Steel City Blitz
The 2025 WPIAL season is now in the home stretch with just four games to go before the playoffs. Conference play fully kicked off last week for every section across the WPIAL. Only 9 teams remain undefeated heading into Week 6. Upper St Clair and North Catholic suffered their first losses in unbeaten showdowns with Peters Twp and Imani Christian. Additionally, North Allegheny lost their first game in a Championship Rematch against Central Catholic.
On this week’s edition of the WPIAL Blitz Show, we were fortunate enough to interview New Castle Head Coach Fred Mozzoccio, fresh off the Canes upset of Aliquippa. We also recapped all of the Week 5 action, ran through all of the conference standings and discussed this week’s WPIAL Blitz Statewide Rankings. Our WPIAL Blitz Show Player of the Week from Week 5 was Western Beaver RB Wyatt Sparbanie. In the Golden Beavers victory over conference foe Riverside, Sparbanie stole the show under Western Beaver’s new lights, running for 265 yards and 7 touchdowns. Check out his 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 6 Games of the Week!
Central Catholic and North Allegheny have set themselves apart in the 6A playoff race, leaving the final two spots to be decided amongst five teams. Hempfield has a win over Canon-Mac while Norwin defeated Seneca Valley. A win here will go a long way to separating either of these teams in the murky middle of the Quad County Conference. Hempfield has not made the playoffs since 2016 and Norwin has not been to the postseason since 2017 so both teams are seeking history this year. Both teams have offenses led by quality quarterbacks. Hempfield’s Dom Detruf has thrown for 1258 yards and 14 TDs and run for 184 yards. On the other side, Norwin’s Trystan Tavares has thrown for 597 yards and 9 TDs and run for 513 yards and 8 scores. Detruf has spread the ball around and has six receivers with over 100 yards on the season. His top targets have been Jack Kopas (356 yards, 7 TDs) and Henry Mutschler (217 yards). Tavares has just three receivers with over 100 yards, led by Potter Brozeski (138 yards, 3 TDs) and Jake Knight (136 yards, 2 TDs). For the Spartans, Aidan Stinebiser (434 rushing yards, 199 receiving yards, 7 total TDs) has been the lead back in the ground game. The rushing attack is what will likely separate these teams as Norwin’s Giovanni Rothrauff (798 yards, 6 TDs) has been the workhorse for the Knights offense and will be relied upon to keep Hempfield’s offense off the field....
