George Guido: Knoch, Highlands to be tested against No. 2 South Fayette

By: George Guido
Tuesday, October 1, 2019 | 4:07 PM

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In the Class 4A Northwest Conference, Knoch remains on the brink of WPIAL playoff qualification, and Highlands jumped into the playoff race with victories the last two weeks.

But both local teams, however, will have their work cut out over the next two weeks as the Knights and Golden Rams take on South Fayette.

The Lions (5-1 overall) are No. 2 in the TribHSSN rankings this week behind Thomas Jefferson. South Fayette’s only loss was in a Week Zero game against Upper St. Clair, a school that has made the WPIAL playoffs 32 of the past 33 seasons.

While South Fayette has long been a quality program, coach Joe Rossi has taken the school to dizzying heights in his 13 seasons at the helm.

Rossi’s teams have won 135 games during his South Fayette tenure with four WPIAL titles and one runner-up. The Lions have had eight — yes, eight — undefeated regular seasons under Rossi and nine conference titles.

Rossi’s first head coaching job was at Riverview from 2002-06, taking over for the late Jake Cappa.

Fighting with Route 28 construction constantly took its toll, and Rossi opted to stay closer to home, taking the South Fayette job.

South Fayette is one of the few Allegheny County school districts with increasing enrollment, thanks to the spillover from home construction related to jobs growth in the Pittsburgh International Airport vicinity.

The school jumped from Class 2A football to 4A when the PIAA went to six classifications in 2016. With the construction of the massive Southern Beltway through the school district, it’s not out of the question for South Fayette to jump to at least Class 5A in the foreseeable future.

Right now, Knoch’s magic number for making the playoffs is one. One Knights victory or a loss by Highlands or Blackhawk puts Knoch into the postseason.

Highlands is a ½-game behind Blackhawk for the fourth and final WPIAL spot from the conference and needs a victory at Montour Friday.

A 10 for Apollo-Ridge

Even with Apollo-Ridge being awarded a forfeit victory over Shady Side Academy last Friday, the Vikings received more good news.

The team will get 10 WPIAL tiebreaker points to use in the event tiebreaker criteria is needed to determine playoff standing.

Ordinarily, the standard football forfeit score is 1-0.

But since it was an Allegheny Conference game, the Vikings received 10 points and Shady Side was docked 10 points.

The third WPIAL tiebreaker is point differential. A team is awarded up to 10 points for the margin of victory and can lose up to 10 points with each conference loss.

Going into this week’s action, Apollo-Ridge is at +20 and Shady Side is at +10.

Apollo-Ridge is at Valley Friday while Shady Side hosts Summit Academy.

Hockey starts

Almost quietly, the PIHL season got underway Monday.

There will be five varsity teams representing the Alle-Kiski Valley this season with Plum in Class AA; Fox Chapel, Freeport and Kiski Area in Class A; and Burrell in Class B.

Highlands, Knoch and Deer Lakes will field junior varsity teams only.

The PIHL is not part of the PIAA. Instead, the PIHL is governed by USA Hockey rules and not the National Federation of State High School Associations.

Both governing bodies, however, have allowed the sticks to be lengthened to 65 inches, up from 63 inches. Blades can now be 12½ inches in length.

Goalkeepers can now have the widened portion of their sticks go to 28 inches in length from the heel and the length of the blade is maximized to 15½ inches.

The rationale behind this is that players are taller than ever, as are their sticks and equipment. A change in the maximum length of stick rule follows a similar change to other rules codes. It also would limit the potential waiver requests.