Football Anyone? WPIAL Football 2015 Alignment/Schedules Released

By: Bruce Markey
Thursday, January 22, 2015 | 6:07 PM

The High School football season is only 224 days away! Don’t laugh; it will be here before you know it.  With that being said, this week the WPIAL released their football schedules for the upcoming 2015 season.  The WPIAL was forced to make four realignment changes due to the upcoming merger between Ford City and Kittanning High Schools, which is forming Armstrong High School starting this fall.  

Those four changes included shakeups in Class AAA and Class AA.  In Class AAA, Yough was moved from the Greater Allegheny Conference to the Big Nine Conference (which now has ten teams) While the newly formed Armstrong High School will compete in the Greater Allegheny Conference replacing Yough.  Meanwhile in Class AA, because of the Ford City and Kittanning merger, the Allegheny Conference lost two teams.  That forced the WPIAL to move Summit Academy from the Midwestern Athletic Conference to the Allegheny Conference and Quaker Valley out of the Century Conference into the Midwestern Athletic Conference.  Because of that, the WPIAL had to do some schedule changes and create new schedules for Armstrong, Quaker Valley, Summit Academy and Yough. 

The most affected by the scheduling changes were the teams in the Allegheny Conference.  While majority of the teams in the WPIAL next season will be playing the second year of their schedule cycle (from the 2014 realignment).  Teams playing in the Allegheny Conference will have a total revamped schedule for 2015, due to the fact that the conference lost two teams from last season.  Summit Academy will inherit Ford City’s 2014 schedule and will play at the reverse locations from last season.  Quaker Valley leaving the Century Conference leaves that conference now with only nine teams, creating an open date. That open date will be filled by a non conference cross schedule with the Allegheny Conference.  Quaker Valley now in the Midwestern Athletic Conference in replace of Summit Academy, will play Summit’s 2014 schedule and will also play the reverse locations from last season. 

Another interesting affect from the merger of Ford City and Kittanning is that now the WPIAL has an odd number of football teams (123).  With that odd number, the WPIAL has created a non conference cross schedule with the City League for the teams playing in Class AAA’s Greater Allegheny Conference.  In 2014, the Greater Allegheny had a non conference cross schedule with the Big Nine. With Yough moving to the Big Nine, that now makes it a ten team conference, having it not needing to schedule a non conference game.  Teams in the Greater Allegheny will now have a non conference cross schedule with a team from the City League in 2015. 

Armstrong’s inaugural schedule was made up by Yough’s 2014 Schedule (but will play in reverse locations) while Yough’s 2015 schedule was created by the Big Nine conference open dates from the 2014 schedule.  For Example, Albert Gallatin had a non conference game week one of last season so Yough plays Albert Gallatin week one of the 2015 season. 

Tim O’Malley the Executive Director for the WPIAL said that realigning and making changes to schedules mid cycle is a rare occurrence.  Teams and conferences in Class AAAA and Class A were at all not affected.  Class AAA’s Parkway conference and Class AA’s Interstate conference were too not affected by the four changes.  For the teams and conferences not affected, they will play the same schedule that they played in 2014, just at the opposite site from last season. 

The 2015 High School football season kicks off on Friday September 4th.

2015 WPIAL FOOTBALL SCHEDULES: