Some items that fell off my laptop
The knee injury of Beaver Falls lineman Donovan Jeter is not serious and his coach says he is "day to day."
Jeter is a junior defensive lineman who already has a number of major-college scholarship offers. Jeter sustained the injury in practice last week and did not participate in a scrimmage Saturday against Mars.
Beaver Falls coach Ryan Matsook said this weekend that the extent of Jeter's injury would be known early this week. Matsook said today that Jeter is fine. Jeter tweeted "Thank god my meniscus isn't torn. Be back at 100% in 7-10 days."
Wilkinsburg drops sports
Wilkinsburg is a small school and has had low participation in sports in past years. So this should come as no real surprise: The school informed the WPIAL that it is dropping its varsity baseball and girls volleyball.
The Wilkinsburg School District also decided to drop its three middle school sports - football, boys basketball and girls basketball.
"For a few years now, we've had some issues with participation," said Mike Fulmore, Wilkinsburg's athletic director and also the football coach. "The school board just felt it wasn't financially responsible to allocate that money for sports with such few children."
Wilkinsburg has had some small rosters in football in recent years. Fulmore said he now has 18 to 20 players and there is no danger of football folding at the moment.
"We had a few more decide to join us when school started," said Fulmore. "We think we can be competitive. We always think we can be a competitive team. They've been competitive here in the past with less. One of the things that was disappointing last year is we kind of accepted [low-participation] numbers as an excuse. The expectation is no matter how many we have, we have to compete."
Westinghouse and the WPIAL
It looks like Westinghouse High School will again try to join the WPIAL for football only.
The Pittsburgh Public Schools Board of Education will vote Wednesday night on whether to allow Westinghouse to request a move to the WPIAL for football. Westinghouse is a City League school.
Westinghouse made the same request to the WPIAL two years ago. But the WPIAL turned down the request because it would have made an odd number of teams in the league, which creates scheduling problems.
Even if the board permits Westinghouse to apply for WPIAL membership in football, WPIAL executive director Tim O'Malley said the league wouldn't decide whether to accept Westinghouse until December, at the earliest.
"If we get a formal request from Westinghouse, we would have to wait until the PIAA finalizes classifications for schools in December and until we see how many teams in the WPIAL will request a schedule," said O'Malley. "We know Hollidaysburg is leaving in football. But there is a possibility that Geibel might come back and we don't know what will go on with a few other schools, like Wilkinsburg."