Freeport Yellow Jackets

HARMARVILLE - North Allegheny 4 Central Catholic 2 The Tigers made a commitment for the 2003-2004 season long before the opening faceoff and it has paid off as NA coach Tom Pandolfo, has stressed conditioning and is beginning to make believers out of NA and non-NA followers. Central Catholic coach Kevin Zielmanski is trying to get his team to put a consistent 45 game together, which has eluded the Vikings since their opening victory at Meadville and will continue to until CC plays hungrier and maybe a little joust with NA would be just what the doctor ordered. Central jumped on top as Matt Grabowski scored at 13:33 of the first period. The Tigers responded as Derek Rusbarsky scored midway through the first and captain Bryan Maloney put the Tigers ahead with 1:50 remaining for a 2-1 lead. Bill Weiler scored a crucial power play goal with just :19 left in the second period to extend the Tiger advantage to 3-1. Matt Urso teamed up with Eddie Martin and Matt Capalongo to pull CC back within one with 8:21 remaining and plenty of time left to tie it. But North Allegheny as it has throughout the pre-season and early in the regular season stood tall and Matt Zrebiac shot a 3:04 of the third found its way through traffic and put the game on ice for a 4-2 NA victory and a spot in the Semi-Finals on Sunday.

Pine Richland 2 Mt Lebanon 1 Mt Lebanon and head coach Paul Taibi has been on a marathon, which has seen the Blue Devils play 4 games in 4 days prior to their matchup with upstart Pine Richland. With a berth in the Semi-Finals at stake, the coach Jimmy Black’s Rams were playing with a lot of confidence coming off victories against a tough Archbishop Ryan team 5-4 and pounding a very good Upper St Clair team earlier in the day 6-0. Pine Richland caught Mt Lebanon sleeping in the first period and jumped on them for 11 shots but could not beat Matt Vaughn as the game remained scoreless. The Rams broke the scoreless drought at 13:24 of the second as Josh Foder redirected a Drew Lilly shot to give PR a 1-0 lead. Richland held the lead until 4:19 remaining in regulation as Mt Lebanon’s Eric Sloan wristed a shot while falling down which eluded Nick Gazzo and tied the game at one apiece. The Rams would have the final say as Brian Kreitt redirected a Josh Foder pass past Vaughn with 2:53 remaining to give Pine Richland a 2-1 victory and a berth in the Semi-Finals on Sunday.

CORAOPOLIS - Special Report to Pa Hockey provided by Indiana Hockey Club The IHS Varsity Ice Hockey team ended their three game road trip with a win tonight shutting out Carrick 10-0 at the Airport Ice Complex in Moon. Zach Diamond opened the scoring effort with a power play goal at 13:23 in the first period. Mike Hart finished out the period with another powerplay goal, unassisted. The second period saw seven more goals, one each by Joe Appolonia and Alan Halapin, while Michael Jack had two, and Diamond added a second. Jason Boske rounded out the period with two of his three goals for a natural hat trick. Mike Nesper led assists with five, followed by tow from Diamond, adn one apiece from Halapin, Jack, Zach Damico, Phil Paterson, and Brad McCoy. Goaltender Mike Mentch made five saves in one and a half periods, while Mike Kennedy finished out the game with five more. Indiana outshot their opponent 50-10. The Indians, now 4-1 will meet Kittanning next Wednesday, November 26th at 8:15 following the JV game at 6:45 against Thomas Jefferson at the Indiana Ice & Expo Center.

LOWER BURRELL - Jan Battista may now know what he was getting himself into by coming back to the Penn Hills Hockey program that he and his brother Joe [you may know him as the Penn State Hockey Coach who has lead the Icers to 4 Straight ACHA Division 1 National Championships and 7 overall or maybe just Joe Ba] played for during the late 1970’s [on some pretty good Penn Hills teams by the way]. Jan inherited a Penn Hills program which has fluttered ever since Jerry ‘Dr Evil’ Bass was politically removed by a self serving group of parents, who did not have the best interest of the hockey program in mind when the ousted the coach and has suffered ever since. Anyway, Jan is doing his best to right the program, which has been around since 1971 as one of the original programs in Western Pennsylvania, since it took the ice against Churchill on March 21, 1971. Jan may want to sit and have a little chat with Bruce Cameron, who has been involved with Hempfield Hockey and more importantly given over 20 years to hockey as a teacher of the game and assistant coach for the Hempfield Hockey program and has finally taken the Head Coaching position. Bruce is a true builder from the beginning of Westmoreland Hockey during the early 80’s and a fixture at the Kirk Nevin Arena, who along with people like Dave Small, who built the Greensburg Salem program, Andy Cesarski, builder of the Latrobe program, Butch Marrietta, builder of the Greensburg CC program, Gary Swingle, builder of the Franklin Regional program are part of a group of people who served hockey for the betterment of the game of hockey. Little did I know until last night. Bruce shared with me that he was involved with my HS Hockey coach Dan Sheehy, in bringing hockey schools to Greensburg in the early 1980’s when all of the aforementioned programs began. One thing Hempfield has had over the past few years has been some prolific scoring and that has been a trademark under Bernie Piesek and Bob Morningstar through the mid to late 1990’s, but it was Penn Hills who got the early jump in this one as Eddie Obenauff scored at 13:26 and Willie Banks at 11:37 to give the Indians a 2-0 lead. Hempfield’s top line answered in the opening period as Dan Margonari and John Zurenski, scored at 8:48 and 4:55 respectively to tie the game. The Indians regained the lead as the crafty Ryan Jones tickled the twine with just 0:46 left to give PH the lead 3-2 at the break. On to the second and the game really opened up as Hempfield took the lead 4-3 on goals by Jordan Bishop at 13:36 and Brian Bittner at 11:12. Ryan Jones lit the lamp again at 7:56 of the middle period, but it didn’t last long as the Spartans Jeff Robinson and John Zurenski scored 27 seconds apart at 7:56 and 7:29 for a 6-4 Hempfield lead. Jones answered completing the hat trick less than a minute later at 6:16 and Penn Hills was within one. The backbreaking goal came with 2:48 left in the second as Margonari combined with Robinson and Zurenski to extend the lead to 7-5 for Hempfield. The game was still in reach foe Penn Hills as Eddie Obenauff missed a golden opportunity to cut the lead to 7-6, but just shot wide of Hempfield goaltender Julian Yakubisin. The Spartans smelled victory as Jordan Bishop scored on the wraparound at 12:48 and Zurenski completed the hat trick on a nice pass from Margonari at 11:46 and the rout was on 9-5. Jones added his fourth goal on the evening to cut the lead to 9-6, but Jake Belli put the exclamation point on a 10-6 victory for Hempfield and win # 1 for the Spartans and Bruce Cameron in 2003-2004.

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