Recently in YAIAA football Category

In Thursday's paper, I wrote a story about a study by the National Athletic Trainers Association that recommends high schools coaches cut down on two-a-day practices, especially during the first week of organized workouts.

Obviously, the subject matter is a complicated one, and it's near impossible to explore every crevice of the story within the space newsprint affords. Luckily for us we have the wonderful, limitless blogosphere with which to do that.

So here are some of the impressions I got from reporting the story, along a few tidbits that didn't make the print product.

Even an hour after the West squad in which he was the offensive line coach for lost 37-22, West York coach Ron Miller couldn't say enough good things about his experience at the East-West All-Star Game.

"I made relationships that will stay with me forever," Miller said via telephone from Mansion Park in Altoona, site of the game. "I worked with some good football coaches."

Miller, shown below congratulating one of the state champion Thomas Jefferson players after the District 7 team knocked off his Bulldogs in the PIAA Class AAA semifinal.

He got to coach some of the TJ kids and was particularly impressed with Pat Hagen, the 6-6, 275-pound offensive lineman that will play at West Virginia.

"That kid we will watch on Sundays," he said. "They are great kids too."

It wasn't just the football people that impressed Miller either. He raved about Sheryl Ebersole, who works for the Blair County Visitors Bureau and runs the East-West game.

"I never met anyone like that," Miller said of Ebersole. "It was amazing. She deserves a shout-out."

My colleague and top-notch journalist Jim Seip broke this story a few minutes ago: William Penn football coach Matt Ortega (above) is leaving to take the helm at Coatseville.

Who would make a good replacement for Ortega?

There aren't any names that immediately come to my mind. William Penn is a different situation than most other schools in the area and requires a different type of coach.

Ortega was able to both connect with his players and earn their trust. He was able to increase interest in the program and convince talented athletes (like UConn-bound receiver Malik Generett, who only played basketball before talking to Ortega) to give football a try. The new coach will have to be able to do similar things in order to succeed in the city of York.

Anybody have any thoughts on who would be a good fit for the William Penn football program?

Moving to six football classifications? The WPIAL won't have any of that.

From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article linked above:

A recent survey showed that area schools would rather end the season with the Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League championships than compete in six classifications beginning with the 2010 season as proposed by the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association.

This could be enough to convince some on-the-fence voters to cast their vote to maintain the status-quo. I can't imagine teams from across the state would want a PIAA tournament without WPIAL teams, like the Thomas Jefferson squad that ran all over District 3 Class AAA champion West York in the state semifinals (see picture above).

I came out in favor of the PIAA changing to six classifications in football in this column from three months ago, but there are some YAIAA football coaches that are on the fence about the idea.

The move may or may not come to fruition. It has passed two logistical hurdles already, but will need the support of a two-thirds majority in May to become official. The resistance to the move from the western part of the state may be enough to keep it from passing. YAIAA football committee chairman Don Seidenstricker said it has about a 50-50 chance of approval.

Dallastown's Kevin Myers sees positives and negatives that could stem from the change.

"I go both ways," Myers said. "For Dallastown, we're going to be 6A. We're going to be playing with the bigger schools. I got kind of mixed emotions about it. The way it was explained to us was if we go to six classifications, we either take four schools in the districts and play 10 weeks or go to eight schools in the districts and play nine weeks. Do you give up that week in the regular season or continue to play 10?"

A new book tells about the West York High School's district champs.

A 56-page book about the West York High School varsity football team's District 3 championship season is being published this month by the York Daily Record/Sunday News and its high school sports Web site, GameTimePA.com.

For details, see:The dogs got out.

This seems like a no-brainer:

Following the lead of the NFL and the NCAA, the National Federation of State High School Associations has banned the horse-collar tackle from high school football.

Starting this fall, tackling a player by grabbing the inside collar of the shoulder pads or jersey will be a personal foul carrying a 15-yard penalty from the spot of the infraction.

"Though this play does not happen often, we must ensure that our coaches and officials understand the importance of penalizing this act," said Julian Tackett, assistant commissioner of the Kentucky High School Athletic Association and chairman of the NFHS football rules committee.

Football is violent enough without the horse-collar tackle, so it makes sense that high schools model their rules in this circumstance after those in the NCAA and NFL. If anything, I think there should be more action taken to help minimize injuries at the high school level.

I wasn't surprised when I saw Brandon Real was left off the Big 33 team roster. No matter what he has been able to do on the field, the West York senior seems to be overlooked. So even though his talent and his accomplishments make him seem like a smart pick, it was no shock when the coaches went with players who have received more attention from Division I programs.

The silver lining for Real is that he came very close to earning one of those sought-after roster spots, according to this column by Rod Frisco of the Patriot-News. Frisco writes:

This year's Big 33 head coach, Tim Janocko of Clearfield, runs the spread, which places just one running back on the field at a time, so he needed just two running backs on the team.

There were 54 running backs nominated this year. The RB-LB committee had to watch tape on all of them, and come up with two.

The powers that be made one of the more obvious calls when they recognized Brandon Real as a first-team all-state running back in Class AAA. You could make a decent argument for him as player of the year, but I think they made the right call in picking Brian Baldrige, especially considering Thomas Jefferson won the state title.

There was another West York player that was not selected for either the first or second team who I believe deserves a spot: senior safety Blaine Fissel.

When Real went down with his collarbone injury in the playoffs, the West York defense continued to excel in the second half of the victory over Garden Spot to preserve the shut out and then held Manheim Central to only seven points in the district championship game, allowing the Bulldogs to win despite scoring only 13 points.

Fissel was the leader of that defense and deserves recognition for it, especially when you compare his numbers to some of the players that made the team.

Many area high school basketball teams have some sort of phrase or saying on their warm-ups of T-shirts. Most of the time it's some sort of played-out sports cliche about hard work or hustle. The Red Lion boys' basketball team got a little creative with theirs this season, as I noticed before Wednesday's 59-48 victory over Dallastown.

They include only two words on the back of the warm-ups, one on top of the other. The above word is DEFENSE is big bold block letters. Directly below it is the word offense, noticeably smaller, probably less than half the size of the first word.

I asked junior Spencer McCreary (above) about the meaning behind the words on the shirt.

"There's always the saying that offense wins games and defense wins championships," McCreary said. "But I think for us it's more so that we're going to smother teams defensively and our defense is going to lead to our offense."

All Autumn Lau has to do is score points at the same pace as she has done over her first three varsity seasons and the Northeastern senior forward will be the new all-time scoring leader in YAIAA girls' basketball.

Lau, who will play Division I basketball at St. Francis College in New York next year with her twin sister Amber, entered the 2008-09 season with 1,758 points to sit exactly 500 points behind the record of 2,258 set by Fairfield's Lauren Beckley. The senior forward averaged 24.1 points per game last season and has already scored 64 points in three games this season to increase her career total to 1,822.

Even if you use the more conservative estimate of 21.3 points per game, which is what Lau is averaging so far this season, the Northeastern senior will become the fifth YAIAA girls' basketball player to crack the 2,000 point barrier by the 12th game of the season.

The others are Beckley (Fairfield, 2006), Barb DeShields with 2,175 (William Penn, 1990), Meredith Cox with 2,097 (Delone Catholic, 2006) and Meggan Quinn with 2,044 (Red Lion, 2006).

Until Brandon Real suffered a broken collarbone two weeks ago, West York rarely had its skill players racking up major playing time on both offense and defense.

Corey Harris would take some carries here and there and snag some receptions, but most of his playing time would be at cornerback. Blaine Fissel and Dan Gay have caught several passes this season, but no one in the West York receiving corps has even half the number of catches as leading receiver Nate Jacobs. Neither Jacobs nor quarterback Alex George ever played on the other side of the ball, and early in the season the decision was made to keep Real exclusively on offense.

When Real went down, that changed. Now the West York coaching staff has to strike a balance between Harris and Fissel at running back, staying with the more effective runner but still keeping both of them fresh enough to play stellar defense.

The West York football team usually focuses on offense during its Tuesday practice, but this week they spent the last half-hour or so working on defense in anticipation of Friday's PIAA Class AAA semifinal against Thomas Jefferson.

Coach Ron Miller wasn't thrilled with what he saw and he informed his players as such.

Briefly stopping the practice and calling his players together, an Miller impassioned Miller expressed his disappointment. He told the Bulldogs they needed to show more intensity. He said they shouldn't be satisfied with winning a district title. He demanded a better effort for the rest of the session and the following few days.

It wasn't anything too far out of the ordinary -- just a high school football coach keeping his team in line. What struck me in particular was that Miller boiled success in high school football down to three basic elements.

Meet Brian Baldrige, the leading rusher of West York's PIAA Class AAA semifinal opponent Thomas Jefferson. He scored all of the touchdowns in Thomas Jefferson's win over Strong Vincent in last week's PIAA Class AAA quarterfinals. Two weeks earlier in the postseason, Baldrige ran for 382 yards on 32 carries to help the Jaguars earn their sixth consecutive WPIAL championship.

He also said at Thomas Jefferson, "they expect you to win a state title." The Jaguars have won two since 2004 and are two games away from a third. Baldrige told me that whether or not you're able to earn the crown is "what you're measured on when you graduate from T.J." I told him that sounds like a lot of pressure.

"It is, but our coaches really take it off us because they work us hard in the summer and that's how we keep making it back to the state playoffs," Baldrige said. "We work harder than any other team and it pays off."

West York has never reached the state semifinals in football at the Class AAA level and on Friday will take on a team that won the crown last year and will view this season as a disappointment if they fail to do it again. Although the Bulldogs will undoubtedly fight hard to stay alive and earn a state title of their own, they seemingly have a lot less pressure on them this week. It's sort of like they have nothing to lose.

I asked Baldrige whether he thought the lack of pressure might be an advantage for West York.