Scholastic Notebook – 04/02/2016

By: HSSN Staff
Saturday, April 2, 2016 | 12:32 AM

The Pittsburgh Central Catholic football team won WPIAL and state titles this past season with a team that had five seniors sign with NCAA Division I-A colleges.

Those talented players will never again wear the Vikings blue and gold, but Central Catholic is a must-stop for college recruiters again.

It has become apparent that Central Catholic’s 2017 team will again be loaded with another handful of seniors who will play major-college football.

Two of the top seniors-to-be made verbal commitments to Notre Dame within a day of each other recently. Linebacker David Adams announced March 20 he had accepted a Notre Dame scholarship. The next day, defensive lineman Kurt Hinish went on KDKA television and announced he also had accepted a scholarship to Notre Dame. Hinish and Adams are close friends and had talked about going to the same school.

Adams is highly-touted, rated as one of the top 5 inside linebackers in the country in the class of 2017 by some scouting services. Rivals.com ranks him a four-star player. Penn State and Stanford were his other top choices, but he had loads of other offers, including ones from Michigan State, Florida and LSU.

Hinish also is talented and rated a three-star prospect by Rivals.com. e also had a number of scholarship offers. Penn State, West Virginia and Mississippi were among the other schools to offer.

But there is more to this Central recruiting than Adams and Hinish. C.J. Thorpe is a big lineman who also has offers from schools across the country. Thorpe has not made a decision yet, but he recently visited Penn State and Michigan. Soon he plans to check out Alabama, Auburn and Georgia. They have all offered. Thorpe is rated a four star by Rivals.com.

But Central Catholic also has linebacker Tim Terry, who has offers from a few Mid-American Conference schools.

Lineman Jacob Hinish, cousin of Kurt, has an offer from Navy. More offers could be on the way for him.

There is also big lineman Jamain Stephens. The son of former Steelers Jamain Stephens, it is not known if the younger Stephens has offers. But he recently tweeted about a visit to Boston College.

Consider the aforementioned players, throw in some other talented players, and it’s easy to pick who should be ranked No. 1 for the first season of WPIAL 6A football.

Moon Shining Early

It is still early in the season, but it appears a team to watch in WPIAL baseball is Moon.

The Tigers were 4-0 after beating Ambridge, 12-5, on Thursday. Moon has a new coach this year in Todd Goble, but he knows a thing or two about winning. He was Quaker Valley’s coach the past three seasons and guided the Quakers to the WPIAL Class AA title game twice.

But the hot start is nothing new to the Tigers. The question is can they keep up the winning? Moon started 6-0 last year, but ended up only 12-6 and missed the WPIAL Class AAAA playoffs. Moon plays in ultra-competitive Section 1 against North Allegheny, Seneca Valley, North Hills, Butler and Pine-Richland.

Saunders Out at Montour

Will Saunders was the boys basketball coach at Montour for only two seasons, but Montour apparently saw enough. The school board opened Saunders’ position Thursday night.

Saunders took over at Montour for the 2014-15 season after Adam Kaufman left to take the Moon job. Montour was 9-14 last year, 7-5 in section and lost in the preliminary round of the WPIAL playoffs. Montour was 13-10 this season and again 7-5 in section. The Spartans won a preliminary-round playoff game before losing to New Castle, 78-39, in the first round of the Class AAA playoffs.

Saunders came to Montour from South Park. He also coached the Shady Side Academy boys and North Allegheny girls.

George at Ambridge

Terry George was hired as the new football coach at Ambridge in mid-March. George replaces Dan Bradley, who left to become the coach at OLSH. George was Ambridge’s coach once before in the 1990s. He also has head coaching experience at Carlynton, Cornell and West Allegheny. He became Canon-McMillan’s interim coach two seasons ago when Rod Coder resigned early in the season.

Legendary Coach Curry Dies

George Curry, the winningest coach in Pennsylvania high school football history, died Friday morning.

Curry was the longtime coach at Berwick High School. He had two stints at Berwick and still coached the Bulldogs last season. But Curry found out in the middle of last season that he had Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Curry also coached Lake Lehman before he went to Berwick the first time. After he left Berwick he coached for a few years at Wyoming Valley West before retiring. He came out of retirement to coach Berwick the past few seasons.

He finished with a record of 455-102-5 and won six state championships. Curry had to retire again after last season because of his health.

Tags: Ambridge