Bill Beckner stories, Page 23

Tropical Storm Debby has the upper hand at the Little League Softball World Series. Constant rain left teams sitting on their hands with no games to play for a second straight day in Greenville, N.C. That includes Greensburg’s West Point 12U, which has gone 1-1 in the double-elimination tournament as...

Editor’s note: Trib HSSN will publish team-by-team previews for one conference per day until the start of the high school football season Aug. 23. Having coached at Penn-Trafford for a decade, Ron Prady has a good idea what it takes to win in Class 5A. That should help the third-year...

A new NCAA recruiting rule kicked in earlier this month. It prevents college coaches from communicating with prospects until Aug. 1 of their junior year. When that day rolled around for Anthony Grippo, his cellphone “blew up.” The rising junior from Greensburg Central Catholic had more than 20 calls or...

Superstitions have long been a part of sports. Tiger Woods always wore a red shirt when he walked onto a golf course on Sundays. Michael Jordan used to wear his college practice shorts from North Carolina under his Chicago Bulls uniform shorts. Wade Boggs had to eat chicken before every...

Veteran boys soccer coach Scott Schuchert had a message for his Norwin players when they lined up to run sprints during a conditioning workout this week at the Turner Valley Soccer Complex. “Winning isn’t fun.” Say what, coach? At that moment, he could have replaced “winning” with “running” and it...

Load the bases. Live with the result. With one out and runners at second and third for Italy’s Emilia Romagna Little League in the bottom of the fifth, Tina Madison pulled her defense into the pitching circle for a talk — a rather calm talk, all things considered. “Relax,” the...

A summer paving project caused some temporary parking inconveniences at Norwin Knights Stadium. For workouts, football players had to park high atop the field at the middle school and walk down the hill. Similarly, Norwin is back in the WPIAL’s highest classification for football. The Knights hope for a transition...

Year 2 appears to have greeted Nick Keefer with more structure and the feeling of a greater sense of eagerness among his lot of 80-plus football players. “We have great kids here, and they are always ready to go to work,” said Keefer, the coach at Hempfield. “We were together...

West Point will play its second game of the Little League Softball World Series at 9 a.m. Tuesday in Greenville, N.C. The elimination bracket game was moved up an hour due to pending weather in the forecast. It will be shown on ESPN Plus. West Point needs to defeat Emilia...

The build-up to the decision was stressful. The reasoning behind it, though, made perfect sense. Recent Norwin graduate Bailey Snowberger had her future plans locked in: Go to Holy Cross, blend in and continue her excellent play as a shortstop at the college level. Kimberly Stiles, the coach at Holy...

A PIAA custom since its inception in 2013, “heat week” is the unofficial start to high school football training camp, and it opens Monday around the state. Players, who will don helmets and shoulder pads but can’t hit, are required to attend five consecutive days of heat acclimatization before the...

Mon Valley won’t have to travel far to play for a world-renowned youth baseball championship. The local team of 13- and 14-year olds advanced to the Pony League World Series set for Aug. 9-14 at Lew Hays Pony Field in Washington, Pa. Mon Valley will open the double-elimination tournament 4:30...

Saint Vincent ensured stability in its sports programs with the promotion of D.P. Harris to full-time athletic director. Harris, who will continue as the men’s basketball coach, had served as interim AD for the past year. SVC president Father Paul Taylor, O.S.B. called the move a “pivotal decision.” “He has...

For the opening ceremony of the Little League Softball World Series, teams were asked to submit a song and a fast fact to organizers and ESPN. Greensburg’s West Point 12U team will walk out to the beat of “Black and Yellow” by Wiz Khalifa. As for the fast fact, coach...

When Nick White was an assistant boys soccer coach at Fox Chapel, the Foxes took late-summer trips to team camps. It became part of their voluntary training schedule. The week-long bonding events were a build-up to the start of the WPIAL season. “Getting to know the boys on a deeper...

A team that didn’t have a playoff win for 54 years has two in the past two seasons, and John Wetzel has a lot to do with it. Latrobe’s quarterback and three-star safety has developed into of the WPIAL’s top dual threats. Last year, he passed for 1,289 yards and...

Expectations are high for Jeannette alum Marcus Barnes, who is primed for his senior football season at William & Mary. A safety, Barnes was selected to the East-West Shrine Bowl 1,000, a watch list for the annual senior all-star game set for Jan. 30 at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas....

A key rule change could alter the way coaches and catchers communicate on the softball field. If the PIAA adopts a new rule, starting next season teams will be permitted to use electronic devices for one-way communication to the catcher during games. The rule was passed by the National Federation...

When Matt Ager came to Pittsburgh in 2015, he went to a game at PNC Park and watched the Pirates’ Gerrit Cole pitch against Clayton Kershaw and the Los Angeles Dodgers. Ager, a 21-year-old pitcher the Pirates drafted in the sixth round earlier this month out of UC Santa Barbara,...

Greensburg Central Catholic was a class above the competition in WPIAL Class 2A last girls basketball season when it captured its sixth district championship. Next season, the Centurions won’t be able to defend their title because they are moving up a classification, to 3A. The move is because of a...

A day after his 26th birthday, pitcher Jared Kollar received a gift: a promotion in the minor leagues. Kollar, a Latrobe and Seton Hill alum, is headed to Triple-A with the San Diego Padres. His 9-3 record and 3.04 ERA in 15 starts were good enough to earn him a...

When he put his name into the national free-agent database known as the NCAA transfer portal, pitcher Noah Czajkowski hoped to garner interest from Division I baseball programs nearer to where he grew up. That one such suitor was Pitt came as a pleasant surprise and a welcome bonus. Czajkowski,...

As his teammates ran routes, threw and caught passes and defended throws, Dom Detruf looked on with interest. He stood on the field, holding a football and a towel and barked out directions and advice like a coach. The junior quarterback from Hempfield would rather have been playing, but he...

Samir Crosby could have a special season in store for the Greensburg Central Catholic football faithful. The Centurions’ gamer has created enough exciting plays — in a myriad of ways — in two years to attract several NCAA Division I college programs and a half-dozen scholarship offers. Harvard, Buffalo, Fordham,...

Pitt-Greensburg has a new women’s basketball coach. Julie Bolden will take over the Bobcats after two seasons as an assistant and recruiting director at Division I Dayton. She also worked as a video coordinator at Hofstra for one year. An Ohio native, Bolden replaces Darien Lantz, who coached for two...