Quips get 2 more football transfers
Aliquippa, slated to play in Class 5A next season, has now picked up 4 newbies in past few months
Two more talented underclassmen in WPIAL football have transferred to Aliquippa.
The Post- Gazette has learned that lineman Jamar Allen left North Hills and started classes at Aliquippa this week. Allen is a 6-foot-1, 300-pound sophomore who was a first-team all-conference selection in Class 5A this past season and has a scholarship offer from Temple.
Also, sophomore linebacker J.J. Work left Central Valley and transferred to Aliquippa. Work started this past season and part of his freshman year at Central Valley. He was a secondteam all-conference selection as a sophomore in Class 4A.
Allen and Work are two of four freshmen or sophomores who have transferred to Aliquippa in recent months. The other two are freshman defensive back Larry Moon and freshman running back Sa’Nir Brooks, who both transferred from Central Catholic to Aliquippa. Moon is the most heavily recruited freshman in the WPIAL, with scholarship offers already from a number of major colleges, including Pitt, Penn State, West Virginia, USC and Tennessee.
The transfers are noteworthy because of Aliquippa’s plight of being bumped up from Class 4A to Class 5A for the 2024 season under the PIAA’s competitive-balance rule and the competition classification formula. Football teams can be bumped up in classification if they go far in the postseason two years in a row and have at least three transfers over those two years. Aliquippa, a perennial WPIAL power, has won the past two WPIAL Class 4A championships and one state title and also has a record 20 WPIAL titles.
Due to the competitive-balance rule, Aliquippa was bumped up from Class 3A to Class 4A in 2020. The Quips, who years ago voluntarily played up in Class 3A, were supposed to be bumped up from Class 4A to Class 5A in 2022, but the school won an appeal with the PIAA and stayed in Class 4A.
Aliquippa does not feel it should be bumped up to Class 5A this time because the team had five transfers during the past two years that had virtually no impact on the team. Aliquippa lost an appeal to the PIAA this time, and the PIAA ruled the Quips would be Class 5A next season. Both Aliquippa superintendent Phillip Woods and coach Mike Warfield have said the school district plans to take its case to court. That has not happened yet, but Woods said Friday in a text message, “Our plans have not changed.” The WPIAL came out with new conference alignments a few weeks ago and has Aliquippa in Class 5A.
“Our grievance is with the application and addendums of the competition formula from its inception as it relates to the Aliquippa School District,” Woods said. “A few students will not change our enrollment classification, nor will it change health and safety concerns.”
Warfield had said in February that Moon and Brooks were simply coming back to
Aliquippa. Due to a family situation, they live together in Aliquippa. But Moon and Brooks have bounced around schools the past few years. Central Valley coach Mark Lyons said Moon and Brooks played for
Aliquippa’s junior- high team as seventh-graders and then transferred to Central Valley and played for Central Valley’s junior- high team as eighth-graders. Both then transferred to Central Catholic as ninth-graders, then transferred back to Aliquippa.
“We can’t control people coming and going,” Warfield said last month. “What do you want me to do? Tell them not to come? They’re from Aliquippa.”
As for Allen, he came to North Hills in eighth grade and attended Pittsburgh Public Schools before that. Lyons said Work came to Central Valley from Ohio at some point in his eighthgrade year.
But Moon, Brooks, Allen and Work must be cleared by the WPIAL yet to be eligible next season. The WPIAL has not received any transfer paperwork yet from Aliquippa. Administrators at Central Valley and North Hills also have not yet “signed off” on the transfers.
According to PIAA rules, Allen and Work will not be eligible for at least the playoffs because an athlete who transfers after their sophomore season is ineligible for the playoffs at his next school unless they meet one of the PIAA’s exceptions.
Lyons commented that transfers are becoming a problem in high school sports.
“High school kids are going to emulate what’s going on in college, and right now, these kids are acting like there’s a high school transfer portal,” Lyons said. “It used to be that you would be honored if you were a young player and got a letter in the mail from Pitt or Penn State that says we are interested in you, come to our camp and you’re a future prospect. But that’s not good enough for high school kids now. If they aren’t getting scholarship offers as freshmen, they feel they need to go somewhere else.
“Have we benefitted from transfers in the past [at Central Valley]? Yes. I’m not naïve. But right now, kids are looking to go to schools because they think they’ll get scholarship offers. To me, that’s a red flag. The [Matt Sieg] kid from Fort Cherry is a great example. He’s at a small school, but if you’re good enough, they’ll find you nowadays. He has scholarship offers. I’m not knocking Central Catholic, but not everyone has to go to Central Catholic to get an offer.”
More transfer news
Colt Sprankle showed promise as a sophomore quarterback at Armstrong last season. In a little more than four games, he threw for 761 yards and 11 touchdowns before a broken collarbone ended his season. Well, Sprankle will be in a Knoch uniform for the 2024 season.
Sprankle has transferred to Knoch. The WPIAL ruled him eligible for the regular season but ineligible for the postseason. Sprankle has appealed that ruling and will have a future hearing with the WPIAL board of directors.
N. Hills girls hoops
In only his second season as the girls basketball coach at North Hills, Tony Grenek guided the Indians to a section title and the school’s first playoff win in 35 years. But Grenek has resigned as coach.
“The only reason is family,” Grenek said. “I want to see my [seventh-grade] son do his thing and my [sophomore] daughter do her things. It’s just stuff I don’t want to miss at this time. It has nothing to do with anything else. The parents were great, the boosters were great and the administration was great.”
Grenek was Point Park’s women’s coach for 11 seasons before coming to North Hills but also saw time years ago as a high school coach.
“I have a renewed respect for high school coaches,” said Grenek, an academic counselor at Point Park. “When you work all day at a job and then go coach high school, that’s a lot.”