Looking Back At 2018

Source: Pittsburgh-Post Gazette

2018 was a wild year involving WPIAL Sports. There was a lot of good things that happened to school districts and high school athletes during 2018. Unfortunately, I cannot recap every single moment that happened in the WPIAL in 2018; but, I am going to try the best that I can to recap some of the things that all of you should know or be aware of that happened in 2018.

Involving football, 2018 was great for Penn Hills and Aliquippa as they both won WPIAL and PIAA championships. Hollis Mathis, Corey Thomas Jr., MJ Devonshire, Will Gipson Jr., and many other football players from both of those schools will remember 2018 for the rest of their lives due to the great football season that both schools had. Tyler Bradley (QB at OLSH), led the WPIAL in passing yards with 3,364 in 2018. Bradley did win a WPIAL championship for OLSH; but, even though his team could not win a PIAA championship, he has to feel a little happy that he was one of the more dominant quarterbacks in the WPIAL. Bradley and South Fayette quarterback, Jamie Diven, both led the league in passing touchdowns in 2018 as they both threw 45 touchdowns. Turner Grau, wide receiver at Avonworth, led the WPIAL in receptions in 2018 with 68. Grau did not hit 1,000 receiving yards during the 2018 WPIAL football season; but, just because he did not hit 1,000 yards that doesn't mean he should not get the attention that he deserves. The media should have done a better job in giving Grau the spotlight. Aliquippa wide receiver, Will Gipson Jr., led the WPIAL in receiving yards with 1,658 in 2018. 2018 was also great for Gipson as he verbally committed to the University of Pittsburgh to play football.

Steel Valley running back, Kameron Williams, had to enjoy 2018 a little bit as his football team won the WPIAL 2A football championship and he led the WPIAL in rushing yards in 2018 with 2,020 yards. Seton LaSalle got a great Christmas present in 2018 as former Aliquippa and Ringgold football head coach, Mike Zmijanac, is now the football head coach at the school.

KDKA and WPCW aired the WPIAL football championships in 2018 and their ratings for the games were very high. KDKA and WPCW got so many viewers that they are trying to air the WPIAL basketball championships on their channels. Both of those channels just might have found the answer to get more viewers.

Involving baseball, the two teams that got most the attention in 2018 was Canon-McMillan and Ringgold. Bothe Canon-Mac and Ringgold won state championships in baseball in 2018 and you know that baseball players for both teams were extremely happy.

In 2018, Franklin Regional's Boys bowling team and Butler's Girls bowling team both won WPIBL championships. When it comes to WPIAL football and WPIAL basketball, there are 6 total schools that are declared WPIAL championships for both sports. For bowling, it's different. Even though there are sections in bowling, there can only be one WPIAL championship for bowling because there is only one classification unlike basketball and football in where there are six classifications. Woodland Hills bowler Johnna Hill won the 2018 WPIBL Girls Singles championship and Beaver Falls bowler, Devin Crepp won the 2018 WPIBL Boys Singles championship. Junior, Johnna Hill is once again doing well to begin the 2018-19 WPIBL bowling season for Woodland Hills as she is averaging 205 pins a game and leads the East Section in total pins hit and average pins hit per game.

In 2018, Mars got a lot of attention when it came to high school basketball. The Boys basketball team for Mars won the WPIAL 5A basketball championship and lost in the PIAA 5A basketball championship game. The team was led by Robby Carmody, who is now playing basketball at the collegiate level at The University of Notre Dame. The Girls basketball team for Mars won the PIAA 5A basketball championship in 2018 as in that state championship game, Tai Johnson was able to steal the ball on defense and score the game winning basket to help Mars win. The funny thing about this state championship win for Mars is that they did not even get into the WPIAL 5A championship game as they lost to Oakland Catholic in the semifinals. The fact that Mars did not let the WPIAL playoff loss to Oakland Catholic affect them in a bad way going into the state playoffs is pretty tough.

Also, in the year 2018, a lot of notable WPIAL athletes graduated from their high schools. Here's a list of just some athletes that the WPIAL lost in 2018 due to graduation. Trust me, there are more WPIAL athletes that I did not mention that I should have mentioned and that is my fault.

- Amante Britt (Woodland Hills)

- Phil Jurkovec (Pine-Richland)

- Amani Johnson (East Allegheny)

- Robby Carmody (Mars)

- Daivon Stephens (Penn Hills)

- Cory Fulton (Penn Hills)

- Robert Lawrence and Jessica Cadez (Canon-McMillan)

- Kenny White (Pine-Richland and West Allegheny)

- Jake Cortes (Peters Township)

- Antonio Garofoli (Mt. Lebanon)

- Troy Fisher (Central Catholic)

- Drew Saxton & Noah Plack (South Fayette)

- Nick Deanes (Seton LaSalle)

- Amonte Strothers (Steel Valley)

- Robert Kennedy (Jeannette)

- Ricky Guss and Coletrane Washington (Quaker Valley)

- Kwantel Raines (Aliquippa)

- Marcus Hooker (New Castle)

- Kavon Morman (Montour)

- Joey Koroly (Trinity)

- Brady Walker (Gateway)

- Alex Amos (Upper St. Clair)

- Jake Kradel (Butler)

- Ayden Owens (North Allegheny)

There were a good amount of WPIAL athletes that transferred to different schools in 2018. Just to name a few, former OLSH basketball player Donovan Johnson transferred to Moon in the summer while former Hampton basketball player Isaac DeGregorio transferred to North Catholic. Former Lincoln Park basketball player, Thomas Melonja, decided he wanted to go back home to Peters Township and Khori Rasmeur-Fusco wanted to take his football and basketball skills to Mars after playing WPIAL sports for Clairton. There were many other WPIAL athletes that transferred to different schools that I could go on and on and on again.

During the fall and early winter of 2018, big time athletes made verbal commitments involving which colleges they wanted to. Here's a list of just some of the WPIAL athletes that verbally committed to play sports at the college level. Trust me, there are more WPIAL athletes that I did not mention that I should have mentioned and that is my fault.

- Joey Porter Jr. (North Allegheny) [Penn State]

- Makenna Marisa (Peters Township) [Penn State]

- Dino Tomlin (Shady Side Academy) [University of Maryland]

- Jenna Clark (Thomas Jefferson) [Yale]

- Courtney Jackson (Gateway) [Syracuse]

- Mackenzie Wagner (Chartiers Valley) [Loyola University of Maryland]

- Tai Johnson (Mars) [Bucknell]

- Mateo Vandamia (West Allegheny) and Ryan Coe (South Fayette) [University of Delaware]

- Rachel Martindale (North Allegheny) [University of Akron]

- Hollis Mathis (Penn Hills) [William & Mary]

- Gillian Piccolino (Keystone Oaks) and Gabi Legister (Chartiers Valley) [Kennesaw State]

- Anastasia Russ (Hampton) and Will Gipson Jr. (Aliquippa) [Pitt]

- Dante Cephas (Penn Hills) [Kent State]

- Jayvon Thrift (Norwin) [West Virginia University]

- Shamyjha Price (Bishop Canevin) [UMass Lowell]

- Jayde Boyd (Oakland Catholic) [Fairleigh Dickinson]

- Mike Trimbur (South Fayette) [Cornell]

- Connor Barrett (Chartiers Valley) [Duquesne University]

- Jack Fitzpatrick (Upper St. Clair) and Andrew Kristofic (Pine-Richland) [University of Notre Dame]

- Reese Samuel (Upper St. Clair) [Howard University]

- Michael Katic (Pine-Richland) [University of Indiana]

- Tyler King (Pine-Richland) [Navy]

An incident that happened in the WPIAL that got a lot of attention in 2018 was on February 6th 2018 as a big fight happened between Clairton and Monessen in a high school Boys basketball game. There were a lot of fans in the crowd that were fighting with each other that it was funny to watch; but, at the same time not funny to watch and really scary. If you watch the video of the whole fight you could see that there might have been multiple gang fights happening throughout the whole gym. Apparently, Clairton and Monessen are such rivals that the people in both of those communities are not surprised that a big fight broke out at that game.

The WPIAL was very entertaining to watch in 2018 that hopefully it will be just as entertaning to watch in 2019.