George Guido: New turf ready to go at Valley’s Memorial Stadium

By: George Guido
Tuesday, November 26, 2019 | 4:47 PM

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The new artificial turf is down and ready to go at Valley’s Memorial Stadium.

Workers last week installed the turf from large rolls, much like carpeting.

The two-tone green turf will replace the ersatz surface that was installed in 2008. The numbers and hash marks were sewn in over the weekend, even though there was a problem with needles breaking last week during the cold spell.

It is part of an athletic facilities upgrade at Valley that includes a new track oval, baseball batting cages and dugouts. Part of the baseball costs will be provided by a $10,000 anonymous donation to baseball coach Jim Basilone, according to school district officials.

Allegheny uprising

While the Allegheny Conference was once the province of the Alle-Kiski Valley, addition of classifications plus enrollment changes have expanded the geographic footprint of the conference.

With that in mind, when Avonworth defeated Washington for the WPIAL Class 2A title Saturday, it followed Steel Valley’s 2018 WPIAL championship. It marked the first time Allegheny Conference teams won back-to-back WPIAL titles since Richland did it in 1969-70.

Before that, Burrell won back-to-back titles in 1967-68. The conference, then known as the Allegheny Interscholastic Conference, was so large it contained schools in the old Class A and Class B formats.

Leechburg won the “A” title in 1965, dropped to “B” the following season and earned another crown there.

From 1960-75, at least one AIC team reached the WPIAL title game.

Under the WPIAL reorganization of 1973, Class B became known as “A” and Class A was rechristened “AA.”

Helmet pounding

The ugly helmet-pounding incident in Cleveland brought to mind a similarly ugly incident years ago at Oakmont’s Riverside Park.

On Oct. 18, 1980, Riverview held a late, 14-6 lead over Duquesne in an Eastern Conference game. But instead of taking a knee and running out the clock, Raiders coach Chuck Wagner called timeout to attempted to score more points.

Riverview wanted to win by at least 10 points in order to accumulate the maximum amount of tiebreaker points in the margin of victory criteria.

Duquesne took umbrage at Riverview’s attempt to widen the final spread. After the game, a Duquesne player pounded a Riverview player with his helmet in an incident that was caught on tape. Away from the camera, a Riverview band member was pounded by a helmet from another player and was hospitalized at St. Margaret’s overnight.

The WPIAL had a hearing within two weeks of the incident and suspended three Duquesne players from athletics for the remainder of the school year.

Turns out, Wagner knew what he was talking about. The Raiders defeated Clairton, 22-15, in the season finale to finish tied with Serra Catholic and Clairton atop the conference with 6-1 records. But because Riverview lost to Clairton by more than 10, it needed to defeat the Bears by more than 10.

That’s why they were trying for those extra points against Duquesne.

Tags: Burrell, Leechburg, Riverview, Valley