Steel City Blitz
As hard to believe, the 2025 WPIAL season has passed the halfway point. With five of the ten regular season games in the books, conference play kicks off this week in full for every section across the WPIAL. Only 12 teams remain undefeated heading into the second half of the season. Two games this week feature a matchup of unbeaten teams. A 5A Allegheny Six Conference showdown between Upper St Clair and Peters Twp and a 3A non-conference meeting between North Catholic and Imani Christian.
On this week’s edition of the WPIAL Blitz Show, we recapped all of the Week 4 action, ran through all of the conference standings and debuted the WPIAL Blitz Statewide Rankings. Our WPIAL Blitz Show Player of the Week from Week 4 was the South Allegheny duo of Drew Cook and Joe Gamret. The Gladiators throttled the defending WPIAL Champions South Park 56-7 behind 4 TDs from Gamret and 3 from Cook. We couldn’t decide on just one as the best player of the game, so they are co-Players of the Week, with a special shout-out to the South A line that just dominated South Park in the trenches. Check out Cook and Gamert’s highlights on Hudl. We’ll be back on Monday night at 9:30 this week for another great show! Tune in on the SSP Network on YouTube.
As playoff races start to heat up, be sure to check my WPIAL Standings Page here on the site, which I’ll keep updated with all of the tiebreakers. Without further ado, here are the Week 4 Games of the Week!
The Vikings and Tigers have met in the last three WPIAL Championship Games. Central Catholic emerged victorious last year after losing the prior two title games. The winner of this game will have the inside track to the conference title and top seed in this year’s 6A playoffs. Central Catholic rolled through their first two conference games by a combined total of 116-7. North Allegheny got everything they could handle from an upstart Norwin team last week. Central Catholic has found their offensive stride behind a powerful offensive line anchored by numerous D1 recruits. Roman Thompson (411 yards, 13 TDs) ran for 4 TDs last week and has been the workhorse in the backfield. Sophomore Owen Herrick (858 yards, 6 TDs) has stepped into the quarterback role and has two talented receivers in Aiden Nasiadka (159 yards, 1 TD) and Navy-commit Maceo Watkins (155 yards, 4 TDs). Defensively, Central’s line is anchored by Western Michigan-commit Angelo Pugliano. At linebacker the Vikings have future rivals in Duke-commit Colsen Gatten and North Carolina-commit Ashton Blatt. North Allegheny’s offense is built around their ground game and workhorse back Luke Rohan who leads the team in three offensive categories (426 rushing yards, 187 receiving yards, 10 total TDs). When Rohan isn’t running the ball, dual-threat QB Brady Brinkley has been efficient, throwing for 708...
