Laurel Highlands senior on memorable run
It has been a memorable sports school year at Laurel Highlands High School. The Mustangs won a WPIAL football playoff game for the first time in school history, won a second WPIAL basketball championship in three years and Monday won a PIAA baseball playoff game for the first time.
“I think the guys in all the sports programs this year, we’re all on the same page,” said Laurel Highlands senior Joe Chambers. “We hang out together. There is just a different bond.”
The common bond among all three teams has been Chambers.
Chambers is the only Laurel Highlands athlete who has been a starter on the football, basketball and baseball teams. He was the winning pitcher in Monday’s 4-3 victory against Cathedral Prep in the first round of the PIAA Class 4A playoffs. He struck out 12 and allowed six hits and also had two hits.
The win lifted Chambers’ record to 7-1, and he has a 1.42 ERA with 82 strikeouts in 59 innings. He is the team’s designated hitter when not pitching and has a .312 batting average.
Chambers ( 6 feet 2, 180 pounds) was a starting guard forward on the basketball team and an excellent 3- point shooter. He started at receiver in football after starting at quarterback as a sophomore.
“They have all been pretty unreal experiences with all three sports,” Chambers said. “I think the WPIAL basketball championship and winning this [PIAA] baseball game were pretty equal.”
Chambers plans to play baseball at the University of Tampa, accepting a position as a walkon. But first, there are the PIAA baseball playoffs. Laurel Highlands plays WPIAL champ West Mifflin in the quarterfinals at 4 p.m. Thursday at Latrobe High School.
Four WPIAL champs ousted
As far as the WPIAL is concerned, maybe the most eyeopening factoid about the first round of the PIAA playoffs was that four WPIAL champions lost. Mt. Lebanon (6A), South Park (3A), Serra (2A) and Union (1A) all put on the uniforms for
the last time.
Since the PIAA changed from four to six classifications in the 2017 season, this was the first time that four WPIAL champs exited in the first round of the state playoffs. But history suggests it shouldn’t come as a total shocker, because it isn’t easy for WPIAL champs to make it to the PIAA title games.
Since the turn of the century, 42 WPIAL teams have made it to PIAA championship games. But only 18 of those 42 were WPIAL champions.
Last year was the most successful season for WPIAL champs, in terms of making it to PIAA championships. Five WPIAL teams made the PIAA finals last year and three of them were WPIAL champs — North Allegheny, New Castle and Shenango. New Castle and Shenango both came home as state champs.
Them again
One of the top PIAA quarterfinal games Thursday will be West Allegheny vs. Bethel Park in Class 5A. The two met in the WPIAL semifinals and West Allegheny won, 3-0, on its way to winning the WPIAL title. Bethel Park is the defending PIAA champion.
“We’re kind of in a different spot this time,” Bethel Park coach Pat Zehnder said. “West Allegheny was kind of in revenge mode last time because we ended their WPIAL season last year [in the semifinals]. That gives you extra juice when you go against a team that put you out. I have such respect for what [West Allegheny coach] Bryan Cornell has done and they have such good kids. But our guys are really pumped to get another chance at them.”
The teams meet at 2 p.m. Thursday at Washington & Jeffersone.
One more PIAA run?
Riverside coach Dan Oliastro became the winningest coach in WPIAL history earlier this season. He also has won more PIAA titles (four) than any coach in state history. Can he lead Riverside on one more championship run?
Riverside defeated Mount Union, 5-3, in the first round of the Class 2A tournament to earn a quarterfinal matchup at 3:30 p.m. Thursday at Seneca Valley against WPIAL runner-up Neshannock. Riverside and Neshannock are from the same section and Riverside defeated Neshannock twice during the regular season.
Riverside is one of only two schools to win four PIAA baseball championships. The other, coincidentally, is Mount Union. Mount Union, a District 6 team, had a legendary coach in Nick Imperioli, but Imperioli only won three of Mount Union’s four titles.
Riverside lost in the WPIAL semifinals this season. But in two of Riverside’s four state championship seasons, they failed to win the WPIAL title twice.
Kling of Central
Central High in Martinsburg knocked Mohawk out of the Class 3A playoffs with a 13-3 victory Monday. It wouldn’t be an overstatement to say Central features one of the top high school players in the country.
Paxton Kling is a senior outfielder who recently was named the Gatorade Pennsylvania Player of the Year. But maybe even a better indication of Kling’s talent is the fact that Baseball America rates him the No. 93 prospect for July’s MLB draft, and that includes all players in high school and college. Kling has signed with LSU.
Against Mohawk, Kling was 2 for 4 with a double, home run and three RBIs. For the season, Kling is batting .575 (42 of 73) with six home runs and 35 RBIs. He has helped Central to a 25-0 record. But Kling won’t face a WPIAL team the rest of the playoffs because no WPIAL team is left in the Class 3A bracket. Besides Mohawk, South Park and Hopewell also lost in the first round.
Nobody’s perfect
Serra was the only team to win a WPIAL title with an undefeated record, but Serra lost in the first round of the PIAA playoffs to Redbank Valley, 2-1. That means no WPIAL team has ever won a PIAA baseball championship with a perfect record since the PIAA playoffs were started in 1977.
Only four WPIAL teams have won PIAA championships with one loss and the last to do so was Riverside (26-1) in 2006. The other three WPIAL teams to win state titles with only one loss are Penn Hills (251 in 1978), Connellsville (26-1 in 1989) and Neshannock (24-1 in 2004).