Jeannette begins history-making path
Jeannette is striving for history.
Since the WPIAL began more than 100 years ago, no school has ever won baseball, football and basketball championships in consecutive seasons. Jeannette is on the cusp of doing just that.
But you don’t have to tell that to Jeannette basketball coach Adrian Batts, whose Jayhawks have the opportunity to round out the trifecta.
“Trust me, we know about it,” Batts said.
A school has won WPIAL football and basketball championships in the same school year a total of 16 times, including Jeannette in 2007-08. But Jeannette’s baseball championship in the spring — the school’s first to date — gives it the chance to make history in a different way. Three players on the basketball team, Tre Cunningham, Drake Petrillo and Seth Howard, also played on Jeannette’s football and baseball teams.
“That would be great and we’ve talked about it but just the fact that they have the opportunity is great,” Batts said.
The Jayhawks finished the regular season 18-3 and as Class 2A Section 1 winners. Cunningham, who averages 17.9 points, 7.1 rebounds and 2.1 steals per game, said the team doesn’t think about the history when it’s on the court, but sees it as a unique opportunity.
“I think about the 2007 team and what it did in football, and their basketball team that was also good,” Cunningham said of the Terrelle Pryor-led teams, which gave the school its first WPIAL basketball title. “We did it in baseball too, so we’d be above them. I want to be in the same rank as them.
“We might as well go after it in basketball, too.”
Junior Anthony Johnson, the team’s leading scorer with 22.2 points per game, to go with 7.5 rebounds and 6.1 assists, returned from an ankle sprain in the Greensburg Central Catholic win Feb. 9. He was a standout defensive end for the football team. With his injury combined with illness plaguing the team, this is the first time the Jayhawks have been at full force since Dec. 29, Batts said.
With Johnson gone, the soft-spoken Cunningham stepped up as a leader, playing shooting guard and occasionally point guard or power forward. As a threesport athlete, playing pitcher and third baseman in baseball and outside linebacker, wide receiver, kicker and punter in football, he never has the time to get out of shape, he said.
Being a more reserved player has its advantages, Cunningham said, though he has learned to occasionally take the open shot instead of always making the extra pass.
“I think it’s good because in later games I like to get the team involved,” Cunningham said. “I like to get teammates involved more so I’m not the only one doing things. But sometimes I have to step up and learn how to be vocal, because I sometimes run pointguard.”
Johnson and Cunningham, combined with Robert Kennedy, who averages 12.5 points, 4.5 rebounds and 2.5 steals per game and led the Jayhawks to a PIAA championship in football as quarterback, comprise Batts’ “Big 3” and should play a big role in the Jayhawks’ playoff run.
“I know everybody’s talking about OLSH and Sewickley, but Jeannette, we’re going to be there, too,” Batts said.