where he will...

Maclean Maund will forever be memorialized on the Penn-Trafford campus. The late Warriors baseball star, who was killed in an auto accident in January not far from the high school, has his own memorial bench overlooking the baseball field near the school’s entrance. The marble bench, perched on top of...

Corinn Brewer went into her first — and last — track competition of the summer with an all-or-nothing approach. Why would she not? She had been training for the AAU Junior Olympics during the first five months of the covid-19 pandemic, and the rising junior at Greensburg Central Catholic wanted...

Jack Salopek has been enamored with Division I football for years. It’s driven him to work extra hours, grind in the offseason and always perform at a high level. He has completed the most challenging part of earning a scholarship at the next level. But the former Norwin star quarterback...

When Mark Katarski recruits a high school basketball player, he doesn’t just make sure she can dribble with her left hand or that she plays relentless, end-to-end defense. The women’s coach at Seton Hill also looks for smarts in his prospects — on the court and otherwise. “We always put...

Westmoreland East pulled off a championship sweep in Johnstown — in dominating fashion. Paul Carpenter Capital Advisors has a roster loaded with county players, and many of them played key roles in a tremendous summer season in the Johnstown Collegiate Baseball League. Paul Carpenter won its first league playoff title...

Of the nine inductees in the 2020 Penn State Behrend Athletics Hall of Fame class, five have ties to the WPIAL. The class will be honored in the spring. The honorees who first made their mark in the WPIAL include: • Kayla Frost — The 2010 graduate out of Peters...

Week Zero, as a name, never seemed to carry much clout in the WPIAL. The moniker was met with a lukewarm reaction and did not make sense to many people when it became a thing several years ago. Many teams just decided to use the opening week for a second...

The Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference earlier this week decided to shift most of its fall sports to the spring, a move not altogether shocking considering the volume of local college conferences doing the same thing. But when the AMCC listed the affected sports, alarm bells went off for some coaches....

One day after his identical twin brother received a scholarship offer from Butler, Penn-Trafford’s Nate Frye netted the same arrangement from the same school. Could a package deal be in the works for the talented siblings? A running back and free safety, Nate Frye recorded 74 tackles and returned an...

When the Colonial Athletic Association decided to move football to the spring because of health and safety concerns over the coronavirus outbreak, it virtually stamped out the final days of Todd Summers’ college career. At least his days at Villanova. A Franklin Regional graduate, Summers would have been a senior...

Mason Frye is expected to line up at receiver and also play a key role in the secondary for Penn-Trafford this football season. Frye went from being another key returning two-way starter to a Division I prospect in one tweet Wednesday night. The 5-foot-8, 155-pound senior announced a scholarship offer...

Katie James pulled off the amateur double. A junior-to-be at Southern Methodist and Shady Side Academy graduate, James held back a talented field of some of the state’s better players to capture the 84th Pennsylvania Golf Association Amateur Championship on Wednesday at Lebanon Country Club. James, who recently defended her...

While most small-college conferences have taken a cautionary approach to fall sports by postponing the season until the spring, one area conference is staying the course. The NAIA River States Conference will buck the trend and have a fall season, leaning on a crutch of guidelines and protocol to play...

After a mostly flawless regular season and a strong start to the playoffs — a fine summer baseball run, all things considered amid the covid-19 pandemic — the Westmoreland American League stayed the course with another tradition by naming its all-league teams. The league, which normally is known as District...

With the start of the WPIAL season pushed to Sept. 14, Belle Vernon was left scrambling to find a time and date for one of its marquee events, the Paul Sasko Kickoff Classic. After exhausting all possibilities of working the boys-girls soccer tournament into the revised schedule, officials were left...

Zach Lorenz is on the path to a Division I soccer career, but he likely will have to score a scholarship with limited highlights and contact with coaches. Covid-19 crossed out most of the annual cup season, so Lorenz, an incoming senior midfielder at Franklin Regional, was not able to...