Jerin Steele stories, Page 32

During Pine-Richland’s boys basketball playoff run, multiple players saw their name with a large point total beside it on the stat sheet. That’s by design. Rams coach Bob Petcash preaches sharing the ball and moving around to find the open shot. It’s his expectation for everyone that puts on a...

From the opening tip, Ellwood City coach Steve Antuono Sr. paced the sidelines watching the game with intensity, while wearing his emotions on his sleeve. As the time ticked off in the fourth quarter, he and his Wolverines let that emotion spill out onto the floor. The weight of 35...

All season, Mohawk coach Mike O’Lare has talked to his team about creating a new story to be remembered to go along with winning the school’s first WPIAL girls basketball title a year ago. The sequel has had some different variables in it, but the Warriors are one win away...

In the middle of the second period of the WPIAL Class AAA 160-pound wrestling final, Cole Spencer took an accidental shot from Norwin’s Chase Kranitz and realized one of his teeth was broken. “I got a little chip on it, and I asked the ref, ‘Where do I put this?’...

Five distance runners from Pine-Richland traveled to Virginia last month to test themselves against some of the best high school competition in the country and came home with solid results. Meredith Price, Audrey DeKunder, Elizabeth Hunkele, Angelina Hunkele and Natalie McLean competed at the 2021 Adidas Indoor Nationals on Feb....

In a double overtime thriller, No. 6 Leechburg upset No. 3 Eden Christian 45-40 in the WPIAL Class A quarterfinals Friday night at Sewickley Academy. The Blue Devils (9-4) advanced to the semifinals and will play top-seeded Rochester at 6 p.m. Tuesday. Owen McDermott, Eli Rich and Marcus Cleveland scored...

Sewickley Academy made 19 of 28 free throws and eventually pulled away for a 38-21 victory over Greensburg Central Catholic in the WPIAL Class 2A girls basketball quarterfinals Friday night. No. 4 Sewickley Academy advanced to play No. 1 Neshannock in the semifinals at 6 p.m. Monday. The 12th-seeded Centurions...

The 2021 WPIAL Class AAA diving championships were full of repeats. For the second consecutive year, Fox Chapel senior David Manelis put forth a dominant performance to win the boys title, and the North Allegheny trio of Christina Shi, Maya Ennis and Zoey Ky finished 1-2-3 in the girls meet....

With the volatility that comes with playing during a pandemic, Pine-Richland hockey coach Jordan Yoklic told his players to embrace each opportunity and not take it for granted. After all, the Rams were gearing up for a Class AAA semifinal with North Allegheny last year when the pandemic first hit...

The last time the WPIAL had an open basketball tournament in 1984 Bob Petcash was a senior at Ambridge and played for a Bridgers team that made the Class 4A final, where it lost to Farrell. Now, 37 years later, Petcash will enter his first WPIAL tournament as a coach...

Cole O’Connor saved his toughest dive for last and it paid off. The South Park senior trailed by five entering the final round, but successfully executed an inward double with a 2.8 degree of difficulty to score 46 points and vault himself to his first WPIAL Class AA diving championship...

Pine-Richland wrestling made some big strides during the team portion of the season, and now the hope is it has set it up for success in an expanded individual season. That starts with defending WPIAL champ Cole Spencer, a Penn recruit who is No. 1 at 160 pounds in the...

When Kyle DeGregorio took over as coach of the Pine-Richland girls basketball team before this season, his first objective was establishing a culture. That culture has tenets that include growth, strengthening relationships between players on the court and developing an open line of communication and trust between players and the...

Delaney Allen was exhausted as she climbed out of the pool after swimming her hardest in the 50-yard freestyle on Jan. 28 against North Allegheny when she started hearing screams of joy coming from her teammates. “I was so tired that when I ran that race that I didn’t even...

Pine-Richland football had four players accept preferred walk-on offers on Feb. 3, and each one has a unique story. Eli Jochem, the Rams’ record-setting wide receiver, is headed to Indiana to play at his mother’s alma mater. Caden Schweiger spent months recovering from injuries sustained in an ATV accident but...

Dan Petcash saw an opportunity and he took it. Going into his sophomore season at Binghamton, there were several openings in the lineup, so he spent the summer working on becoming a lockdown defender. That training has paid off and has led to Petcash, a Pine-Richland grad, getting starter’s minutes...

At the high school level it’s a rarity for a team to have its entire roster back from the previous season, but it’s a welcomed reality for longtime Mt. Pleasant girls basketball coach Scott Giacobbi. The Vikings did not graduate anyone and bring back a group of five seniors and...

T.J. Kravits had just finished his season coaching at Marion Center. Being a basketball fan, he looked at the schedule and decided to take a trip to Mt. Pleasant to see a game against Geibel. At the time he didn’t know he was seeing his future team play, but he...

Gateway hockey coach Shawn Jesih sees a lot of potential in the freshmen and sophomores who make up the majority of the roster. So much so that before the season, he bumped the Gators up from the PIHL’s Tier 3 JV league to Tier 2 knowing it would be a...

When reflecting on last season, Franklin Regional girls basketball coach Anthony Kobus pointed out five losses in section play by seven points or less. It was a product of having a young team with only one senior. Now the Panthers have a rotation of nearly a dozen girls who have...

On paper, the 2019-20 Franklin Regional boys basketball season looked like a tale of two halves with a 7-2 run down the stretch to get into the postseason after 5-9 start, but it was more of a yearlong journey of growing up. The Panthers had only three returning players with...

Mars boys soccer coach Chris Knauff said the ground was clear at his home five miles from the Mars Athletic Complex, so he was quite shocked to see a snow-covered field upon arrival. What didn’t surprise him was his team’s ability to adapt to the conditions and find a way...

In the early portion of Saturday’s WPIAL Class 2A championship game, North Catholic standout junior Jayden Sharpless said she was a little too amped up when she fired a free kick well over the goal from 30 yards out. The second time she got a free kick chance, Sharpless made...

Ricco Ciccarelli could hear Greensburg Central Catholic coach Tyler Solis say, “I think you got it,” as his attempted cross kept curling closer and closer to the net. What started out as a pass intended for the far post turned into a perfect strike just under the crossbar and the...