Are you ready for some football?
Welcome to the official forum on high school football for the 2018 season.
During the off-season let’s talk about players, recruiting news, teams and everything about high school football.
During the season each week let’s talk about match-ups and how teams did. Let us know what player(s) stood out each week.
881 Responses
Ken/Billy
To be accurate, Midd-West was in a CO-OP with EAST Juniata in the Tri-Valley League. EJ was AAAA because of the CO-OP. Most of the players on the EJ team were actually from the M-W school district so they should not have trouble generating interest for their own team. The other half of the story is that EJ will now not have a FB team and their players will play for Juniata which has always fielded a pretty decent team.
Neshaminy returnees starts with its QB from last year, Brody McAndrew (6′ 3″, 190 lb – last year). He was 136 of 232 in 2017 with 17 TDs against 4 INTs — he will be a junior this year (he’s very, very good and with another inch and a few more pounds expected he’ll have good size).
The receivers coming back include Zack Canimore, Cory Joyce and Oleh Manzyk who had 12 catches for 128 yards, 48 for 610 and 28 for 438 respectively last season (88 catches in total for just shy of 1,200 yards). They’re all good (and all seniors).
Running backs include the Hebron brothers (back as seniors — Vaughn’s kids) along with Henry Hill, who was a sophomore last year and looks to have potential (there are some other names too who were sophs and a freshmen in 2017).
The O line will see some new faces.
D wise they have Luke Hitchens along the line (6′ 2″, 210) with Bobby Buchys (6’4″, 210 – again, last year). Manzyk is all over the place on D but will probably be an LB or DE with Chris Majors (5′ 11″, 205 last year, Corey Majors younger brother, junior this year) another LB.
They have at least two of their DBs back (Joyce and Marcus Griffin who is another senior).
As it is, and skill-wise, they have what seems as everyone back except Joel Stills (RB and DB) and Zach Canimore (receiver and DB). Then as said, they’ll be some new faces on the line.
McAndrews is very good and took them to an 11-1 season as a sophomore so watch for a lot from him and his arm (he’s got the receivers too).
Stills was making noise as the RB by season’s end in 2017 so we want to see the group as mentioned above fill that in (they seem to produce RBs every year).
Manzyk is an impact player (he was all state as a sophomore and junior at two different positions) so expect plenty from him.
The defense should be solid.
Multiple transfers should be next on the agenda. HS athletics should not be about “Hired Guns” DePaul should not be allowed to play for TEP. The PIAA is a joke!
@philyboy Coatesville does return some skill position players, but lost 3 of their 4 starting WR’s. Lost two OL’s and TE. On D, is where the losses sting a bit, they lost both DT’s, a SDE and WLB, and half of their secondary.
They should be fine on O, but finding a plug in the middle of their D and replacing Avery Young at one corner spot will be their defenses main challenge.
While this site was down for a few weeks last month, some of you might of missed that the PIAA inched along in their attempt to deal with the transfer issue. This only applies to in-season transfers, and IMO it is still way too little, and too late, especially after this N-G girls hoops issue. If anyone in familiar with it, you already know how much of a complete disgrace it was/is.
http://highschoolsports.pennlive.com/news/article/-8985422966390870277/piaa-board-of-directors-tightens-procedure-on-in-season-transfers/
@FNL
Neshaminy returns their QB McAndrews. I believe he will be a senior. He returns with fellow seniors Joyce and Manzik who will get D1 offers if he hasn’t already. Not sure about their running game, but the defense seems to be pretty good every year. If NP lost their QB from last season, I will give the way to early to tell nod to Neshaminy.
@phillyboy
“But from what I gather Coatesville may be really good this year”
Cumberland Valley lost a lot from last year so Coatesville should be able to finally win one against them this year. CV reloads pretty quickly though so don’t count them out just yet but the talent will be younger and inexperienced. I’ll know more as the season approaches but I’d expect Coatesville to win this one fairly handily this year.
Billy Splain
Thank you for the information regarding Midd West
Thanks for that FridayNightLights. Who knows, ironically maybe they’ll have a better season this year now that there’s seemingly less pressure. But from what I gather Coatesville may be really good this year. If I’m not mistaken they have most of their best skill players back. Any Red Raiders fans out there that can shed some insight into this? Would be awesome if they could talk that Sanders kid into returning to the home team for such a promising year, you feel me?
Time for the PIAA to step in and stop the “Philly Sports School” DePaul goes from Norristown to North Penn to Imhotep…I’m sure he transferred to TEP for academics. No wonder the Western shools, i.e the WPIAL, are considering leaving the PIAA. This is now what, the 4th straight year TEP will be in the AAAA finals and will probably mercy rule the competition. This school should not be allowed to compete in the PIAA.
Foleman: the wpial is not considering leaving the PIAA. no district can leave the PIAA, the member schools can leave the PIAA but very doubtful any would consider that.
Chris & Ken, Midd West was in a co op with Juniata for several years.
@Phillyboy:
North Penn definitely underachieved last year. Never seemed to come together. They had a fair amount of players go to D1 schools from last year’s team. Henley went to Delaware, Thomas to Villanova, and Jamal to Delaware State. DePaul holds at least one D1 offer, as does Cartwright. Jon Haynes has also received D1 interest and it seems a matter of time until he receives his first offer. That’s a lot of talent on one high school team. Goes to show that a collection of talent doesn’t mean a team. Hopefully they uncover some diamonds this year. They usually find a way to develop.
Buddy
Already enrolled at TEP..
https://twitter.com/stevedepaulqb
Will have to manage my expectations for North Penn this year. Going into last year there was all kinds of hype, it almost took on a life of its own. Somebody with the handle ‘District 1’ was talking some serious smack. Heck, even the WNPV guys bought into it. Must confess I started to get a little excited. Drove all the way up to Lansdale from North Philly on that humid late August evening. MAN, felt like I finally reached Wall Drug only to realize there was no ‘there’ there. It reminded me a little of the Eagles infamous ‘dream team’ from a few years back. Like a great coach once expressed: ‘If you start believing your press clippings you’re in trouble. Your butts got to make it happen’.
@ Buddy:
DePaul’s twitter says Imhotep ’19 now. Looks like he’s gone. He had some talent. Not sure what they have in the pipeline talent-wise. Feiser’s younger brother is there and Feiser is the QB coach I believe. Any ideas?
@Buddy
PW because PW coach Chung is a former North Penn Knight, I think it was like 5-7 years ago they scrimmaged Don Bosco, as I went down to that scrimmage, Don Bosco handled them fairly easily.
David Mika
Dave, as basically a fan interested in the history of PA high school football, new schools, or those not playing football anymore, or consolidations always interest me. Can you (or anyone) tell me about D4 Midd West?
@ Friday:
DePaul to Imhotep? Find that hard to believe. Need to get verification on that.
@ Smoll:
NP scrimmages PW. Or at least they scrimmage at PW’s field.
You can find NP schedule at northpennfootball
What Heartland division is Southern Columbia in this year?They’re schedule shows a lot of Division 1 games and Division 3 games. Very little division 2. I find it bad for football if they are in the small school division and I’m sure they don’t want to be in that one either.
@Derrick:
Not sure what to expect from NP this year. Pretty much everyone now gone from that strong team that lost to St. Joe’s 2 years ago and a lot from last year’s team that I thought underachieved a little bit. I’m also not sure about who’s moved in or out, with the transfers we see nowadays. I saw on another message board that DePaul, NP’s starting QB from last year, has left the school to go to Imhotep. I believe NP will have a solid running back in Gorski and a couple of experienced receivers in Jon Haynes and Shamar Edwards, assuming they are all still there. They have a few other good players as well but it will definitely need to be a quick re-stock. I would say the edge goes to Neshaminy right now. Does anybody know how Neshaminy looks?
Thx Buddy!!!
I did a little digging and found NP’s full 2018 schedule and saw that they have Pennsbury game 3 to wrap up their non league schedule. From there it is the usual suspects of their SOL division.
I’m not a big NP fan, but I do appreciate and respect them for scheduling more established competition the first few weeks of the season. I remember 4 or 5 years ago they had a three headed monster of a schedule with Lasalle, Wood and SJP to start the season, which just lets say was ugly. But they picked themselves up, dusted themselves off, and proceeded to run the table I believe and made a nice deep run in the post season that year.
Is this Midd West in D4 a new team?
Yes, Chris.
Typical North Penn scheduling to me, take on someone really tough week 0 and 1, possibly take a loss or two, toughen up the troops, and turn North Penn into the tough North Penn and watch out near the end of the season. Generally they schedule a really tough scrimmage too, a few years ago if my memory was right it was Don Bosco Prep at North Penn.
anyone heard any news on ChesMont adding teams or combining since Octorara has moved to D3 and Bishop Shanahan is now a 4A school?
@ kevin:
NP first game ( not counting the 1 scrimmage they have) is at Neshaminy.
Second game is LS at NP. Rather play LS the last game, but 2nd game is better then first.