***UPDATE*** Class A, AA, AAA, AAAA Brackets complete.
P.I.A.A. Class A Final Clairton Bears vs Riverside Vikings Friday, December 17 @2pm
P.I.A.A. Class AAA Final Bishop McDevitt Crusaders vs Allentown Central Catholic Vikings Friday, December 17 @ 7pm
P.I.A.A. Class AA Final South Fayette Lions vs West Catholic Burrs Saturday, December 18 @ 12pm
P.I.A.A. Class AAAA Final North Allegheny Tigers vs LaSalle Explorers Saturday, December 18 @ 5pm
Note: The following teams will be on the HOME side of HersheyPark Stadium: Clairton, West Catholic, Allentown Central Catholic, North Allegheny
Note: The following teams will be on the AWAY side of HersheyPark Stadium: Riverside, South Fayette, Bishop McDevitt, LaSalle
Stadium Aerial Links have been added for each game. Click on each blue Stadium Aerial for a photo of the host stadium. A special thank you goes out to everyone that has helped with this project. Good luck to all teams in their quest for a PIAA State Championship. Any questions, comments or corrections please email Jeremy
Here are the direct links to each bracket.
480 Responses
I think that public schools have an advantage in that Catholic students choose to go there instead of Catholic schools. There must be lots of Catholic kids at North Penn or Ridley or wherever you send your taxes. I want to see some statistics of Catholics in public school. Public schools are recruiting their middle/junior high schools to keep good Catholic football players in public school. I demand an inquiry. The illogical part of you public school lovers argument is that students don’t belong to any system. The point is that their parents choose for them. Please stop this nonsense and talk about football you blow-hards. By the way I am a Catholic school product and if my ironic humor is lost on you, you probably went to public school.
For those who feel that the PA Public and Catholic leagues are not balanced, take a few things into account. First, notice the cyclical nature of most teams. Usually when you are good, you stay good for a few years and when you are bad the same. LaSalle, Wood and WC will not make it deep into the playoffs every year. Secondly, the coaching quality varies from school to school. The coaches who’s teams make it deep are there for that reason as well. Factor a good coach with disciplined students, you get good products. (Philly PUB needs a change in culture to compete) Lastly, the more pride a school takes into their program, the better it does. If anyone looks up past years from some of these teams, you would could not predict their turn around and laugh at the idea of them being able to compete on the state level. I remember playing at West Catholic when we didn’t have enough players to hold the bags, the coaches did(00-04). A few big seasons, a couple of quality wins, STUDENTS COME OUT TO PLAY, WORK HARD and GET IT DONE.
Basically just saying winning carries over but only for so long. The teams you see won’t be good forever…so just enjoy quality football. (JB you speak some good truth by the way)
Catholic Leaguers…In spite of any logical argument these people will never concede their basic philosophy is flawed and will just keep spewing out meaningless numbers and reject any and all simple numbers that disprove all they have to say. They deal in this ideology that has no bearing on fact, truth or common sense. This is the social price that we pay for public education in addition to the monetary price that we will always be on the hook for. At first I was annoyed at them not calling it a day in spite of proof that they are wrong hands down I now am just going to go with it for the entertainment value and keep pissing them off. The only other people I like pissing off more are “liberals” but we are probably talking about one and the same here so I get two for the price of one.
Enough of this tired argument.Unless the PIAA feels there is a problem and as it stands they don’t your all pissing in the wind and calling it rain
@StanW, you didn’t even post #341; would seem you really do have a problem with posting facts.
In typing up post 341, I neglected to identify Bucks County as part of the Archdiose of Philadelphia. Was thinking ahead to the next sentence.
To guest, what is the old saying, “you get what you pay for”. Take that chip off your shoulder, you sound bitter that your can’t for some reason be part of championship teams
@HSSportsfan
FYI, North Penn led Downingtown East 35-3 at one point… so saying DE played NP tougher than anyone in the playoffs so far would be a completely false statement.
These mathematical arguments are so absurd they are entertaining so let me add an absurd mathematical argument to the mix for entertainment value only. The scary thing is my exercise in absurdity might make more sense than the others.
First how many Catholics do you people think are out there especially ones that have the desire and the means to support Catholic Education. The percentage of Catholics in the USA is ABOUT 24% and as I just stated public schools get a good share of them as not all Catholics have the will and/or means to pay tuition on top of paying for everyone else’s kids tuition. So what does that do to skew your numbers? Since some on here are statistical and mathematical geniuses with no common sense I am sure someone will come up with something probably more absurd and nonsensical than they did before.
P, first of all I would ask you to rereead my posts. You are misrepresenting what I said. Once again I NEVER said that any of the Catholic Schools or private schools RECRUITED. Would you please stop making the assertion that I said that.
On the Archdiose website they identify the Archdiose to be Philadelphia north and south and the counties of Montgomery, Delaware and Chester. I checked Google for the population of Philadelpia proper and those 3 counties. Once again I never said “3.3 million football players” I said people
I would ask that you please read Goldenknight’s post Perhaps he can explain it better that I.
If you wish to be critical of the mistake I made on the population of the North Penn School District and the fact that there is a limited number of public schools that accept tuition students you certainly have the right to do that. Those were my errors. I owned up to those when I was told they were incorrect. I did my best to correct them.
I stand by my assertion that open enrollment gives the Catholic and private schools an advantage. Supporters of those schools or others certainly have the right to disagree with my assertion.
Yes I was at 1 regular season game vs Whitehall, who byt the way, would struggle to stay on the same field as OHara, and I was at the Abington Heights game. Abington heights would finish in 3rd or 4th place in PCL.. Your boys are going down..
Ironic, all this D12 whining.
Nobody cared about D12 when it was the Philly Pub schools with open enrollment getting crushed in the PIAAs.
Nobody cared about D12 when it was the Philly Pub schools with a bye week getting crushed in the PIAAs.
Now that D11 finds it can’t compete with D12; there’s plenty of whining.
I’d be impressed if everyone had whined about Philly schools 4 years ago when they had open enrollment and a bye week. Fact is, everyone in D11 and D1 wanted the cakewalk game in the playoffs against the Pubs
Golden Knight, build this into your “scientific” approach.
Private school (LaSalle / SJP) parents pay 18K a year to send their son there IF he can produce top scores in the entrance exam.
Fact is, very few 8th grade students can even qualify let alone afford it.
Folks, this is a math exercise, pure & simple. No one is trashing the Catholic/Private school teams. They are no doubt, very, very good. Please put the emotion aside and look at the logic.
For those of you that understand basic probabilities & statistics, your chances of getting more good talent increases as the potential POOL of total talent increases. This is the main logic behind having 4 classes of playoffs to begin with. Just like the pool of talent probability is less in a Public school that has school district borders encompassing 500 boys compared to 1500 boys ( ie; Henderson or Rustin (500 ) vs N.Penn (1500) ) …so is the probability of more talent in a “open” Catholic district of multiple 1000’s of boys ( ie; N.Penn= 1500 boys in the district to choose from , LaSalle = 5000+ boys to choose from since there are no boundries for the Catholic schools.
By the way, this logic/math holds true for the Catholic schools themselves. The realistic, potential pool of boys is less for W. Catholic ( and they are very good ) than it is for LaSalle & St Joes Prep.
Also, there is also a “proportion” issue. If there is a disproportionate amount of Catholic School teams in the last few rounds of the States compared to the total amount of schools, you can bet the PIAA will at some point do what N.J. does.
Also, for those who would argue that LaSalle or St. Joe’s Prep only have 800 or so boys in the school, realize that the bigger the OVERALL POOL to chose from , the more chances you will get 22 very talented kids, compared to 11 or 15 very talented kids ( where the district boundries confine you to a limited pool) . Some of this is ‘football logic’ whereby the difference between 2 teams is the “depth” of talent, not just the kids who ‘start’
So, bottom-line, it’s a math issue…
I agree with guest. Sounds like a workable idea
@LB, AW is down their top running back and also a D lineman I believe.
Long season but would be nice if all remaining teams were at full strength!
Should be a good game; I think anyone expecting a blowout is mistaken. I do believe AW is a distinct underdog but at this point in the season, none of that matters at all.
@oLen, you’re correct; LaSalle will have to play much better next week!
Get to PW early; there won’t be nearly enough parking!
@PhillyFan, LaSalle didn’t play their best game for sure but then again, they didn’t have to.
Easton’s QB has one talent; he can run for his life and he needed to. Their only score was on a LaSalle mistake and at no time was there a feeling that Easton was even in the game.
As for the best player on the field; you’ve got to be kidding me. You must be impressed by QBs who have to run for their life; the best player on that field was Rahman. Maybe you missed his two runs over 40 yards and his pick to seal the game.
@Dog21
Soooooo i guess you’ve been to all of accs playoff games to say that and the games during the regular season right?? cause i doubt SH has a backfield faster then ours nosovitch and mcdermitt are some fast kids but they’re athletic i think you should stop puffing your chest out and just wait for the game at basd
Dog21
you talk crazy. wood had a week schedule too. they played ohara. ACC played dtown east who was a solid football team they played north penn better then anybody in the playoffs so far. You talk so crazy i wouldnt be suprised if you actually thought wood can beat lasalle and north penn
Congrats to La Salle for beating a very tough Easton team. The Easton team this year was way better than the team from last year. La Salle did not look good today. Theyri offense was stagnant and their defense could not tackle. Kudos to Easton. They played very hard. I believe that this year’s Easton team was ten times better than past year’s Easton team. With that said, La Salle will have their hands full with a very good North Penn team. La Salle will have to play their A game to come out as victors. whoever comes out on top of this game will be state champs.
Stan, please do us all a favor and stop trying to make you opinions sound like facts. I called you out twice now, and you have still addressed the fact. You said posters, when you meant posers. If you are going to insult somebody, don’t be wrong. You only insult yourself when you are wrong. Second, you claim that La Salle has open enrollment. True. You claim that since they have open enrollment they have a pool of players that is 3.3 people large. False. Dude, come on. You were wrong. In no was was I trying to be malicious, until you tried to defend your stupid point. I am calling you out on your stupid fact. The greated Philadelphia area may have around 3 million people, but the age range is from infant to elder. So the number of high school football players is not 3.3 million. To claim that La Salle, or any other PCL private school, has the ability to recruit because they are not restricted by boundaries is nothing short of a poor excuse. Stan, by saying that La Salle has 3.3 million to choose from is idiotic. That is like saying there are upwards of 6.7 billion people on earth, and anyone who wants to play football for La Salle can move into the area and play. Stan, please stop trying to make up for your stupid comment. Not every kid wants to go to La Salle. You got to get your facts straight. Trying to defend your statements which you claim to be true (which are not), makes you seem dumb. I do not know where you are from Stan, but check the population count in your area. I’ll bet it isn’t 3.3 million.
Lewisburg underrated???? They are ranked #1 on this site.
@ stan. You’re absolutely right about the large pool PCL draws & RECRUITS from. These guys are just gonna twist your words and try to insult you because the have nothing else. Now they’re pretending that these schools don’t have kids from all 5 counties (3.3 mil as you stated)? ?? Thyre a joke!!! Hey JB & P, I have that smoking gun you were asking me for. I’m not about to Call a kid out on this public site, so we gotta figure a way I can give the info privately. RECRUITED!!!!!
Guest..The PIAA (WPIAL) was founded in Pittsburgh in 1913 or abouts by at least three Private school principals so maybe the PIAA should be for privately funded schools and the publicly funded schools can go play with themselves…Catholics not only pay for their own kid’s education they pay for your kid’s education too. I’m just sayin….
How about the AA undefeated underrated Lewisburg Dragons putting away Trinity!!!