North Allegheny has experience in putting bye week to good use

By: John Grupp
Saturday, October 25, 2025 | 11:01 AM

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North Allegheny coach Art Walker is getting better at byes.

For the fourth consecutive season, the Tigers — and the rest of the WPIAL Class 6A bracket — will have a bye week to prepare for their playoff opener, and Walker has grown more comfortable with the atypical schedule.

“When this all started, it was a process to figure it out,” Walker said. “I would say the first time we did OK with it. After that, we made a lot of changes, and the last couple of years, we really think we have a good handle on how to handle that week.”

While the WPIAL postseason gets underway Friday at football stadiums across Western Pennsylvania, the four Class 6A playoff teams will be biding their time until the playoffs kick off the first week of November.

North Allegheny (7-2, 4-1), which was scheduled to travel to Seneca Valley on Oct. 24 in the regular-season finale, has secured the No. 2 seed and will host the Mt. Lebanon-Norwin winner Nov. 7 in the semifinals.

Since 2021, the Class 6A bracket has started a week later than the rest of the WPIAL, a move necessitated by an abbreviated four-team field.

Walker said his approach to the two-week gap involves experimenting with different methods. The goal is to keep the players ready, but also rest them and make sure “it’s peak performance come playoff game.”

“There are some different things to consider,” Walker said. “But I would say it’s trial and error and relying on experiences we’ve had in the past.”

When the new WPIAL Class 6A format was installed four years ago, Walker and his staff reached out to college and high school programs that had been in a similar situation “to get a little bit of a blueprint.”

But experience ended up being the most valuable lesson.

“Really,” Walker said, “I just think you’ve got to go through it.”

The Tigers treat the bye week like a regular game week, but with practices toned down a bit.

“We try to keep it as normal as possible,” junior quarterback Brady Brinkley said. “The bye week practices are the same. But, physically, they are not as hard on our bodies. We will limit the practice to keep it safe and give the kids the rest that they need.”

On the bye week Friday, when the Tigers would typically be playing, the practice is ramped up to simulate the emotions and demands of a game night.

“We have a really tough workout that day,” Brinkley said. “That puts us through that endurance and adrenaline rush we would normally have in a game.”

Said Walker: “We’ve got to put work in on Friday because that’s typically when the players are exerting the most energy.”

Two weeks to prepare for a playoff game isn’t typical. In Walker’s first 17 seasons at North Allegheny, the Tigers had a “bye week” twice. In 2018, the Tigers earned a bye in the six-team Class 6A field, and, in 2020, Hempfield canceled the regular-season finale because of covid, giving North Allegheny an extra week to prepare.

Now, the Tigers have two weeks to get ready for a team they have already met in the regular season. This will be the ninth time in 10 seasons that North Allegheny’s opening playoff opponent is a regular-season rematch. The only outlier was 2020, when the regular-season game with Seneca Valley was canceled because of covid.

Walker said familiarity with the other team doesn’t change a lot in terms of preparation.

“I think it’s more about your team than the opponent,” he said. “The prior game is something you use as a guideline and a gauge, but it may not be the only thing you are working with. Teams evolve. They may have changed, and same with us.”

Tags: North Allegheny