Steel City Blitz
The WPIAL 1A semifinals will be played on Friday night at neutral sites (Hopewell and Fox Chapel). The 1A champion will be crowned at Acrisure Stadium in the first game of the day on November 22 and enter the State brackets the following week in the semifinals. The WPIAL Champion will face the Champion from District 9 or District 10. All year, 1A has looked like a guaranteed rematch between Fort Cherry and Clairton after the way both teams dominated the regular season. But a shadow of doubt has been cast over that as Jeannette broke through against Clairton’s defense last week and gave the Bears all they could handle. Clairton prevailed, setting up a rematch of last year’s semifinal against Bishop Canevin.
Check out this week’s edition of the WPIAL Blitz Show where we broke down all of the playoff matchups!
Fort Cherry is the two-time defending WPIAL Champions and have won 40 straight games against WPIAL opponents. Fort Cherry is led by senior QB Matt Sieg, who earlier in his career was the first freshman member of the 1000/1000 club then just the second player to reach the threshold twice. This season he played through an injury so Fort Cherry did not ask him to throw as much as he did in past years. Sieg still finished the season with 403 passing yards and 8 TDs along with 1612 rushing yards and 28 TDs. This season Seig broke the WPIAL career total yardage record and Mike Vernillo’s school rushing record, placing him second on the WPIAL’s all-time rushing list. With Sieg playing through injury, Fort Cherry almost exclusively ran the ball over the second half of the season. In addition to Sieg, there were plenty of opportunities for juniors Eli Salvini (906 yards, 19 TDs) and Ryan Huey (619 yards, 12 TDs). Salvini scored 3 touchdowns in the Rangers opening round win over Avella and two more last week against Neshannock.
Laurel, on the other hand, last appeared in the semifinals in 2009. The Spartans started the season with three wins over 2A playoff teams from the Midwestern Conference. Their only loss came against Bishop Canevin and they rolled through Big Seven Conference play. Laurel has traditionally been a run-heavy team but opened up the offense with QB Luca Santini (1255 yards, 20 TDs) who broke the school’s career passing record this season. The Spartans will do everything they can to get the ball in the hands of Swiss Army Knife Kolton Carlson who leads the team in receiving (658 yards), rushing (767 yards), and scoring (19 total TDs). In last week’s win over Chartiers-Houston, Carlson had over 200 yards of total offense and scored twice. The Spartans lead back is Nathan Hill (667 yards, 15 total TDs) who will get his share of work in the ground game.
Clairton has put together one of...
