Forty-eight minutes is the length of a typical WPIAL football game, but two contests this week could be notably shorter.
Fox Chapel and Baldwin each asked their opponents this week to show mercy and reduce the length of the quarters in their conference games Friday night. Baldwin hosts South Fayette in an Allegheny Six opener, while Pine-Richland visits Fox Chapel in the Northeast.
Such arrangements have occurred in past seasons but mostly by small schools. Fox Chapel and Baldwin complete in Class 5A.
In a letter shared Thursday with the Pine-Richland football team, Rams coach Jon LeDonne said the school had agreed to Fox Chapel’s request to shorten the quarters Friday. The first quarter will remain the standard 12 minutes, but the second, third and fourth are cut to eight.
The game is likely to be lopsided. A year ago, Fox Chapel lost to Pine-Richland, 71-0. The Foxes fell to 0-2 in the conference this year following losses to Penn Hills, 49-14, and North Hills, 56-7.
“I am sure this was not an easy request, but understand how taxing, both physically and mentally, lack of success on the field can be,” LeDonne said in the letter. “A shortened game will limit impacts for players, keeping their players safe and ensuring their varsity personnel can continue to compete the rest of their season, minimizing additional unnecessary risk.”
Pine-Richland (4-1, 2-0) is the defending WPIAL Class 5A champion and ranked No. 1 this season. The Rams are coming off a 56-14 conference win over Plum.
LeDonne said Pine-Richland granted Fox Chapel’s request in “the spirit of sportsmanship,” but made clear that the Rams intended to compete as usual.
“We will still come out and play our brand of football,” he said. “We have no control over our schedule, and as this is a conference game, we plan to execute our game plan throughout the contest.”
Regardless of the halftime score, LeDonne said Pine-Richland’s starters would be on the field to begin the third quarter.
“This approach ensures players remain prepared to perform following halftime, which is an important aspect of maintaining readiness as the season progresses,” LeDonne said. “Playing one half of football for a series of weeks does not benefit our varsity players when they will be faced with adversity in the fourth quarter.”
In recent days, Baldwin’s administration asked its five conference opponents to use a running clock for the entirety of their games starting Friday against South Fayette. But that idea was abandoned because PIAA rules allow the clock to run continuously only if one team is leading by 35 points or more after halftime.
The rules do allow teams to agree upon shorter quarters, which Baldwin also favored. The Highlanders have the WPIAL’s longest active losing streak at 24 games after a 0-5 start to this season.
In an open letter to the community, Baldwin-Whitehall superintendent Randal Lutz said: “The request was about avoiding forfeits, which other schools in the WPIAL have already had to do this season, and about protecting our kids from unnecessary risk.”
Despite being a Class 5A school, Baldwin only had around 30 players on the roster. Lutz noted that Baldwin faced “disheartening” criticism this week for making the request of other schools.
“The intent of the email had a clear and singular focus: safety first,” Lutz added. “Our athletes themselves responded yesterday with one unified message: let us play the games as they are meant to be played.”
USC has a leg up
In practice this week, Peters Township got prepared to start drives at the 20.
That’s how much Indians coach T.J. Plack respects the leg of Upper St. Clair kicker Jacobo Echeverria Lozano. The senior has sent 29 of his 32 kickoffs into the end zone for touchbacks in the first five weeks.
Echeverria earned first-team all-conference honors as both a kicker and punter last year.
“We’ve got to find some way to make up for that kicker kicking into the end zone,” Plack said. “It’s huge. … Everything we’ve done in practice offensively we’ve started on the 20-yard line. We’ve got our kids accustomed to it, and we’re ready to go.”
Peters Township snuck past Upper St. Clair in the WPIAL semifinals last year thanks to a kickoff that narrowly fell short of the end zone. Nick McCullough returned a kickoff 97 yards for a touchdown in a 7-3 victory.
As a junior, Echeverria earned touchbacks on 50 of 71 kickoffs.
The 5-foot-10, 165-pounder was ranked as the 10th-best kicker nationally in the senior class by Kohl’s, which evaluates specialists at its camps.
Echeverria is perfect on field goals this season with makes from 39, 38, 38, 25 and 24 yards. Also a nationally ranked punter, Echeverria is averaging 45.4 yards on five punts.
An independent streak
These Colonials aren’t stuck in the past.
In the midst of a 0-10 season, Albert Gallatin decided in 2018 to stop playing WPIAL football. The Fayette County school remained a WPIAL member but chose to seek out an independent football schedule instead.
Seven years later, Albert Gallatin is 5-0 and looking for a sixth straight win Friday at Allegany, Md.
The Colonials won WPIAL Class 2A titles in 1961 and ’74, but they’d struggled on the football field since the district consolidated schools in 1987. The team was 9-82 in the decade before deciding to go independent.
Albert Gallatin is one of five WPIAL teams playing outside the league. The independent route hasn’t sparked success for everyone — Brownsville is 0-4 and Connellsville is 1-4 — but the Colonials have started to win again.
Championship preview?
Central Catholic and North Allegheny meet Friday at Newman Stadium in a battle for first in Class 6A.
It’s always a big game for the big-school rivals. But the bigger question always seems to be: Can anyone in 6A prevent a rematch seven weeks from now in the WPIAL finals?
This has essentially become a two-game series for Central Catholic and North Allegheny each year — with the regular season contest meaning less than the rematch. They’ve met in the WPIAL title game for a rematch three seasons in a row and four times in the past five years.
Always in a rush
The WPIAL’s leading rusher will likely change after Friday night.
That’s because while Bentworth’s Ben Hays has a game at Carmichaels, Leechburg’s Tim Andrasy will be idle this week. Springdale didn’t have enough healthy players, so it called off its game with Leechburg.
The game could potentially be rescheduled later in the season.
For now, Andrasy has 1,037 yards while Hays has 954. Bethel Park’s David Dennison is third with 900 yards.
Andrasy rushed for 257 yards and four touchdowns on 37 carries last week against Jeannette.