Category: Latest News

By Matthew DeGeorge

The PIAA is taking steps to address the competitive imbalance in district and state tournaments. The plan for evening the playing field, though, isn’t what the title of Monday’s hearing indicated.

At the Pennsylvania Athletic Oversight Committee’s meeting on, “Public, Private Sports,” the idea of conducting separate championships was not brought to the table for discussion. Instead, the PIAA is spearheading initiatives it hopes will lessen competitive imbalance by targeting the pressure points with which administrators and legislators are often presented.

“There’s no doubt that concern and criticism over this issue has intensified recently,” said Rep. Gene DiGirolamo, (R-18) of Bensalem, the chairman of the PAOC.

“Of all the issues, it’s one of the ones I hear about the most,” said Sen. Scott Martin (R-13) of Lancaster.

In the short-term, the PIAA has implemented or proposed several measures to root out and deter athletically motivated transfers. But as explained by PIAA Executive Director Dr. Robert Lombardi, a longer-term plan that has passed a first reading by the PIAA’s board would install a system that utilizes not just enrollment but transfers and a success factor to determine classification.

(click on this link for the full story)

 

  

By Harry Chaykun

Emerson Baynard is arguably one of the finest basketball players the city of Chester has produced. His legendary career is remembered by those who followed his performances in the late 1950s and early 1960s with awe.

His storied high school career has intrigued noted Delco author Jack Lemon to the extent that Mr. Lemon has decided to write a book about Emerson’s glory days. He has embarked on interviewing teammates, opponents, and fans who were aware of Emerson’s skills.

One such interview took place when Mr. Lemon contacted the retired and iconic University of Wisconsin basketball coach Bo Ryan. Bo himself had an outstanding Chester High basketball career while wearing the same number that Em wore – 42.

During the interview Bo learned that Emerson Baynard’s grave site in Haven Memorial Cemetery is unmarked. Bo took pause and made the offer to help raise the funds needed so that Emerson could have a proper memorial. He said that if others felt similarly, he would match the funds donated so that a fitting memorial could be installed.

In the event that the funds raised were to exceed the cost of the memorial selected by the management of Haven Memorial Cemetery, those additional funds would be shared equally by the Chester Boys and Girls Club and the Chester Biddy Basketball League.

Any party interested in making a donation to this cause should send a check to the Sports Legends of Delaware County (SLDC) Museum, which is located at 301 Iven Avenue, Wayne, PA 19087. Donors should note that the money is to be used for the Emerson Baynard memorial fund.

For more information, contact Jim Vankoski at 610-909-4919 or by email vankoski21@comcast.net.

In a 1997 article, former Daily Times sports editor Ed Gebhart said it best for all of us who saw the Big Em play when he wrote:

 “The Emerson Baynard I will remember will leap high into the air and ferociously snatch a rebound with one hand and smack it into the palm of the other. He will begin that deceptive lope down the court before throwing those fakes … head fakes, shoulder fakes, hip fakes. Suddenly, he’ll lift that magnificent body far above the defender and let fly, ever so delicately, a jump shot. As the ball settles into the net, he’ll head back up the court, pumping his fist and flashing that little smile we all knew so well. And I will cry a little, too, for the glory that was and for the glory that might have been.”

By Aaron Carter

Kevin Funston called Bonner-Prendergast athletic director Joe Lake on Monday morning on an unrelated matter and got some unexpected but welcome news about the school’s search for a boys’ basketball coach.

“He said, ‘I’m happy you called. You beat me to the punch. I was gonna call to tell you that you’re the next Bonner-Prendie coach,’ ” Funston recalled. “I said, ‘Oh, wow, that’s a good way to start the week!’ ”

For the last four years, Funston was an assistant coach under former B-P coach Jack Concannon, who stepped down after last season.

Funston, who graduated from St. Joseph’s Prep in 2006 and went to the University of Pittsburgh, where he served as team manager under Jamie Dixon, has nearly a decade of coaching experience. He also had stops as an assistant at Lycoming College and Indiana (Pa.) and eventually returned to the Catholic League as the junior-varsity coach at Archbishop Carroll under Paul Romanczuk, who also stepped down after last season.

(click on this link for the full article)

By Mike White

More and more school superintendents have recently called for the PIAA to have separate postseason tournaments for public and Catholic/private/charter schools. Now, two state legislators who sit on a committee that oversees the PIAA believe separate tournaments deserve consideration and the public vs. private issue needs to be looked at further.

Sen. Jay Costa, D-Forest Hills, and Rep. Rob Matzie, D-Ambridge, met Wednesday morning with New Castle Area Schools superintendent John Sarandrea and attorney Larry Kelly, who are spearheading an effort across the state to have the PIAA possibly create separate tournaments. Critics feel public schools with geographical boundaries are at a competitive disadvantage against private/Catholic/charter schools that have no boundaries to attract students. Over the past three seasons, 69 percent of the PIAA boys and girls basketball champions have been teams from non-boundary schools, and many from the Philadelphia area.

“My view of this rises to the level that we need to start having conversations [on the oversight committee] about this issue and I will be making a request that we have hearings in the future,” Costa said. “I’m moving toward the need to address this issue. What we can do and what anything might look like, I can’t speak to that. But the path we have been going down has really created a competitive imbalance that I don’t think is in the best interest of overall interscholastic athletic activities. It’s a complicated issue.”

(click on this link for the full article)

By Terry Toohey

Harrigan announced his resignation as the Lions’ boys basketball coach Sunday. Harrigan is the second basketball coach at O’Hara and third boys basketball coach from a Catholic League school in Delaware County to step down this spring.

Longtime O’Hara girls coach Linus McGinty announced his retirement last week. McGinty won 824 games in a 36-year career at O’Hara and Archbishop Carroll. He achieved 557 of those wins in 24 years at O’Hara. In that span he guided the Lions to the Catholic League final 16 times and won 11 championships.

Last month, Jack Concannon announced he was leaving Monsignor Bonner & Archbishop Prendergast after four seasons as the boys basketball coach. It was Concannon’s second stint at his alma mater. He was the head coach from 1992-96.

A day later, Paul Romanczuk stepped down after 15 seasons as the boys coach at Archbishop Carroll.

Harrigan went 16-29 overall and 5-21 in league play in two seasons at O’Hara. The Lions went 11-12 overall and 5-8 in the league in 2017-18.

Prior to O’Hara, Harrigan coached at now closed Del Val Charter for five seasons. He led the Warriors to the Public League and PIAA District 12 Class 3A titles in 2016.

 

By Matthew DeGeorge

As an athletic director, B.J. Hogan is used to the comings and goings of coaches. Not many of them, however, were once his 11th-grade math teacher. And none that he’s likely to encounter again will have the reputation and pedigree of Linus McGinty.

“It’s amazing,” Hogan said Tuesday. “You sit there and you look, I don’t know how many coaches nowadays could last at a school 25 years and be that successful. … It’s insane how successful he’s been.”

McGinty announced his retirement as the head girls basketball coach at Cardinal O’Hara Tuesday after 24 years at the school and over 800 career wins between O’Hara and Archbishop Carroll over the last four decades.

In the two dozen years at O’Hara, McGinty went 557-113, per the school, making the Catholic League final on 16 occasions and winning 11 titles, including the last two. He won 267 games in 12 seasons with Carroll, giving him 824 career wins.

At O’Hara, he mentored 14 Daily Times Players of the Year, three McDonald’s All-Americans and more than 60 players who went on to play basketball in college, more than 40 at the Division I level.

(click on this link for the full story)

By Rick O’Brien

The Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League recently sent an online survey to its member schools to find out their opinion regarding the current PIAA playoff format.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette listed the six questions in the survey. The No. 1 – and most pressing – question: Do you believe schools without geographical boundaries have a competitive advantage over schools with established geographical boundaries?

According to the Post-Gazette, 86 percent of the 108 schools (there are 138 WPIAL schools) that responded to the survey “said they would favor separate tournaments for boundary and non-boundary schools.”

By Matthew DeGeorge

The core of Delco’s hoops prowess this season resided in Class 5A, and media voters across the state reflected that in the release of the All-State basketball teams Tuesday.

Bonner & Prendergast’s Isaiah Wong was voted to the first team in Class 5A, one of seven Delco honorees, all in Class 5A.

Four of the seven second-team nods were doled out to Delco players: Bonner’s Ajiri Johnson, AJ Hoggard of Archbishop Carroll, Christian Ray of Haverford School and Penncrest’s Tyler Norwood. Antwuan Butler of Cardinal O’Hara and Tariq Ingraham of Bonner were third-teamers.

Players were chosen by media across the state according to PIAA classification/enrollment size, with three teams of honorees in each of the PIAA’s six classes. A player of the year and coach of the year were also recognized in each class.

Wong, the 2017-18 Daily Times Boys Basketball Player of the Year, averaged 22.2 points per game in his first season with the Friars after transferring from Notre Dame (N.J.). The 6-3 junior guard led Bonner & Prendie to its first PIAA tournament, advancing to the Class 5A semifinals before being knocked off by champion Abington Heights in overtime. (The Comets were represented by first-teamers Jackson Danzig and George Tinsley as well as coach of the year Ken Bianchi.)

(click on this link for the full article)

By Matthew DeGeorge

It’s not easy to get Isaiah Wong to crack a smile on the basketball court. Even dressed in his school uniform, tasked with the very un-competitive pursuit of taking portrait photos, a certain steeliness dawns once he steps on the court at Bonner & Prendergast. He’s not going to cross anyone over in his dress shoes, but the basketball in his hands still inspires the impassiveness of his visage.

There’s a couple of tricks to get Wong to offer a glimpse at his pearly whites, though. Bring up the number of close games his Friars played this year — 16 decided by 10 points or fewer, five that went to overtime and an 8-1 mark in the Philadelphia Catholic League in games decided by seven points or fewer — and you’ll see a hint of a grin curl up the corners of his mouth. Mention the prospect of rising to the individual challenge of playing in the Catholic League, and the smile grows wider still.

If you want to get Wong beaming, though, just bring up the chants — those heckles about him being from New Jersey and the student-section antagonism of “Ov-er-ra-ted” that he heard in cramped gyms across the Philly this year. That’s a sure-fire method to piquing Wong’s amusement.

(click on this link for the full story as well as links to the All-Delco team)

By Christopher A. Vito

In flashes, you can see Rondae Hollis-Jefferson on an NBA court and envision him wearing an orange-and-black uniform. The tools he developed at Chester High are the ones he showcases nightly on basketball’s grandest stage.

The smoothness that enables him to push the ball up the court in effortless strides. The creativity required to make acrobatic shots look routine. The aggressiveness to clean the glass against rebounders four inches taller.

Those attributes are constant, win or lose. And for Hollis-Jefferson, now 23, his team’s losses have far outnumbered its victories.

“I’m human. It wears on you. It definitely has its days,” he said.

Hollis-Jefferson’s most-pressing task, the one linked intrinsically with his pro career, is the ongoing rebuild of the downtrodden Brooklyn Nets. The third-year pro is compiling his best season as the club’s longest-tenured player, one whose leadership extends beyond his place atop many of its stat categories.

Beyond basketball, he focuses on change — changing lives, changing outlooks, changing what the future holds for children in Chester. The irony, he freely admits, is that a guy so dedicated to change remains the same.

(click on this link for the full story)