WPIAL board accepts executive director Scott Seltzer’s resignation, appoints replacement

By: Chris Harlan
Tuesday, October 21, 2025 | 4:26 PM

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The WPIAL will soon have a new administrator at the top.

The board on Tuesday accepted WPIAL executive director Scott Seltzer’s resignation and voted to promote chief operating officer Vince Sortino to the top spot. The move is effective Dec. 20.

“It’s just time to retire,” Seltzer said. “You know when you know.”

Seltzer, 58, a former assistant superintendent at Chartiers Valley, has worked as WPIAL executive director for three years. He’d previously served as a WPIAL board member for more than a decade. His stated mission was always to enforce the rules while striving to do so in a least harmful way.

“Since 2002, when I became an assistant principal at Frew Mill, a lot of my day is (spent) giving people bad news,” Seltzer said. “I try to do it in a respectful manner, as respectful as possible. Who’s eligible, who’s not eligible. ‘I’m sorry you missed a deadline.’ After a while, you’re tired of giving people bad news.”

Seltzer took over as executive director in 2022 when former director Amy Scheuneman resigned unexpectedly. He’d joined the WPIAL board in 2009 and was elected president seven years later.

Once a WPIAL athlete himself and later a teacher and coach, Seltzer provided stability to the league office in a time of change but said he never saw this as a long-term job.

“I never had any aspirations of that,” he said. “But I enjoy the people I work with. I enjoy the member schools and the student athletes. This allowed me to retire from education and still be a part of education.

“Really, I’m humbled by the experience because I get to sit in the same seat that Tim O’Malley sat in. He is, and will always be to me, the best executive director of the WPIAL.”

Sortino, 62, will become the league’s sixth full-time executive director after Charles “Ace” Heberling (1976-97), Larry Hanley (1997-06), O’Malley (2006-20), Scheuneman (2020-22) and Seltzer.

Sortino joined the WPIAL office in 2020 as assistant to the executive director under Scheuneman.

Previously, Sortino was a longtime athletic director and coach of various sports at Baldwin and later worked as AD at Dallastown in York County. His WPIAL contract as chief operating officer designated him as the eventual replacement for Seltzer.

“I’ll still be in the same seat in the same office, just with a different title,” Sortino said. “I’m excited about it. It’s sad to see Scott leave. I’ve known him for a very long time. He’s a great person and has really contributed to the league for years as a board member and now executive director.”

Sortino said the WPIAL will hire another administrator in the coming weeks to fill his current role. The league had only one full-time administrator overseeing the league for much of its history — the executive director — but Seltzer and Sortino split those duties when the WPIAL created the chief operating officer position in 2022.

“It worked well,” Sortino said, “because it hit on the strengths of both individuals.”

Seltzer agreed.

“I think Vince and I made a really good team while I was here,” said Seltzer, noting that having Sortino already in line for the job contractually made his decision to resign easier. “That’s helpful to me because now I know they’re not just stuck.”

A Lawrence County native, Seltzer is a graduate of Mohawk and Westminster, where he played football and won an NAIA national championship in 1988. His career in education started as a social studies teacher at Mohawk, where he also coached football, baseball and basketball and volunteered as a judge for track meets.

Seltzer climbed the ranks as a school administrator from his first position at Frew Mill School in New Castle, an institute for adjudicated youth. His resume included jobs as an assistant principal and principal at the middle and high school levels at Moon and Neshannock. He worked at Chartiers Valley for 12 years.

Seltzer said he’d be interested in staying connected to education as a school district consultant or interim administrator somewhere but had no immediate plans. He and his wife Sandra have three adult children: Alex, Matthew and Kaitlin, along with daughters-in-law Alyssa and Grace.

“I probably won’t do anything for a while,” Seltzer said. “But I don’t think I’ll be totally not working.”

The WPIAL developed a less contentious relationship with the PIAA during his tenure as board president and later executive director, which Seltzer said he believed was beneficial to the league. But in terms of his WPIAL legacy, Seltzer said he hadn’t thought much about that idea.

“Hopefully people think that when they called the office, I told them the truth,” Seltzer said. “That I’m an honest person, and whether you liked it or not, I didn’t lie to you.”

Chris Harlan is a TribLive reporter covering sports. He joined the Trib in 2009 after seven years as a reporter at the Beaver County Times. He can be reached at charlan@triblive.com.