South Fayette taking sibling rivalry to heart
South Fayette hockey coach Matt Schwartz doesn’t just game-plan and come up with strategies to help the Lions win.
He also provides family counseling specializing in sibling rivalries.
And he wouldn’t want it any other way.
“It’s really cool because we’re a team of siblings which is really neat to see,” Schwartz said. “I can’t really say how great our locker room is or how much these kids are buying in and trying to get better every day and working their butts off, so it’s a good thing.”
South Fayette, which opened the season with three consecutive wins, also has three sets of brothers, including a set of twins, in the lineup. Senior goaltender Brandon Timmins and junior defenseman Dylan Timmins protect the backside, while freshman twins Jackson and Tyler Brandebura and brothers Trent, a senior and freshman brother Trevor Dalessandro, man the Lions top two scoring lines.
And, so far, it is working to perfection. Even though it wasn’t really by intent as some injuries forced them all together.
“Trent and Trevor really have good hockey sense even though Trevor is undersized because he’s a freshman, but he might have the highest hockey IQ on the ice,” Schwartz said. “Because of the age gap, this might be the first time they have played together. Trevor has stepped up in a big way for us.”
Trent and Trevor came into the week with two goals apiece to lead the team. Jackson and Tyler, meanwhile, have combined for three goals and five points.
“They really work well together and they have a little of the Sedin telepathy,” Schwartz said. “They read each other well and they know where each other is.”
That leaves the Timmins brothers and, though Dylan is scoreless in three games, that’s not his primary job. Brandon, meanwhile, is 2-00 with a 1.50 goals-against average and a .942 save percentage as he rotates between the pipes with Graydon Sarnowski and Allen Schrader.
Though there are plusses to having three sets of brothers working together, it can have some interesting drawbacks.
“There are times with both sets of [forward] brothers that we have to tell them to calm down because they get on each other a little bit,” Schwartz said. “If you had a mic on the bench, with some of the stuff that these guys are saying … yeah, I am a coach and counselor.”
Peters Township
Rick Tingle has been around the block long enough to know not to take one game, especially the first game of the season, out of context.
It’s a good thing, too. A less experienced person behind the bench might have lost it after Peters Township dropped an 8-1 game to PineRichland in the opener.
“It was a couple of things and we played with them, but we had a lot of new guys and some jitters and we really didn’t get as many preseason games as we would have wanted to,” Tingle said. “We had an early COVID issue and we only had one preseason game. That’s kind of been the trend the last two years, not being able to get in as many practices and preseason games as we have in the past.”
Even with the seven-goal loss, Peters Twonship has been able to rebound a bit with three consecutive victories and moved into second place behind North Allegheny in Class 3A coming into the week.
“We are looking OK and we’ve had some things that we need to address,” Tingle said. “We had a wide swing in goals-against from an eight-goal game to a couple of games just letting up one and a game where we gave up five, so we need to stabilize that piece of our game more than anything right now.”
Unlike many teams, Peters Township has to right the ship in a hurry.
Because of a scheduling quirk, the Indians will play 14 of its 20 games before the holiday break in December. The Indians only play two games in January and, as it gets prepared for the playoffs, will have just three games in February.