A-K Valley football notebook: Former Valley star Pryor to be grand marshal for homecoming parade

By: Michael Love
Saturday, September 20, 2025 | 4:14 PM

Former Valley athletic standout Benjy Pryor will be the grand marshal of the third annual Willie Thrower Homecoming Parade on Thursday night in Arnold and New Kensington.

The parade will begin at 6 p.m. in the 1800 block of Fifth Avenue in Arnold and proceed to the corner of Fifth and 10th streets in New Kensington. After that, festivities move to Valley High School, where games, food and a bonfire will be featured.

Pryor, a 1977 Valley graduate, was the first person to start in the original Sonny Vaccaro Pittsburgh Roundball Classic and the Big 33 football game. After a stellar career at Pitt, where he played tight end on back-to-back 11-1 football teams, he turned to education after injuries derailed a potential NFL career. He most recently served as vice principal of Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Greenbelt, Md.

The New Kensington-Arnold School District renamed the homecoming parade to commemorate the 70th anniversary of Thrower becoming the first Black quarterback to take a snap in an NFL game in 1953 while playing for the Chicago Bears.

Valley hosts undefeated Freeport on Friday.

Raiders run to record

Riverview set a new single-game scoring mark with Friday’s 64-14 victory at Springdale.

The old record was 61 points set in Week 5 of 1997 with a 61-19 victory over Serra Catholic.

The Raiders improved to 3-2 overall and evened their Eastern Conference record at 1-1. They got back in the win column after consecutive losses to Cornell and Leechburg.

Riverview led Springdale, 21-0, after the first quarter and 50-0 at halftime on the strength of a pair of touchdown runs — 20 and 39 yards — from Kaden Levy; TD rushes of 2 and 32 yards from Max Kratt; a 26-yard run from Don Williams; a 51-yard scamper from Rio Stotts; and a 10-yard run from Miles Duncan.

The Raiders host Greensburg Central Catholic on Saturday at Riverside Park in Oakmont.

Armstrong was strong

Friday marked the first time in four years that all four WPIAL teams from Armstrong County won their games on the same night.

Freeport defeated Burrell, 34-7; Leechburg knocked off Jeannette, 36-27; Apollo-Ridge topped Shady Side Academy, 22-14; and Armstrong edged Latrobe, 17-14, on a 23-yard field goal by Daniel Pearson with 3 seconds left in the game.

On Week 5 in 2021, Freeport defeated Valley, Apollo-Ridge topped Summit Academy, Leechburg beat Springdale and Armstrong got the better of Knoch.

Andrasy does it again

Leechburg won its fourth in a row Friday and improved to 2-0 in the Eastern Conference

The Blue Devils recorded more than 40 rushing attempts and collected 306 yards on the ground in the home win over rival Jeannette.

Senior Timmy Andrasy had 37 of those rushes and finished with 257 yards and four touchdowns.

He bookended his evening with a 65-yard scamper that opened the scoring for Leechburg in the first quarter and a 3-yard run that extended its lead to the eventual final score, 36-27, with 3:58 remaining in the fourth quarter.

Andrasy is one of the top rushers in the WPIAL through five games with 948 yards and 17 touchdowns on 135 carries.

Leechburg hopes to keep rolling Friday at Springdale.

Vikings rally

Apollo-Ridge’s winning touchdown with 4:09 left in Friday’s Allegheny Conference opener against Shady Side Academy featured a single-wing formation with a loaded left side of the line.

Senior Jaden McCray took the snap and went in untouched from 3 yards to pull the Vikings to within one.

It worked so well that A-R decided to go for 2 and the lead with the same play. McCray again scored to put the Vikings up for good.

McCray then helped seal the win with a 23-yard touchdown run. His three rushing TDs gives him five through five games.

The run game paced the A-R offense with 200 yards on 42 carries. McCray had seven of those attempts for 37 yards. Sophomore Preston Clemons collected a team-best 79 yards on 10 carries.

The Vikings (3-2) have won two in a row after a two-game skid (Jeannette, Greensburg Central Catholic) and hope to keep it going this week with a rare Saturday night game at conference foe Our Lady of the Sacred Heart (2-3, 1-1).

Michael Love is a TribLive reporter covering sports in the Alle-Kiski Valley and the eastern suburbs of Pittsburgh. A Clearfield native and a graduate of Westminster (Pa.), he joined the Trib in 2002 after spending five years at the Clearfield Progress. He can be reached at mlove@triblive.com.

Tags: Apollo-Ridge, Armstrong, Freeport, Leechburg, Riverview, Springdale, Valley