Remember When?: Section changes upset area cage coaches

By JEFF OLIVER

Sports Writer

The WPIAL’s new alignment for boys and girls basketball didn’t make the board any new friends.

Phil Pergola, Jo Jo Salvino and Mickey Hornack, head basketball coaches at Ringgold, Monessen and Charleroi, respectively, all voiced their displeasure with the WPIAL over the changes.

All three schools, as well as other area schools, will be affected by the alignment.

The biggest change, locally, came in the boys dual Class AA-A section which includes Charleroi, Monessen, Mon Valley Catholic and Frazier. After playing in a section the past two seasons which had only two Class AA schools (Frazier and Charleroi) and five A schools, the WPIAL realigned the group to give it four AA and only two A schools.

Moved out of the revamped Sec. 14 are A schools Duquesne and Clairton (to Sec. 16) and California (to Sec. 17). In are AA schools Bentworth and Beth-Center. 

That leaves just Monessen and MVC as the only A schools joining AA schools Charleroi, Frazier, Beth-Center and Bentworth. Two AA teams and one A team will go to the playoffs.

“I don’t like it at all,” said Salvino. “They took Duquesne and Clairton, two schools we had a great rivalry with, and moved them out. We had the best A section in the WPIAL and they just took it apart. There were great teams, great games.

“Charleroi was one of two AA schools in the section for two years and they didn’t like it. Now the WPIAL does it to us,” said Salvino. “I don’t know why they do these things without asking anyone. They don’t consider the schools, the coaches or the rivalries. If they had to do something with our section, all they had to do was take out one A school and put in a AA school. But they took the whole thing apart.”

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