Least surprising post of this post-season. That’d be a pretty long commute from the Lehigh Valley.
2024 6A State Title PCC vs SJP
- Thread starter northalleghenytiger
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totally understand- yes this board can get too negative- good to see you back!
go vikes! I hope it's close, I have not studied SJP, but my biggest concern is PCC defense. For fun, I'd like to say, win by PCC, 27-24... but i would not bet money on that!
You sure about that? You don't remember Pinkston getting suspended? You don't remember Willie Dodson being investigated?
They aren't dumb about it like Seton was a few years ago with a paper trail.
Just go down to the Southside in a few weeks after the Steelers ends and watch some of the interactions at the 210ths workouts.
yep im sure, you just answered your own question
when coaches DO recruit too much, they usually get investigated and suspended
most of the recruiting is done thru 7v7s and trainers, like 210ths. Not by head coaches "searching for kids and taking them away"
my point is, im pretty sure the open and aggressive recruiting is less common in WPIAL than other part of PA- and most of the best public school talent, is not "taken away" by the privates
I know 2 HC's at private schools right now who actively recruit. They hit the city league hard. They've learned not to leave a paper trail.
There is one current HC at those schools who used to interview for jobs as an assistant and sell himself as being able to "bring a dozen kids in right away." This is when he was trying to land jobs at public schools.
When you say recruiting is done through trainers and 7v7's, what do you mean? What's the incentive for guys like Duane to push a kid one way or the other? Speaking of 210ths, watch what WPIAL HC's linger at those workouts. Is it any coincidence that PCC has assistant coaches who lead area 7v7's ala wpialsportsmen?
I can't speak for Philly. But, I do know GCC basically decimated the Jeanette program to the point where they were using band members to fill out the roster so they could play games. Bishop/Seton feasts on the city league and surrounding areas like Carnegie, McKees Rocks, etc.. Imani hired one of the Hill District youth coaches to feed the program with high end talent.
This isn’t football, but here’s one way trainers push kids. Bethlehem Catholic made Seth Ciasulli a volunteer assistant. They also formed a partnership with his club, so to do offseason stuff with Becahi, you had to pay the thousands of dollars to Red Hawk to be a club member and practice there. But then all of his best elementary and middle school kids started going to Becahi. They get state champs and win team state titles. Red Hawk gets way more members paying 4 G’s a year to wrestle there.
I know it’s a sign of the times (and privates don’t typically draw great crowds at the state finals), but these crowds have been really small. I’d like to see the numbers, but I’ll guarantee this is the least attended 6 state final games in PIAA history.
A sophomore Qb throwing a touchdown to a freshman WR? Pencil them in for a 5-peat
Also numbers show hershey had more people in attendance than Cumberland valley
And junior rb that’s running the ball all over the place.
about 1400 people attended the 6A game
that is pathetic, you would think the piaa would want to separate private schools considering that is greatly hurting their profits
SJP is a dynasty unlike anything we have seen in PA and almost nobody wants to watch them play
kick out the PCL
The last year at Hershey between Mt lebanon and St joes had 3965 attendees. if it were two public schools and was at hershey again it could be 5-6K
There are lots of factors that determine crowd size: distance from the game site, weather, there being or not being a rivalry, expectations of whether it will be a close game, etc. There looked to be more SJP fans than PCC fans on Saturday night. The crowd in Altoona for the Harrisburg-PCC game looked to be quite small. How many were at the 6A District 1 and District 11 finals? Would people who haven't attended a single NA or Downingtown West game all year travel halfway across the state on a December Saturday to see those schools in a state final? As there any 6A game in PA this year that had as many fans as the LaSalle-SJP games? (I understand there would have been a lot more if all the tickets hadn't been sold days ahead, but I also understand we are talking about two fairly evenly matched non-boundary schools playing each other.)
I have no idea on the final, but the Easton-Emmaus semifinal in D11 had a shade over 5,000. Home game, not neutral site, so not apples to apples. But Easton sells between 1,000-1,500 season tickets a year, so there is a baked in attendance floor.
Easton-P’Burg sold 15,500 tickets, attendance was more like 10k with the weather. I’m assuming you’re not counting that in 6A attendance since it’s more like a bowl game? Easton-Freedom had around 8,000 at BASD, I’m not sure how many SJP-LaSalle had.
I think the first SJP / LS game was limited because of the stadium size? What was the attendance of the second? The CB rivalry games draw from 4000 on the low end to 6000+ if the game really means something. Attendance really dropped during Covid but came back a lot the past couple of years. CBW benefits from having an in-town stadium where people can just walk over to the field. Interestingly, SOL regular season games seem to draw bigger crowds than District 1 playoff games.
From all you've told us about Easton-P'Burg it's clear that's a thing all unto itself. (Back when SJP and Roman played on Thanksgiving morning at 29th and Allegheny--at least when I attended them from 1959 to 1971--there were almost always over 7,500 people there regardless of how good or bad the teams were.) But what you wrote above does support the notion that factors such as weather can have a big impact on attendance even at local, very traditional games. SJP-LaSalle had about 5K at both games this year, but they had to stop selling tickets several days before the game because of capacity at Upper Dublin and Wiss. The locations of both games were much more convenient for LaSalle fans, which was OK since they were the home team at both. I would expect that if whoever secures the field next year could get either Villanova Stadium or Franklin Field SJP-LaSalle would draw at least 10K, assuming the weather was at least decent.
I'd ask anyone who knows District 1 football to estimate how many people would travel to Cumberland Valley to see the 6A champion (DW or NP, say) play Harrisburg in the state final. I really don't know, but my assumption is that a lot more people will walk or drive on an October Friday night to see their team play a team from a nearby school than the number of people who will travel to Cumberland Valley on a cold Saturday night in December, especially when they can watch the state championship game for free at home. No?
Tulla,
Do you have the attendance numbers for the D-town West-Prep playoff game?
I 100% agree with you about championship game attendance. Most people aren't going to travel 2 plus hours to watch a game, unless you're a parent, student, or fan. Of course, there are exceptions. I guarantee that if Easton ever makes the state title game their fans would fill their side.
Do you have the attendance numbers for the D-town West-Prep playoff game?
I 100% agree with you about championship game attendance. Most people aren't going to travel 2 plus hours to watch a game, unless you're a parent, student, or fan. Of course, there are exceptions. I guarantee that if Easton ever makes the state title game their fans would fill their side.
I'm a few hundred miles from Philly, so I mostly rely on what I see on the net to get a sense of crowd size. The numbers on both sides of the field for the DW-SJP looked quite low, probably a bit under 1,000 people in total. Pretty much the same at the Parkland-SJP game, which was played on a very bad weather night. SJP had a good crowd at the IMHOTEP game--not many on the IMHOTEP side--and of course big numbers at both LaSalle games and the Roman game.
Easton appears to be something of an outlier when it comes to attendance at hs football games.
I'm not sure how much of a difference moving the games from Hershey to CV made. It certainly appears not to have raised attendance.
Watched this game. I didn’t think that SJP was overwhelmingly better “looking”. Particularly DL where it looked like they had a couple average joes playing.
On O the QB is a nice HS sophomore. OL was big and it seemed to me they won game on basic plays. Power and Inside Zone. PCC couldn’t fit them properly. Wrong gaps, not squeezing hard enough, etc.
On offense, PCC QB was a non factor - which continues a theme of QBs since that group went to SV. Cannot beat a team like SJP with no production from QB. End of story.
In the end, SJP probably had better players, but butter coaching made this a 35-6 game rather than a 21-14 game IMO.
Congrats to SJP and their staff. Again.
On O the QB is a nice HS sophomore. OL was big and it seemed to me they won game on basic plays. Power and Inside Zone. PCC couldn’t fit them properly. Wrong gaps, not squeezing hard enough, etc.
On offense, PCC QB was a non factor - which continues a theme of QBs since that group went to SV. Cannot beat a team like SJP with no production from QB. End of story.
In the end, SJP probably had better players, but butter coaching made this a 35-6 game rather than a 21-14 game IMO.
Congrats to SJP and their staff. Again.
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