Baldwin Highlanders - 1975 & 1988 AAA

Surprise ....Upper St. Clair moves on ! HARMARVILLE - Upper St Clair Kip Guenther knows he is in the beginning of building a program at Upper St Clair that has a lot of promise. Well, for the here and now we all received a little glimpse of the future at the Central Catholic Invitational this weekend. For the teams in Division A ....Serra, Monsignor Bonner and Shaler would probably look at USC's 2-4-0 start to the season and count a win on the CC Invitational slate....bad assumption. Eric Echard put the Panthers on the board early in the first 1-0. After Shaler's Justin Thomas tied the score falling down on the wrist shot at 4:44 of the 1st, USC got goals from Ian Joyce and Matt Major to take a 3-1 lead. Jeff Greenberg added two shorthanded tallies and Matt Moran a single as USC posted an impressive 6-1 victory over Shaler. Notable performance was turned in by USC freshman defenseman Kris McDonough, who was a dominating force on the blueline. The Panthers swept the bracket and moved on to the Semi-Finals on Sunday.

Dunbarton sweeps tough B Division ! HARMARVILLE ~ North Allegheny had some newfound confidence with a big win earlier in the day against Bethel Park 2-0. Brian Hershberger's club was looking to match up with a Dunbarton club who had ripped Bethel and Fox Chapel in its opening round. Dunbarton and North Allegheny engaged in a hard hitting and chippy game through the scoreless first two periods with excellent goaltending from the Tiger's Matt Logoyda and Dunbarton's Ryan Bosack. Dunbarton came on in the third period, but Lagoda made magnificent saves with 5:45 and 4:45 remaining. Dunbarton's captain Brad Binns scored the game winner with 1:37 remaining for a 1-0 victory and helped his club move onto the Semi-Finals.

Central Catholic mounts big comeback ! HARMARVILLE ~ Holy Ghost Prep skipper Brian Tibbels was liking his trip to Pittsburgh after the second period of the Firebirds game against Central Catholic with a 2-0 lead on goals by Josh Steaker and Jack Hillock and an opening big win against Penn Hills. Especially, since his big gun Ryan Gunderson didn't make the trip. Central Catholic erased all of that as Chris Niznik, Eddie Martin and Matt Graboski scored three goals in a little over four minutes to pace the Vikings to a 3-2 win. Brian Adamczyk made some excellent saves to keep his team in the game and to preserve an exciting victory to put his team one win from a semi-final appearance.

TJ has a new look with similar results ! HARMARVILLE - Franklin Regional has played well at time this season as exemplified by a big 8-4 win over Baldwin Friday night and have struggled at times as witnessed by a 9-1 thumping at the hands of Cathedral Prep last Monday. Coach Jim Damp was looking for consistency from his club in the CC Invitational. Thomas Jefferson has matured into a nice club this season under the newly acclaimed tenure of coaching from Don Powell, who has led the Jaguars to three State AA Championships. The Jaguars are also sporting some awesome looking new uniforms to sport their new image. After Dakota Drew put Franklin on top in the first period, TJ scored four unanswered goals from CJ Parkinson, Luke Wawrzeniak, Zach Hanbury and Eric Holzer to build a 4-1 lead after two periods. FR's Mike Mirzibeigi and TJ's Grant Heinauer exchanged goals as Thomas Jefferson positioned themselves for a big showdown with Plum to claim the D Division move onto the semi finals for the first time since their 2000 Central Catholic Invitational championship.

Serra Catholic likes them BM or MB ! HARMARVILLE - Serra coach John Mooney was looking for ways to help his team to get motivated to play Philadelphia AAA power Monsignor Bonner without stars Steve Leppo and Jessie Lubasch. The first way would be to tell his goaltender Tim Johnson to imagine that they were playing Bishop McCort.....who Johnson has had great success.....change the "BM" to "MB" and Johnson will deliver...sounds reasonable. Johnson stopped 38 of 40 shots as teammates CJ King [3 goals] and Cody Moy [2 goals] paced to Eagles to a 6-2 victory over the Friars.