Michael Love stories, Page 24

Every year around this time, Tom Phillips sees the landscape of WPIAL girls volleyball, both overall and in his classification, and knows his team is the hunted. The Freeport coach, now in his 23rd year, knows it especially is the case in 2023 as a host of teams hope to...

The Gateway varsity girls soccer team fields one of the smaller rosters in recent memory with just 20 active players for the 2023 season. That leaves the program without a JV team. But Caleb Kyper, who enters his second season at the helm of the Gators, said the returning and...

Marnie Giunta is considered one of the top coaches in the history of athletics in the state of Delaware. The 1989 Gateway graduate and longtime cross country and indoor and outdoor track and field coach at Padua Academy, an all-girls school in Wilmington, Del., recently was honored with that distinction....

Plum played the 800th game in program history Friday night, and the Mustangs celebrated with a win at rival Kiski Area. The Mustangs mixed the pass and the run, scoring a pair of TDs each way in the 28-18 victory. Junior Nick Odom doesn’t mind running against Kiski Area. In...

The Riverview girls soccer team is after a playoff three-peat. After the frustration of not having enough players to field a team in 2020, the Raiders have enjoyed a resurgence in the program. That growth has produced back-to-back WPIAL playoff berths in Class A. Junior midfielder/forward Cailey Trosch, one of...

The Plum girls soccer team enjoyed a strong four-year run through last season that included 72 victories in 83 games, four consecutive section championships, three WPIAL title-game appearances and three trips to the PIAA playoffs. Last year’s Mustangs reached the WPIAL Class 3A semifinals and the PIAA quarterfinals and were...

Karter Schrock missed almost the entire 2022 season with a left knee injury. The Apollo-Ridge senior got back to game action Friday, and his return against rival Leechburg was triumphant. Schrock carried the ball 28 times for 134 yards and touchdown runs of 2 and 4 yards in the second...

Springdale coach Marc Bentley can’t help but smile when thinking back to last fall and his team’s run to the WPIAL Class A championship game at Highmark Stadium and its trip to the PIAA quarterfinals. “It was such a great experience for the girls, especially knowing how hard they worked...

For a quarter of a century, the Plum Kick-Off Classic youth soccer tournament has hosted competitive matchups involving teams and organizations hoping for a successful start to their seasons. One of the region’s largest youth soccer events is back this weekend. The 26th annual tournament begins Friday and runs through...

Chase Weihrauch made his starting quarterback debut in last year’s Week Zero game against Ligonier Valley. The Springdale senior then suffered an ankle injury during the week before the Dynamos’ Week 1 contest against Northgate and had to sit out several games. “It was so frustrating,” Weihrauch said. “I saw...

Plum and Kiski Area passed each other last year when the WPIAL realigned its football conferences and classifications. The Mustangs moved up to Class 5A and into the Big East Conference with the likes of Penn-Trafford, Franklin Regional and Gateway, while the Cavaliers moved down to the Class 4A Greater...

Derek Burk Deer Lakes, sr., QB/S Burk hopes to start out with a strong game Friday at home against Keystone Oaks as the Lancers begin a journey that could ends with a second straight WPIAL playoff trip. Burk finished last season with 1,426 passing yards and nine touchdowns to go...

Rocco Cecere spent his freshman and sophomore seasons as a backup quarterback in the Riverview offense. He said that focus on his abilities and his improvement provided a lot of the motivation he needed to be ready when it was his turn to run the Raiders’ wing-T offense last year...

Katie Jo Stobert officially was hired Monday night as Highlands’ next athletic director. The school board vote was unanimous. But she has been busy in the position for the better part of a month getting the Golden Rams’ individual athletes and teams ready for the 2023 fall sports season as...

Michael Hanz first made contact with the West Virginia baseball program a couple of summers ago. The Freeport junior right hander’s pitching prowess at a camp on campus caught the eye of the Mountaineers coaches. Hanz attended several WVU camps since then. The most recent camp there this past weekend...

The graduation of 16 seniors from Springdale’s 2021 Class A quarterfinal-qualifying team left a void from which it was tough to recover. The 2022 Dynamos battled through youth and inexperience — only three seniors dotted the roster — and the season ended with the Dynamos at 0-10. But many of...

Riverview won four games in 2022, the most victories for the program since 2015 when it also won four times. The mission for a veteran group of Raiders players — only four seniors graduated from last year’s team — is to take that next step. Energy, enthusiasm and optimism, coach...

Julie Spinelli has one more high school basketball season remaining at St. Joseph, and she has set expectations high herself and her team, which returns every player from last year’s WPIAL Class A semifinalist. She also has her eyes focused on her future beyond high school as she now knows...

Legendary Alabama football coach Paul “Bear” Bryant once said, “Offense sells tickets. Defense wins championships.” There are many examples in the history of football at all levels where a balanced offense and defense is key to bringing home a title. But one needs not look any further than last year’s...

Isaiah Gonzalez earned a baptism by fire as a freshman when he stepped into the varsity lineup at cornerback against Penn Hills when then-senior and one of Kiski Area’s top players that year, Kenny Blake, was out with injury. “That was a challenging game for him to be put in...

While some WPIAL offensive attacks look to incorporate both ground and air assaults, Burrell often loads up its tanks with the hopes of steamrolling opponents. The Bucs rushed for more than 3,000 total yards last year as they battled through Allegheny Conference play to a berth in the WPIAL Class...

When asked to appraise his team’s expectations for this season, Apollo-Ridge coach John Skiba didn’t pull any punches. “We will be young and inexperienced,” he said. But he was quick to add that the future is bright as several talented newcomers, he said, will join the few returning starters from...

Deer Lakes finished fourth in the Allegheny 6 Conference last year and earned a berth to the WPIAL playoffs for the first time since 2015. The Lancers, as the No. 10 seed in the Class 3A bracket, traveled to No. 7 Beaver hoping to pull the first-round upset, but they...