George Guido: Have teams that shared a home field ever won WPIAL titles in the same season?

By: George Guido
Thursday, November 18, 2021 | 11:45 AM

For those who remember the American Top 40 radio show, here’s a Casey Kasem-like question for WPIAL football.

Moon and Our Lady of the Sacred Heart both play home games at Moon Tiger Stadium, and both are still alive in the WPIAL playoffs. Have there ever been two WPIAL football champions who have played home games at the same facility during the same season?

Looking back through the archives, it appears the closest it’s ever come was in 1946. That season, Class AA champion Springdale played its home games at Tarentum’s Dreshar Stadium while Veterans Memorial Field in Springdale was undergoing renovations.

Also in 1946, Class A champ East Deer played several home games at Dreshar when the Bucks were expecting big crowds. Primarily, East Deer home games were played at Creighton Field, which was located across Freeport Road where the high school was.

The former East Deer High School is now the East Deer Personal Care Home.

As for Moon and OLSH, both are a step away from WPIAL title games, and the Tigers and Chargers will be in action in Friday’s semifinal round along Route 19.

Class 5A Moon will play Penn Hills at North Allegheny’s Newman Stadium while OLSH, a big upset winner over Class A top seed Clairton last week, will play Rochester at Martorelli Stadium in West View.

But back to Springdale. When the Dynamos won the WPIAL title in 1973, Springdale also used Dreshar Stadium for its home games while Veterans Field was being renovated.

Today, Dreshar Stadium has been reconfigured for Little League baseball. It was named after John Dreshar, who coached Tarentum High School to the 1940 WPIAL football title and died of a brain tumor less than a year later.

Daylight saving time

Now that we’ve survived moving the clocks back an hour last week to mark the end of daylight saving time, several politicians are proposing to either make DST permanent or to stay on standard time all year long.

Not having daylight saving time would have an effect on WPIAL baseball and other early spring activities.

For instance, sunset in the Pittsburgh region March 28, 2022, the first day of the WPIAL section baseball season, is 7:16 p.m. Without DST, you’re looking at a 6:16 sunset.

It might be hard to get seven innings in before darkness started to set in for games that start at 4 p.m. at unlighted fields.

Schools might have to move up game times to 3:30 or even 3:15 to get the games in, meaning that students from the away teams would have to be dismissed from school even earlier.

Track meets at unlighted fields such as Riverview and Valley might also have their start times adjusted.

It can be guaranteed principals wouldn’t be happy.

Thus far, such proposals never have gained traction, but who knows what the future might bring?