By: Paul Schofield


Sunday, May 25, 2025 | 11:01 AM

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Latrobe boys volleyball coach Drew Vosefski said he was concerned about playing Penn-Trafford for a third time.

Even though Latrobe had won the previous two section matches, the Wildcats faced a different Penn-Trafford squad in the WPIAL Class 3A quarterfinals May 15 and Vosefski’s worries became reality.

The sixth-seeded Warriors rallied to stun the third-seeded Wildcats, 3-2, by the scores of 21-25, 28-26, 25-18, 18-25 and 16-14.

The Warriors (12-7), who lost twice to the Wildcats (16-2) in section play, faced second-seeded Seneca Valley in the semifinals and gave the Raiders a scare before falling 3-2.

They were scheduled to play fifth-seeded Pine-Richland for third place May 23 for a berth in the PIAA playoffs.

Schall said the Latrobe match swung in the second game when his team started to serve better.

“Once we did that, we put them on their heels,” Schall said. “I am really proud of how we played. It was a tough match, and we put everything we had into it. I guess I did too.

“In Game 1, we did not give them much trouble with our serves. We served better starting in Game 2. We had some guys who really served well. We started putting them in some tough spots.”

Latrobe dominated the first game. Penn-Trafford swung the momentum its way in Game 2 early, but Latrobe battled back and tied the score at 25-all.

The Wildcats actually took a 26-25 lead before the Warriors, behind a kill by Caiden McDonald and Nick Laskey, rallied to tie the match, 1-1.

Schall felt Owen Gisi played well up front in all five games with his blocking ability.

The teams split the next two games, Penn-Trafford winning 25-18 and Latrobe answering 25-18, to set up the thrilling Game 5.

“This is playoff volleyball,” Vosefski said. “We had beaten them twice, but there is an old saying is when you get punched to the face, how much do you punch back? They punched back.

“Beating a team for a third time bothered me, but I am not going to make excuses. They played well.”

In the final game, the winner is the first team to 15, win by two. The game was close and went back and forth.

Penn-Trafford took a 12-10 lead, but the Wildcats tied it 12-12. Penn-Trafford went back up 14-12 as Gisi, McDonald and setter Natheniel Rugh started making plays.

Latrobe senior Luke Fiore tied the score 14-all with a service ace, but the next serve sailed long, setting up the final point, and McDonald finished it with a block.

“That was a tremendous team we beat,” Schall said. “They have an excellent setter and hitter. But we stepped up. I knew we would have to be really good, and I thought we’d be in the ballgame.”

Seneca Valley held off a ferocious effort from Penn-Trafford, picking up a 25-20, 22-25, 25-20, 20-25, 15-3 win to reach the WPIAL title game for the fourth time in the past 10 years.

Schall said he was happy with the Warriors’ effort.

“I’m really proud of the guys,” Schall said. “We were a third-place team in our section. I thought we were pretty good. I’m proud of the guys for the way they fought hard through the match. Unfortunately, we needed to get through that stretch in the fifth set still in the ballgame.”

Penn-Traffird’s biggest challenge was to find a way to handle Seneca Valley’s middle blockers, 6-foot-9 Brandon Suski and 6-5 Jordan Hoover.

Owen Gisi and Nick Laskey hit well for the Warriors.

“We handled their middle guys OK,” Schall said. “(Hoover) had a fantastic fifth game hitting and blocking. We did well enough to take their big guy (Suski) out. They had to put another guy in. We had to serve well.”

Paul Schofield is a TribLive reporter covering high school and college sports and local golf. He joined the Trib in 1995 after spending 15 years at the Daily Courier in Connellsville, where he served as sports editor for 14 years. He can be reached at pschofield@triblive.com.

Tags: Penn-Trafford

SHIPPENSBURG — Damira Allen set the top time in qualifying of the girls 100-meter hurdles on Friday at the PIAA Track and Field Championships. But the Chester junior wasn’t at the starting line Saturday to chase a third straight medal and first gold.

Allen was disqualified from the meet due to the Chester girls no-showing their 4 x 400 relay Friday.

Teammate JaNasia Dearry suffered an apparent injury in the girls 400-meter dash. She finished 18th in that event, her time of 57.72 nearly three seconds off her best. Dearry had been third in the event last year and sixth at states in 2023.

As a result, Dearry scratched the 200. Chester also scrubbed its girls 4 x 400 relay, which included Dearry and Allen. The Clippers, per PIAA officials, listed two alternates on their relay card and had one present in Shippensburg but did not run. As a result, it was registered as a no-show rather than an injury/illness scratch, leading to the disqualification from the rest of the meet for anyone on the card, with Allen as the only individual qualifier other than Dearry.

The PIAA is a no-scratch meet, with a pre-meet deadline for event alterations. Should an injury or illness occur, per its bylaws, the PIAA can make accommodations. However, “if a relay team is scratched for a reason other than injury or illness, and the relay no longer has four eligible contestants to compete, each remaining member of the relay team shall be scratched from the meet, as determined by the meet director.” Since the Clippers had four runners but did not run, it was deemed to be a scratch for “reason other than injury or illness.”

An appeal by Chester was denied by the PIAA meet’s jury of appeals. Chester’s athletic department did not comment on the matter.

The confusion deprived Allen a chance to chase her first PIAA gold medal. Allen had been first in qualifying at 14.02 seconds. She set the Delaware County record at 13.91 seconds at Delcos. She was third in the state each of the last two years.  Allen also qualified in sixth place in the 300 hurdles in 43.60.

The girls 100 hurdles were won by Ella Bahn of Spring Grove in 13.64 seconds Saturday. Kennett’s Aydriane Bowden was second in 14.07. Bahn won the 300 hurdles in 41.98.

Allen’s prelims times would’ve placed her second in the 100 and fifth in the 300.

By: Michael Love


Sunday, May 25, 2025 | 11:01 AM

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When the Gateway boys volleyball team defeated Fox Chapel on May 8 to wrap up an 8-2 Section 4-3A slate and clinch the section championship outright, players, coaches, administrators and many others at the school were excited and expected to see the Gators presented with a first-round home game when the WPIAL playoff brackets were revealed the next day.

But Gateway was tabbed as the No. 9 seed and had to make the trip out to No. 8 Mt. Lebanon, another section champion, for a first-round matchup May 13. The Gators were the only section champion in either Class 3A or Class 2A to travel in the first round.

“If I tried to tell you that it didn’t have an effect on our confidence, I’d be lying,” Gateway coach Phil Randolph said. “I can parrot all the talking points about ‘embracing the role of the underdog,’ but these are smart kids who were raised by smart parents and guardians, so they saw the same thing that I was seeing.

“It was a tough pill to swallow, and it was difficult to find our footing when we abruptly and unexpectedly realized that we would have to turn on a dime. It was frustrating and disappointing to say the very least.”

While the Gators brought a fight to the Blue Devils, they were not able to advance. Mt. Lebanon scored a 3-1 win with set scores of 25-19, 16-25, 25-14 and 26-14.

“It was a ‘hold your head high” postmatch speech, and I truly meant those words,” Randolph said. “There were certainly nerves and emotions, both the visible and the repressed types, but our guys worked their tails off and played a heck of a match. Up until the closing point of the fourth set, these guys gave it everything they had.”

With the adversity of having to travel in the first place, the Gators were put behind the 8-ball with the Game 1 loss, but Randolph said he knew his players would not fold their tents, and they rebounded with a solid Game 2 victory.

“For me, I think that a big part of the night was making sure that we are the ones who were putting our opponent into situations where they are creating unforced errors,” he said. “As noted, there were a lot of nerves heading into the first set, and once we got that out of our system a bit and were able to dictate the pace, we looked like the team that I had come to know and love.

“In that second set, we did what we had to do to put Lebo in a position to adjust to us. We were careful yet calculated in our serving, we had high points of contact on our swings, and we were able to take advantage of a height differential that emerged after they stacked all of their bigger guys into three side-by-side spots on the court. It’s a fickle game though, and momentum swings easily.”

Gateway capped its season at 10-4 overall and will be able to put a ‘2025’ on the section-championship banner.

“Despite the abrupt end, we had a great season, particularly considering the move up to Triple-A,” Randolph said. “Prior to our last section championship in 2022, there was something along the lines of a 36-year gap on that banner. The gap is now three years, and we’ll look to trim that time down even further from here as we turn our eyes to the 2026 season.”

Gateway will enter the 2026 season without this year’s senior group that included four-year team members Owen Echegaray, Darious Farrar, Ethan Nguyen and Tom Nikou.

“Given the manner in which this loss marked the closing of one chapter and the beginning of another, it was also really easy to take pride in seeing how Owen, Darious, Ethan and Tom had grown so much as athletes, leaders and young men,” Randolph said.

“On and off the court, I’ll miss them tremendously, as will their teammates. The boys who are graduating, however, are ones who have taken pride in helping build this program into what it is today.”

Randolph said it was equally satisfying to see how the underclassmen who constituted the rest of the starting lineup — middles Chase Lewandowski and Donovan Shaffer, outside hitter Dan Bozicevic, oppositional side hitter Aiden Coughran and middle hitter/outside hitter Toktobek Kubanychbekov — have taken big steps this season.

“They can have organic, earned ownership of calling this ‘their team’ from here on out,” he said. “This is a great bunch of young men, and it is easy to root for them.”

Gateway was well-represented on the Section 4 all-star team with Bozicevic, Echegaray, Farrar and Nikou voted to the first team. Coughran and Kubanychbekov are second-team selections.

“Volleyball is the ultimate team sport, and it was a team-oriented approach that led us here,” Randolph said. “We have a competitive group of guys, and I encourage them to challenge one another every day in practice to really earn it and call it their own. That challenging attitude extended into attendance at open gyms in the offseason. I think that it’s healthy to be accountable to your brothers on the court in that manner, and I loved to see that these guys felt the same way.

“More than anything, it was a lot of ‘invisible hours’ that went into the program. While the season runs from March to May, we are unofficially a year-round program, and our summer open gyms will begin in about two weeks from now. Nothing worth anything is ever earned easily, so we’ll continue to come together as one and come together often so that when March 2026 rolls around, we’ll be more than ready to roll.”

Michael Love is a TribLive reporter covering sports in the Alle-Kiski Valley and the eastern suburbs of Pittsburgh. A Clearfield native and a graduate of Westminster (Pa.), he joined the Trib in 2002 after spending five years at the Clearfield Progress. He can be reached at mlove@triblive.com.

Tags: Gateway

The Middlebury women’s track and field team closed out competition at the NCAA Championships on Saturday. Audrey MacLean was the sole Panther to take part in the day, hitting the track in the 5,000 meters at the SPIRE Institute in Geneva, Ohio.
 
HIGHLIGHTS

• MacLean settled into the middle of the pack for the first half of the race, climbing 10 spots by the midway point.
• The sophomore maintained 10th place until the final 400 where she passed a pair of competitors to finish in eighth place with a time of 16:42.81. 

NOTES

• MacLean earned runner-up honors in the steeplechase on Thursday to secure a pair of All-American honors.
• This marked MacLean’s fourth appearance at a national meet, competing at the NCAA Championships in cross country each of the last two years, while placing sixth in the steeple a year ago.
• This season, MacLean rewrote the record books for Middlebury, setting clockings in steeplechase (10:21.15) and the 5,000 (16:26.94).

The official list of All-American honorees will be shared in the coming days.

Published May 25, 2025 8:21pm

Updated May 25, 2025 8:21pm

There will be a new champion in NCAA men’s volleyball soon.

On Sunday, De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde defeated the University of Perpetual Help System DALTA, 24-26, 25-22, 30-28, 25-17, to eliminate the ALTAs from playoff contention in the NCAA Season 100 men’s volleyball tournament and end the Las Piñas crew’s hopes for a fifth straight crown.

The two teams were neck-and-neck early in the fourth set as they were tied at 8 before the Blazers pulled away and took a 14-10 lead. Perpetual caught up as it trailed 16-14, but Benilde pulled away anew with the likes of Raymark Betco and James Marasigan leading in the rally.

With Benilde leading 20-16, Jeff Marapoc tried to put Perpetual closer, but Marasigan, Mike Balbacal, Jacob Herrera, scored three straight for the Blazers. A service ace from Marasigan put Benilde at match point before Rocky Roy Motol sealed the victory.

Motol led the Blazers with 28 points from 25 attacks and three blocks, to go with 17 receptions and nine digs, while Jacob Agassi Herrera added 19 points. Marasigan had his own triple-double of 14 points, 23 receptions, and 12 digs, while 13 points.

Kobe Brian Taguba’s 29 points and Marapoc’s 16-point output for the ALTAs went to naught as Perpetual fell short in the end game.

Benilde, now at the top spot with 14-3, will still play Lyceum of the Philippines University on Friday. Perpetual, who slipped to 9-8, will wrap its season on Wednesday against San Beda University.

—JKC, GMA Integrated News

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Isaiah Preuitt had quite a freshman year for the Long Beach State volleyball team. He played sparingly for Long Beach State before hearing his number called in the Big West championship against Hawaii.

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He then saw playing time in both the NCAA semis and the national championship.

“Whenever I looked out at the audience I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is reality, like, we’re here,’” said Preuitt of the national championship game.

“I just had to stay ready,” said Preuitt of the time he spent off the court. “I knew the opportunity would come. My coaches prepped me pretty well. When it came, I was ready, and I went out there, and we had fun. We took the natty.”

LBSU is a national power in volleyball but came up short the last few years in the NCAA tournament.

Preuitt and company won the program’s first championship since 2019 when they swept UCLA on May 12.

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“So honored,” said the former #4-ranked boys high school volleyball player in the country. “To play for Alan Knipe and that coaching staff is such a blessing. I love those people so much. To win that for them and all of our fans, the LB Nation, it was a lot of fun.”

The question begs, what’s next? After all, Isaiah won a national championship in his first year playing.

Preuitt thinks LBSU can win a second straight title.

“I think so,” he said. “I think with our Long Beach system and how we play the game of volleyball, if we can work hard and do our jobs, I think we can potentially see the result we want.”

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