Newcomers, familiar faces in championships

Shady Side Academy had a nice scrimmage against Mt. Lebanon last weekend to get itself ready for the WPIAL Class 1A playoffs.

“I tried to reach out to other teams and, for good reason, lots of teams don’t want to scrimmage,” Shady Side Academy coach Betsy Gorse said. “Who wants to wake up at 6:30 a.m. to go out in the rain, but the rain held off and it turned out to be a really great morning.”

For the Bulldogs, the scrimmage wasn’t a luxury. It was essential.

As there were only four teams in the classification, all four were slated to qualify for the postseason with the order of finish being the seeding. Shady Side Academy was originally projected to play Winchester Thurston, but the Bears were unable to participate in the tournament, which gave the Bulldogs a bye into the championship match slated for 3 p.m. Saturday at Washington & Jefferson.

It also meant that Shady Side Academy would have had to go more than a week without a match had it not played the Blue Devils.

“It was a really exciting game to watch and I really appreciate Lebo coming out at 11 o’clock on a Saturday morning,” Gorse said. “For the coaches and the players to give up their Saturday morning was phenomenal and it gave us one more chance to get good competition because we’re not going to get a game in before next Saturday.”

Preparing for the WPIAL finals is routine for Shady Side Academy, which will be making its 11th consecutive finals appearance. The Bulldogs are 6-4 in their previous 10 championship matches, all against Ellis School.

This year, however, the longstanding championship battle between Ellis School and Shady Side Academy won’t take place after Aquinas Academy pulled off a 1- 0 victory against the Tigers to earn its first title berth.

Shady Side Academy already defeated Aquinas Academy three times during the regular season, but none of the matches were blowouts. In fact, the Bulldogs won all three by one goal, which means the play in net of all-WPIAL goalkeeper Thea Conomikes will be of the utmost importance.

Shady Side Academy was 3-1 in one-goal games this season. All three wins were against Aquinas Academy, while the loss was to Pine-Richland, 2-1, in a non-conference match.

“We have to keep working hard on the defense and working on shutting down the other team’s attack,” Gorse said. “Shutting down the team is something we’re going to work on so that we can have that solid game on both ends.”

Class 2A

There have been quite a few years where Penn-Trafford has had to go through a bye to get to the finals. This wasn’t one of them. This time around, fourthseeded Latrobe gave the Warriors all they could handle in Tuesday’s semifinal, but the defense shut down the Wildcats attack and Delaney Shusko scored the only goal of the game in the first quarter in a 1-0 PennTrafford victory.

Penn- Trafford is no stranger to the final match. Far from it. The Warriors are the five-time reigning Class 2A champions and have an outstanding attack led by sophomore Ava Hershberger, who is closing in on 30 goals this season.

Penn-Trafford will take on a Fox Chapel squad at 5 p.m. Saturday at W&J that has not allowed a goal in two previous meetings. The Warriors defeated the Foxes, 1-0, in their first meeting and 2-0 in the second.

Penn-Trafford also defeated Fox Chapel, 2-1, on the Foxes home field in the 2020 championship match.

Class 3A

North Allegheny has not won a WPIAL field hockey title since 2014 and has not even played in the final since losing to Pine-Richland, 4-0, in 2017.

But after a 4-1 victory against No. 3 Hempfield, the Tigers are back in the finals at 7 p.m. Saturday at W&J.

And what else would they get but a rematch of the 2017 final with Pine-Richland.

This one might appear to be an easy win for the Rams, who have outscored their opponents, 111-5, including its 2- 1 victory against Peters Township in the semifinals. But North Allegheny scored in both of its section matches against the Rams and lost only by 31 and 2-1 scores.