Four West Hills high school football teams are playoff-bound, as the brackets for the WPIAL playoffs were unveiled Saturday.
Moon Area, Montour, Our Lady of the Sacred Heart and Bishop Canevin all secured spots in their respective classification brackets, and all four will open their playoff journeys on Halloween night, Friday, Oct. 31. All games will be played at 7 p.m.
Two of the local teams will play at home: Moon, seeded No. 5 in the Class 5A division, will host No. 12 Armstrong, and Bishop Canevin, the No. 3 seed in the Class 1A division, will entertain No. 14 Greensburg Central Catholic at Dormont Stadium.
Montour, seeded sixth in the eight-team Class 4A division, will travel to meet No. 3 New Castle while No. 9 Our Lady of the Sacred Heart visits eighth-seeded Mohawk in a Class 2A battle.
One local team that didn’t make the grade was Cornell, which saw its season end in a heartbreaking 30-28 loss to Monessen Friday night. The Greyhounds are seeded No. 15 in the Class 1A bracket and have the unenviable task of taking on No. 2 Clairton.
Cornell finished 5-5 overall and 2-4 in the Black Hills Conference, but two of their losses – which came in the last two games of the season – were by a combined three points and another came by four points.
Avella, which earned the final spot in the Class 1A bracket, finished the regular season 6-4 overall and 3-4 in the Tri-County South Conference and lost their last two games by a combined score of 82-6. Two of Avella’s three conference wins came over Mapletown, which went 0-7 in the conference. And one of their nonconference wins came by a 7-6 score over Carlynton, which went 1-9.
The Montour-New Castle matchup will be a rematch of a game played Oct. 3. In that game, the Spartans could not contain Red Hurricanes quarterback Marino Graham, who rushed for 107 yards and four touchdowns.
Montour coach Lou Cerro said he doesn’t believe either team has an advantage as a result of seeing each other a month earlier.
“We’re a little different team than we were four weeks ago,” said Cerro, who figured his team could be seeded anywhere from No. 3 to No. 6 in the eight-team bracket. “I’m sure they are, too.
“We’re excited to be there. But we have to be ready to play, because they’re a good team. They beat us up last time.”
OLSH coach Donnie Militizer said he was pleased to see his squad get invited to the Class 2A dance – and he felt the Chargers deserved it.
“Our nonconference schedule was brutal, and top to bottom, our conference is pretty good,” he said. “We have a young football team, but our kids stayed focused, we got better each week and we earned ourselves a spot. I’m really proud of them — now let’s see what we can do.”
Moon finished 7-3 overall and 4-1 in the Allegheny Six Conference, good for second behind Peters Township. They’ll take on an Armstrong team that went 4-6 overall and 3-3 in the Big East, which left the River Hawks tied for third.
Bishop Canevin improved to 7-3 overall and 5-1 in in Black Hills Conference play by whipping Burgettstown, 43-10, Saturday night. Greensburg Central Catholic went 5-5 overall and 3-4 in the Eastern Conference, good for fifth place.
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