Guido: A-K Valley football teams set to travel

By: HSSN Staff
Wednesday, January 17, 2018 | 1:13 PM

In 1959, the longest road trip for the undefeated Springdale Dynamos was to Hampton — a mere 14.7 miles from the school campus.

For the next two seasons, Alle-Kiski high school football teams will endure considerably more travel than during the era of three-classification football and neighboring schools.

But at second glance, it could have been much worse.

Teams in Class 3A, which we presume still will be called the Allegheny Conference, will be faced with some mighty long road trips. For instance, Deer Lakes and Uniontown are 67 miles apart, one mile more than Freeport and Uniontown.

Burrell also will face some distant opponents in the same conference like Mt. Pleasant and Yough. But the Bucs faced those same schools for much of the 1970s as members of the old Keystone Conference.

In fact, Burrell's first athletic director, Bob Haser, helped form the conference along with Yough coach John Bruno and several others.

Unfortunately, Bruno never saw the conference he helped form because he suffered a heart attack on the field in 1970 in a game against Brentwood.

Also, Elizabeth Forward coach Mike Collodi will be coaching against his alma mater over the next two seasons. He is a 2000 Burrell graduate.

Kiski Area, Fox Chapel and Armstrong will be in one Class 5A conference.

Plum will be in another 5A conference. The most distant rival will be Albert Gallatin, 61 miles away.

Highlands will remain in Class 4A with practically the same teams as the past two seasons except for Mars, which has moved to Class 5A, and Indiana. Beaver is now in the same conference as Highlands.

Springdale, Leechburg and Riverview still will compete in the Class A Eastern Conference, which stays the same except for Bishop Canevin moving out.

But an interesting situation exists in Class 2A where a conference will include Valley, Apollo-Ridge, Shady Side Academy and Summit.

Schedules are set to come out late this month. As part of the two-year enrollment cycle, teams a school plays this year will have the sites reversed in 2019.

Bubash dies

Bob Bubash, who began his baseball rise on the 1956 Har-Brack WPIAL championship team and later pitched in the Phillies chain for five years, died over the weekend at 77. Bubash was inducted into the Alle-Kiski Valley Sports Hall of Fame in 2010.

George Guido is a Valley News Dispatch scholastic sports correspondent. His column appears Wednesdays.

Tags: Armstrong, Burrell, Fox Chapel, Highlands, Kiski School, Leechburg, Riverview, Springdale