Don Rebel: District 12 continues decade of basketball dominance

By: Don Rebel
Thursday, March 21, 2019 | 1:12 PM

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It really has been a decade of dominance.

Since joining the PIAA, District 12 schools have left their mark on many sports, but none more impressive then what they have accomplished on the hardwood.

District 12 is made up of schools from the Philadelphia Public League and Philadelphia Catholic League.

The district was formed in 2003-04 when the Philly Public Schools became part of the PIAA.

Then, in the 2008-09 school year, the Philadelphia Catholic League became part of the PIAA and District 12.

District 12 has won 11 PIAA girls basketball championships, all of them coming in the last 10 years. Since 2009, the WPIAL is the only district to win more, having won 13 PIAA girls basketball championships.

But when you turn to the boys basketball state title picture, the pendulum swings big time to the district in the southeast part of the state.

From 2004-08, District 12 teams won only two PIAA boys basketball state titles thanks to the back-to-back championships for Philadelphia Prep in 2006 and ‘07.

But once the Philadelphia Catholic League became part of the PIAA, that’s when District 12 started hauling in the roundball gold.

Every year, District 12 has won multiple PIAA boys basketball crowns, with the exception of 2010 when only Neumann-Goretti was a state champ.

Since 2009, District 12 has won 28 boys basketball championships, including 4 of 6 a year ago and sweeping gold with four state title winners in 2015.

That is 28 of 42 championships (66 percent) won by teams from District 12. In that same time frame, WPIAL boys hoops teams have won state gold seven times.

Of those 28 District 12 titles, 22 have been won by private or non-boundary schools.

Those numbers are part of the reason there has been a major push from administrators across the state for separate boundary and non-boundary school state tournaments.

As for this year, only Archbishop Carroll in Class 5A qualified for the PIAA finals from District 12 on the girls’ side.

However, five District 12 boys’ teams are headed to Hershey, including an all-District 12 Class 4A championship game pitting Monsignor Bonner-Archbishop Prendergast Catholic against Imhotep Charter on Thursday night.