Welcome... and my two cents on the PIAA

Here it is... the debut of my new blog on high school sports in Mercer County, Pennsylvania.  Welcome one and all!

Recently the PIAA announced changes to the eligibility rules regarding transferred students.  A player who transfers schools due to changes in a parent/guardian's job status, marriage or a court order is eligible to play for their new school immediately.  If their sole purpose for the transfer was to play a sport, then unless there is a co-op agreement in place, then the player must sit out one season.  I have no clue as to what this means for foreign exchange students.

Also, it has come to light that there has been some debate going on for years on whether the PIAA should have separate tournaments for public and private schools.  The debate about this has been ongoing because public schools have combined for losing records to private schools in PIAA-sanctioned tournaments.  To settle this debate, individual districts should have policies in place to play only other public schools, and private schools should have similar policies to play only other private schools.

This coming season in football, Brandon Phillian will have some huge shoes to fill as he takes over the Wilmington Greyhounds football program following the retirement of Terry Verelli.  I believe that Brandon will do as good a job as Verelli did for all those years.  Having previously worked with him on basketball games on the radio, I feel that Brandon was a good choice to take over a successful football program.

Hickory football will be out to prove that last season's shocking collapse was a fluke.  If head coach Bill Brest did something similar to what Joe Paterno did in the late 1980s when Penn State had its first losing season under him, then Bill Brest needs to return to his head coaching roots and rekindle the spark that made the Hornets winners of six consecutive District X football championships.

In basketball, my friend Matt Durisko will be taking over as the head coach of the Sharpsville Blue Devils boys basketball program.  I feel that he is the perfect choice to lead the Blue Devils out of the desert starting this coming season.

Regarding football and this blog, this is a list of the 2018 high school football regular season games that I plan on blogging about:

24 August:  Grove City v. Fort LeBoeuf
31 August:  Sharon v. Hickory
7 September:  Slippery Rock v. Franklin
14 September:  Wilmington v. Lakeview
21 September:  Mercer v. Union City
28 September:  Lakeview v. Sharpsville
5 October:  Greenville v. Seneca
12 October:  Reynolds v. Farrell
19 October:  Lakeview v. Mercer
26 October:  Greenville v. Maplewood

For these games, I will be at the stadiums armed with my iPad, stylus and game program to jot down game notes that I will compile into blog entries about these games.

This blog is a new undertaking following my recent resignation from the radio station.  I plan on covering the same sports that I did when I was employed with the station.

I hope this blog will be a success for many years to come.