Despite many obstacles, Aliquippa again bidding for a state championship
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After a couple of September losses some people, Aliquippa coach Mike Warfield believes, had his team dead and buried.
People aren’t used to see the Quips lose – ever.
Before last year they had gone 40-2 in the previous three seasons, with two PIAA Class 4A titles and a championship-game appearance.
Go back to Warfield’s first season, 2018, and the Quips were 74-6 with three state championships over six-year span.
Warfield, a retired state trooper and former Quips quarterback, stepped down as head coach before the 2024 season to regenerate. The team slipped to an 8-3 finish; its amazing streak of 16 consecutive district championship-game appearances was snapped.
In the months that followed a handful of top players, almost all of them college prospects, transferred out of the program, to other local schools or to national powerhouses such as St. Frances of Baltimore or IMG Academy in Florida.
Then there were early losses to Avonworth and New Castle, and an injury to starting quarterback Marques Council Jr., a Yale recruit. With three weeks left in the regular season his family announced he was done for the season.
“Everyone had us at the local funeral home,” Warfield quipped.
The talent runs deep but the pride runs deeper at a program such as Aliquippa’s, which has won a record 21 WPIAL championships and has sent more players to the Pro Football Hall of Fame than any high school in the nation.
“(I asked the kids to) just keep pushing and make sure we’re playing our best football the last six weeks of the season,” Warfield said. “The kids stayed together; they maintained their focus and just kept getting better. That’s all you can ask for.”
Like almost every other year for the past two decades Aliquippa is playing in the PIAA semifinals. It faces unbeaten Twin Valley Friday at 7 in Lewistown.
The Quips might have three losses staining their resume but they’re big and fast, as you would expect from state semifinalist, and Council Jr. is running and throwing with no discernible sign of injury. They are a formidable foe.
“There are four teams left in the state in 4A,” said Twin Valley coach Brett Myers. “If you look at each of them, they’re gonna have good quarterback play, they’re gonna be physical teams, and they’re gonna really play hard. Aliquippa’s no different.”
The same can be said of Twin Valley (13-0), which is two wins away from becoming just the second Berks County football team to complete a perfect season or win a state championship. Wyomissing, led by Detroit Lions linebacker Alex Anzalone, was the first, in 2012.
Only a handful of Berks football programs have ever reached 14-0. There was Wilson, with NFL-bound quarterback Kerry Collins, in 1989. Wyomissing, in 2006. Wilson in 2008. Berks Catholic in 2013. Wilson in 2014.
The Raiders put together perhaps the greatest regular season in Berks football history. They’re coming off an impressive district run. With a win Friday they’ll be considered one of the best teams in Berks history. With a win after that . . . well, do the math.
Myers is not thinking that far ahead, and you can bet his players aren’t, either. They have been schooled to think only about properly executing the next play, and nothing more. That kind of laser focus is one of the reasons they’ve been so dominant . . . why they’ve been able to play from ahead and put teams away quickly . . . why they’ve been able to play from behind and not concern themselves about the scoreboard.
They were down 14-0 in the first quarter of their district semifinal at West York — easily their largest deficit of the season. Never blinked. Kept pounding the ball and turned the game into a romp, ending it with 45 unanswered points.
“You can’t worry about the past, you can’t worry about the future,” Myers said. “In football, the only thing you can take care of is the next six to eight seconds. We’ve got a mature team that understands that.”
Myers knows Aliquippa football all too well. In 2018, when he was the head coach at Middletown, his team faced the Quips in the state championship game. Aliquippa won, 35-0.
“They played hard, and with an edge,” he said of Aliquippa, “and this team looks to play the same way.”
The Quips have been so good in recent years it’s easy to forget they could be considered underdogs when it comes to the postseason. By enrollment the school is one of the smallest 2As in the state, with 156 boys in grades 9-11.
The football program, seeking a higher level of competition, opted to move up to 3A in 2016. Not long after that the PIAA adopted its “Competitive Balance” rule, which pushed the Quips another level higher because of their playoff success.
The school appealed to the PIAA, to no avail. When faced with a bump to 5A in 2022 the school sued the PIAA and was granted a preliminary court injunction. The PIAA initially appealed that court ruling, then ultimately dropped its appeal.
That left people around Aliquippa football feeling about the PIAA the way the Oakland Raiders once did about Pete Rozella and the NFL. They felt picked on and scorned. Those hard feelings never slowed down Al Davis or Kenny Stabler or Gene Upshaw; it hasn’t stopped the Quips, either.
“It’s not fair to be forced to play up this high,” Warfield said. “The health and safety (of our players) is really a concern (because of) the number of snaps they have to play against true 4A schools.”
And yet that hasn’t deterred them. The Quips have allowed all of five touchdowns in four district playoff wins. Now they’re one win away from a fourth trip to the state championship game in five years.
How can that be, Warfield was asked. How have they been able to overcome so many obstacles?
“Our kids just love to play the game,” he said.
