South Park looking to pick up where it left off last year
It would be difficult to argue that South Park had an outstanding season in 2021.
It just wasn’t a championship season.
And there was nothing wrong with that.
“I think when you look at it, it was an unfortunate ending given our record,” South Park coach Jon Cantwell said. “But I think when you look at the youth we had on the team, we were pleasantly surprised to be there.”
Considering the tradition at South Park, which won its most recent WPIAL Class 2A title in 2014 and won state championships in 2005 and 2006, losing a 1-0 heartbreaker to North Catholic in the WPIAL quarterfinals could elicit a different reaction. But this wasn’t a senior- laden squad in search of closing out careers with gold medals, but a young squad still earning to prove itself.
“If you had told me in August that we would get to the WPIAL quarters, we’d have been happy with that,” Cantwell said. “We knew we were going to have to fill [up to] eight starting positions, so to see that group come together kind of got lost in that abrupt ending against North Catholic.”
This year, however, South Park won’t be satisfied with just making the WPIAL playoffs. The Eagles want to make some noise when they get there.
“We want to pick up where we left off and we’re fortunate that we’ve got some depth,” Cantwell said. “I’m pretty confident in No. 1 to No. 18 and that they can contribute at a high level.”
South Park returns a pair of all-section selections in sophomore defender Ryan Ellis and junior attacking midfielder Cam Loveland. The Eagles sophomore class is especially strong behind Ellis with forwards Danny Battista and Ryan Wesolowski.
Their juniors aren’t slouches either with returning starters Kaiden Fischer, Jack Ozimek and Colin Kinevy locked in place.
This group had a lot to build on.
South Park did not lose a match last season until it faced North Catholic in the postseason. In their seasonopening 19-game winning streak, the Eagles posted 14 shutouts, gave up just five goals and only surrendered six in 20 contests, a 0.30 GAA.
Not surprisingly, they’ve also improved from last year to 2022.
“It’s great to have those guys play all those high-level games last year to come back and build off of that,” Cantwell said. “Hopefully when we revisit that North Catholic game, they’ll see what we did well and the mistakes we made, so we can learn from that experience.”
Peters Township
When the PIAA biennial realignment was announced last year, Peters Township was firmly ensconced in Class 3A.
But the Indians had no intention of staying there.
“I think that our program is worthy of it and we wanted to play at the highest level of competition,” Peters Township coach Bobby Dyer said. “That is no shot at anybody in Triple, Double or Single- A. But we just thought that’s where we belonged and that our numbers would go up, so why go down for two years.”
It’s not like Peters Township hasn’t been competitive in the highest classification. Last season, the Indians lost
to state runner-up Seneca Valley in the WPIAL Class 4A final and in the PIAA semifinals.
But getting back to those two games will be a challenge.
“There’s been a really big turnover from last year to this year,” Dyer said. “But we know that teams look to play Peters Township, we get other teams’ best shot. If we can learn from that, we’ll be in the playoff picture at the end of it.”
Peters Township returns senior midfielder Mason Lewis and senior defender Connor Hoye to anchor the team up top andon the backside.
“I think they’ll pick up some of that slack from what we lost last year,” Dyer said. “Those guys will do pretty well.”
Peters Township also got some bad news to start the season when junior midfielder Nathan Froelich broke his ankle and, as a result, will miss a significant portion of the season. He was attempting a comeback after missing the 2021 campaign with a torn anterior cruciate ligament.
But there is hope that he will be able to return late in the season.
Sewickley Academy
Sewickley Academy may have been the No. 3 seed in the WPIAL Class 1A tournament last year, but the Panthers, who were upset by No. 11 Riverside in the quarterfinals, were still a relatively young team.
Not anymore.
“The team this year is more experienced,” Sewickley Academy coach Alessandro Moreira said. “We only lost four seniors from last year, so this year the team will be strong(er).”
Sewickley Academy returns its two top goal scorers from last year in senior forwards Michael DiSantis and Hudson Colleti, as well as allsection midfielder in junior Adin Zorn. Having an extra year of maturity will only help the Panthers as they seek their first title since 2016.
“They’re much more mature this year, more experienced and have been playing together so long,” Moreira said. “This season will be a great season for us.”
Since Sewickley Academy hasn’t made it into the finals since its last title, the team is keeping its expectations in check.
“We just want to make the playoffs and then look at a WPIAL championship,” Moreira said. “We need to improve on defense because that was where we lost three starters from last year.”