Could certainly cause some interesting changes in wrestling among other sports. I'm not sure the popular sentiment but as someone who grew up going to a public school with 50 kids in my graduating class I can say us playing private schools was wildly unfair and laughable. Playing against D1 commits from different states and cities because they're at a private school while we barely had a complete roster of whatever farm kids was always absurd.
PA House bill allowing PIAA to split public and private school playoffs.
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Could certainly cause some interesting changes in wrestling among other sports. I'm not sure the popular sentiment but as someone who grew up going to a public school with 50 kids in my graduating class I can say us playing private schools was wildly unfair and laughable. Playing against D1 commits from different states and cities because they're at a private school while we barely had a complete roster of whatever farm kids was always absurd.
The Bill will pass in the Senate and will be signed by the governor: At which point the PIAA will be fully exposed for the rigged and crooked organization that it is. The more press and media coverage...the better...
My guess is wrestling would have separate championships for duals but the individual tournament would stay the same. It's a bill geared towards team sports
Hopefully not. Teams like McCort that bring in kids from other states do not belong in the PIAA tournament with PA public schools.
I would have no problem with the individual portion staying the same. I actually would be ok if they made the individual post season one classification instead of two. I do however agree that boundary and non boundary schools should be split for the team portion. The question would then become, what is considered non boundary? If a team has more than x amount of transfers does it then become non boundary? You see that a ton in football, so would they make a blanket policy or would it be specifically sports based?
Totally agree on individual post season becoming one classification instead of two, also, can the PIAA plan to have the individual states occur the weekend between Division 1 college qualifiers and Division 1 NCAA's.
Most of the McCort kids who wrestled at '26 States lived their entire lives where McCort was the closest Catholic high school. BeCa, Faith Christian and even NDGP would have been better examples.
But this legislation isn't about wrestling but football and basketball where the private schools dominate.
Get the catholic school inntheir own league and championship or the can go with the other private schools. AA and AAA are fine seperated.
Where’s Jax from? I also used to work with a woman who moved her son to McCort from Georgia to wrestle. Wasn’t McCort on postseason suspension for recruiting? None of the others you mentioned were ever on postseason suspension for recruiting as far as I know.
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That's one heckuva qualifier -- it rules out both Forrest brothers (North Carolina), Silfies (New Hampshire), and O'Farrill (NE PA). Also Sam Herring (Mississippi). Also Shamus Regan (South Carolina), who transferred home before the season, possibly because he would've been ineligible for the postseason.
But it does leave in place Pensiero (Georgia), Gordon (Florida), and Rodriguez (Florida) at least. Possibly others. (Another upperweight trained at a New Jersey club but not sure of his residency.)
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Nobody did it like the late George Curry @ Berwick. Was told that there were some local employers that would hire a prospect's parent so they could move there and I remember reading how he once managed to assemble an OL where, tackle to tackle, all five lineman were in the 400 bench club-and how there were D1 colleges that couldn't make that claim.
I made a very specific statement. Your poor reading comprehension showed you the fool. Good job Skippy.
Yeah id definitely have to look at the roster but I dont think is is accurate.
I looked, 50% seems more accurate which is better than past years but yeah this is why.
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Bassets along with Miller would have been at Forest Hills if I'm not mistaken? I was told Jax Forrest was born in New York, and I was told that by a resident of New York who said he was their neighbor (no idea if that is true). Becahi had Ryan Anderson who was supposedly from/lived in New Jersey while wrestling for Becahi. No idea on where some guys are originally from that wrestle/wrestled for Faith Christian. NDGP most notably was probably Crookham. Also unsure on Bishop McDevitt. I was told years ago St Joes was going to be strong in the coming future but that hasn't really happened (although with the current rules it could in 1 offseason). The point to all of that is, this ruling and most people support of it, is not aimed at Bishop McCort. It is aimed at all schools who have the ability to bring in transfers with no penalty, while the majority of the public schools have to play by the rules. And what happens if a kid transfers to a public school and gets flagged? Nothing to the school usually, but the kid loses either a year of whatever sport, or misses the post season.
I'd also like to point out public schools are not innocent. A WPIAL football team Aliquppa, had to play in 4A while having 2A numbers due to "competitive balance" rules. There are also a few WPIAL wrestling teams who have skirted this rule more than a few times. Years ago, Canon Mac brough it Solomon Chishko from Penn Trafford, and his younger brother still wrestled for Penn Trafford. Also had Cody Wiercioch who wrestled his first 2 years at Charleroi.
I hope this passes the Senate, and I hope they make it as black and white as possible for all sports. Public schools - more than x amount of transfers, and you're in the non boundary class. Less than x amount, you can stay in your current classification. Private schools = non boundary.
I'd also like to point out public schools are not innocent. A WPIAL football team Aliquppa, had to play in 4A while having 2A numbers due to "competitive balance" rules. There are also a few WPIAL wrestling teams who have skirted this rule more than a few times. Years ago, Canon Mac brough it Solomon Chishko from Penn Trafford, and his younger brother still wrestled for Penn Trafford. Also had Cody Wiercioch who wrestled his first 2 years at Charleroi.
I hope this passes the Senate, and I hope they make it as black and white as possible for all sports. Public schools - more than x amount of transfers, and you're in the non boundary class. Less than x amount, you can stay in your current classification. Private schools = non boundary.
I'm betting the odds are 100-1 the PIAA never acts on this if it is passed.
I partied with the Berwick guys from the 1990 class after an All-Star football game. We had 7 kegs at my house and we kicked 6 by 7a.m.
Then they were taking the 7th keg as they were leaving. I told them to stop that was mine. Their response was? What am I going to do about it?
Well, I jumped into my buddies car and went to their party.
I remember that day! You called some of us and slapped your head with your sneaker and said, “that was my skull; I’m so wasted!”
Serious question. I follow local high school sports fairly closely. I don't know anything about the machinations of the PIAA. Why would they be opposed to this? What do they lose by doing it?
A lot of money spent on litigation from the private schools. One in central PA has already announced they're ready to sue.
This is the real reason for the legislation. PIAA was nearing its decision without the legislation, so it's not like they needed the bill except for political cover and to undercut potential lawsuits.
I'm curious about Canon Mac's two time state wrestling champions, Angelo Marino and George O'Korn along with three time state wrestling champion Manny Pihakis. From where did they transfer in?
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Here is PIAA Executive Director Mark Byers discussing House Bill 41 and Private and Public with us last week.
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@Coastal2 is banking on it being 51%, so his "most" stays intact.
How anyone can defend the McCort’s and Saint Joes Preps in this debate is mind boggling.
With this proposal SJP would now compete against other non-boundary schools so no reason to throw them into the mix to bolster your argument. Football doesn’t have an “individual” tournament, so SJP will compete against other like schools.
As far as McCort at the individuals, is someone going to tell me that Jax lived in NC during his time here? He moved here in 7th grade if I’m not mistaken. I look at my local program, we had a military kid move in before 9th grade a few years ago, probably 25% of the kids didn’t live in the school district before middle school because we are a desirable school district families like to move to - should these kids be unable to compete at states?
There are transfer rules in place that limit the ability for people to move in during or after 10th grade and compete in the postseason. Don’t tell me they don’t work pointing out the exception, because they do work an awful lot including with McCort kids. We just had a kid who grew up in our school district, wrestled in our youth program, went to private school for 1.5 years before coming back to our public school district where he and his family have lived his entire life to wrestle, and he was ineligible to compete in the postseason for a year - so, yeah, they work, perhaps a little too good.
The proposed bill will work just fine for wrestling and the dual championships will be separated as they should be. The individual championships should be open to all kids who meet the eligibility and residency requirements in place - of which most of the kids mentioned above do, and ones that didn’t were not able to compete.
This is good news and the continued complaining is just CSDS.
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Put all the private schools in one classification period. End of debate. As for wrestling schools, if they don’t like it, they can go compete at Prep Nationals.
Watering down a PA state medal or title like VA, FL, MO, etc. - you know, all those powerhouse wrestling states - is a take.
There is absolutely no reason we need to a third classification for a kid living in PA, going to a PIAA school, abiding by eligibility requirements. Unless you want to see the 3rd place finisher at the D-whatever AA regional have a better shot at getting to the top of the podium in Hershey.
I would hope wrestling is better than that. We should be looking to move to single classification for individuals if we fix the duals rather than the other way. I know logistically that isn’t happening, but in principle it should.
Fix the duals only to see the McCorts, Faith Christians, Becas continue to mop up at the individual tournament? No thanks. That does nothing to balance the competitive edge that schools that recruit have. If you don’t think that is good for the sport, then again, send all the privies to Prep Nationals like Wyoming, Blair, Archbishop Wood, and others do. There’s other options as well. If three classifications of PIAA are bad, then make two. One for non boundary schools and one for boundary schools.
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Archbishop Wood is a PIAA school. Their kids compete in your postseason, but they haven’t had any good enough in a while for you to get upset about. They used to compete in the national preps back in the last century along with a number of other Catholic schools in the Philly area.
No thank you. The other option you mention, sounds good in a message board post but has zero chance of being implemented. There are close to 500 schools that sponsor wrestling in the PIAA. Only 30 to 35 of them are non-boundary schools- religious or charter. Only a couple of them are the schools you that have your panties in a wad. Not happening.
It’s easy to throw stuff out there. Much harder to propose things that actually make sense and are workable.
I also think it makes the greatest wrestling state in the country much weaker if we start segregating wrestlers like Carter Starocci, Tyler Kasak, Nathan Desmond, Mike Labriola, Tom Bold, Darian Cruz, Bernie Brown, Bo Bassett, Melvin Miller, Kevin Darkus, etc. from the crown jewel of HS championships.
The way to fix this for wrestling is: one classification and no team score at individual states. Especially the latter part, which diffuses the real complaint, but good luck with that.
Of course, the problem with one classification is: less/late visibility for college recruiting. But two classifications is the absolute max. Even as-is, every year we have state champs who never pursue D1 programs, others who transfer to lower-division programs, and others who never start in college (and I'm not talking about Joe Sealey types either).