Greg Macafee stories, Page 31

Earlier this week, Highlands, Knoch and Fox Chapel were named among the top two seeds in each of their brackets for the WPIAL basketball playoffs. Highlands (19-3) and Knoch (19-3) were given the first and second seeds, respectively, in the Class 4A tournament and the Foxes (21-1) nabbed the No....

Just last year, the Apollo-Ridge boys basketball team was on the verge of breaking a four-year playoff drought, but when it came down to the waning moments of the regular season, the Vikings barely missed. They finished the season with the same Section 1-2A record as Springdale, but the Dynamos...

When Burrell’s Mikey Scherer was in eighth grade, he decided he didn’t want to wrestle anymore. Looking back, he said he wasn’t having any fun in the sport. So as he stepped into the high school corridors as a freshman, he thought he never would step on the mat again....

WPIAL Class AA wrestlers will converge on Canon-McMillan high school this weekend for their sectional and WPIAL individual tournaments. The sectional tournaments will take place Friday, and when the seedings were announced Wednesday, a few Burrell Bucs found themselves atop the Section 3-AA brackets. Juniors Ian Oswalt (132 pounds) and...

In his team’s run to the state championship, the Raiders’ 160-pounder went 4-0 and picked up two pins, a technical fall and a 2-1 second tiebreaker win in the state championship match against Nazareth Area. All season long, Augustine has been a staple for Waynesburg. He’s produced an overall record...

The Raiders finished as the runner-up in the PIAA Class AAA state championship this weekend in Hershey, falling just short of their ultimate goal. They took down District 3 third-place finisher Central Dauphin, 40-21, in the first round. Then, the Raiders advanced to the quarterfinals to take down Cathedral Prep,...

After jockeying back and forth this season atop the WPIAL Class 4A boys basketball rankings, Highlands and Knoch claimed the top two spots in the tournament when the WPIAL revealed the brackets Tuesday night at the annual pairings meeting in Green Tree. Fox Chapel and Springdale also earned top-four seeds....

The Riverview Raiders have found their new football coach. On Monday, the Riverview school board approved Trevor George, a former offensive coordinator for Ambridge and assistant for Blackhawk, to lead the program. “(Riverview) is a great place to be, and that’s the most attractive thing about it,” George said. “One...

For a majority of this season, the Fox Chapel boys basketball team produced a spotless record. The Foxes have defended with an intensity that has allowed them to produce the best scoring defense in the WPIAL at 43.5 points per game, which is just over two points lower than the...

Since he was 8 years old, Fox Chapel’s Sammy Brown hoped to play college football for a hometown school. On Thursday, Brown achieved his goal when he signed a national letter of intent with Division I FCS Duquesne, where he likely will play linebacker or safety. Has Always been a...

Fox Chapel’s Sammy Brown has found his home for the next four years, and he won’t have to go very far to continue his football career. Just one day after National Signing Day, Brown officially signed his letter of intent to continue his athletic and academic career at Duquesne. He...

It has been a special week for a few players in the A-K Valley as they eclipsed the 1,000-point mark in their careers. On Tuesday, Leechburg senior Jake Blumer and Springdale junior Demitri Fritch hit the milestone. A day later, Plum junior Connor Moss did the same. Blumer earned his...

On Jan. 28, the No. 2 Knoch Knights dropped a Section 1-4A contest to No. 1 Highlands, losing just their second game of the season. It was a tough back-and-forth battle between two of the top teams in the classification and it determined that the two teams would split the...

The Pitt-Johnstown wrestling team will host No. 11 Mercyhurst in a PSAC matchup Friday. If the No. 4 Mountain Cats are victorious, coach Pat Pecora will earn his 617th victory and become the all-time winningest coach in college wrestling history. Pecora tied former Oregon State coach Dale Thomas, who took...

For the second time in school history, Deer Lakes is heading to the WPIAL basketball playoffs for a fourth straight year. Thanks to an intense defensive effort in the second half Tuesday at Valley, the Lancers (11-8, 6-5) were able to hold off an inspired Vikings (3-17, 2-9) squad and...

The Burrell wrestling team has been in this position a time or two. In fact, for the 14th straight year, the Bucs are heading to the Giant Center in Hershey as the WPIAL Class AA champions. Over the past decade and a half, they’ve built a certified dynasty, and the...

The Raiders were trailing Saturday in the WPIAL Class AAA team championship at Canon-McMillan. With three bouts remaining, Waynesburg needed three wins and they needed bonus points in the process. Decisions by Nate Stephenson (152 pounds) and Luca Augustine (160) put Waynesburg in position, trailing by three points. Freshman Eli...

Waynesburg was in need of a big victory in the final match of the WPIAL Class AAA team championship Saturday afternoon at Canon-McMillan and 170-pound freshman Eli Makel answered the call. The Raiders had just gotten back-to-back wins from Nate Stephenson and Luca Augustine to cut Seneca Valley’s lead to...

Three hundred coaching wins is a big number, and Kiski Area coach Will Saunders hit that milestone with the Cavaliers’ 58-49 win over Burrell last Friday. “It was pretty exciting, and I was just so focused on the game, I wasn’t thinking of that, per se,” Saunders said. “Then, Kiski...

Big-time players make big-time plays in big -time games, and earlier this week when No. 3 Highlands needed a player to step up, senior Johnny Crise answered the call. The senior forward scored 24 points and grabbed 10 rebounds as the Golden Rams (17-2, 7-1) got revenge for one of...

Burrell’s AJ Corrado headed into last weekend’s Thomas Chevrolet wrestling tournament in Bedford on the brink of earning his 100th career win. It didn’t take him long to get it. One minute and 11 seconds into his first match of the tournament, Corrado planted Bedford’s Gavin Habinyak and earned a...

For the past three years, the Kiski Area wrestling team has come home from the WPIAL team tournament with gold in hand. The Cavaliers start their journey toward a fourth straight WPIAL team title on Wednesday when they travel to Hempfield for their first-round matchup against South Fayette. But this...

Burrell 152-pounder A.J. Corrado turned in a solid performance at the Thomas Chevrolet tournament in Bedford this past weekend, taking home first place with a 4-0 record and four pins. None of Corrado’s matches got out of the first round. Corrado was the No. 1-seed heading into the tournament and...