Mt. Lebanon molding unproven athletes into team

Mt. Lebanon was the WPIAL Class 3A runner-up in 2019 when it lost to PineRichland in the championship match at Robert Morris University.

Heading into 2020, the Blue Devils were a senior-laden squad ready to win their first title since 2015.

Now, after a year off from the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown and subsequent cancellation of the season, the school is like most in the area and trying to feel its way through the early part of the season with a relatively unproven lineup.

“All the spring sports are trying to figure things out. I’ve lamented to our guys and anyone who would listen, our seniors, the last time they saw any action was when they were sophomores and our juniors were freshmen. There’s such a lack of experience across the board,” Mt Lebanon coach Mike Ermer said. “It’s almost like we’re starting all from scratch and it’s going slowly.”

But it’s going.

And now that it is going, Mt. Lebanon is molding these unproven commodities into a team that may yet compete for its fifth title since 2009.

“It’s been really fun,” Ermer said. “Last year, I thought we had a really good

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group of seniors, we had a lot of known quantities. But going into this year, there are no preconceived notions as to what part fits where and we’ve kind of embraced that and moved some things around and giving guys different looks that, if we’d have seen these juniors play as sophomores, we might have pigeonholed them.”

By taking last season off, it has given some of the players more time to develop and get into certain roles. None may have taken that more literally than junior attacker Cooper Austin, who spends his falls in the gridiron trenches on the Blue Devils line.

“He’s kind of exciting and kind of a known quantity. This kid is just a different species because he’s 6 feet 2, 250 pounds and he can just move,” Ermer said. “That’s unique and he’s a lot of fun to be around, but watching a human being that’s built like that and is a really good athlete is a lot of fun.”

Austin did start one game his freshman year and is still working on the finer points of the game, but he’s not the only member of the Blue Devils with varsity experience. Mt. Lebanon is built mostly around its defense this year as senior long-stick midfielder Joe Gibbons, senior defender Sam Pellegrino and his fellow defender, junior brother Charlie and senior midfielder Brodie Campbell will have to lock it down on the backside white the team finds its offense.

Still, even with a lineup that is feeling its way through the first few weeks of the season, the team goals remain the same.

“We’re just trying to make sure we’re doing the little things well and letting the chips fall where they may,” Ermer said. “I don’t really have any frame of reference for where the other teams are right now, but our goals we have are the same as every year, to win our section and go from there.”

Quaker Valley

Teams did a lot of things when their 2020 season went by the wayside.

QuakerValley hired a new head coach.as the district promoted North Allegheny alumna Laura Peery from her position directing the middle school program.

And, because of the year off, she’s essentially coaching the same players she coached two years ago.

“It’s kind of cool seeing them all at a higher level and it’s been a challenge,” Peery said. “But it’s been nice coming into it and knowing a lot of the girls because I also work at the middle school.”

Having worked with the players before — and basically teaching them the basics from the ground up — Peery knew all the strengths and weaknesses of her players because she developed them. That’s key for a team that made it to the WPIAL Class 2A semifinals in 2019 and lost to Hampton, 12-11, in a hard-fought match and could potentially see the Talbots again.

It helps that Quaker Valley has several players back from that squad, including senior midfielder and faceoff specialist Paige Gabriele, senior defender and Edinboro recruit Morgan Milletary, senior defender Catherine Mueller and senior defender Lilyana Page, Having a strong defense will be key as the Quakers start a freshman goalkeeper in Emily Martin.

Quaker Valley also brought in a top-flight assistant as this season will mark the return of 2016 graduate Emily Kraus, who was a member of the Quakers 2015 WPIAL Class 3A championship team.

“She is amazing and she really knows the game,” Peery said. “She’s great with the girls and she’s such a great resource to go to because she was such a great player, but she also shows them how to play and demonstrates a lot of stuff for us.”