Story by Curtis Walsh – Beaver County Radio. Photo of Heinz Field courtesy of Aliquippa AD Dr. Jennifer J. Damico. Published January 9, 2024 11:20 A.M.

(Aliquippa, Pa) It was recently announced that the PIAA intends on moving the Aliquippa Quips to 5A for the 2024 football season. State Representative Rob Matzie tells Beaver County Radio, him and the PA Athletic Oversight Committee are preparing legislation to bring some reform to the PIAA.

It’s been 25 years since the state legislature has taken a look at PIAA.
At that time, 13 recommendations for how they should operate were made,
and the PA Athletic Oversight committee was formed. The committee holds a hearing with the PIAA every year, where they talk about mainly finances and issues, but the committee ultimately has no governance.

The PIAA removed a rule that kept safety in the equation for determining how far teams can play up. Matzie says the PIAA removed the rule without telling anybody, and nobody knew until this week. The removal of the role effectively makes it so that the safety of players is not considered when making a team such as Aliquippa play up against teams that have over double the players they do. “What kind of message are we sending our kids?”, Matzie said. The PIAA will only consider success and transfers.

Southern Columbia has one seven straight titles, but has a “boundry list” that allows them to effectively recruit from nearby areas without punishment. St. Joes Prep, a 6A school in Philadelphia, currently dominates the 6A division and openly recruits players from other states. 6A is the highest division of the PIAA, so they are not met with any consequences.

The PIAA has repeatedly alleged that Aliquippa is recruiting. At least one Aliquippa player, who has attended the district since kindergarten, was allegedly named a transfer. “I’m not sure what type of leg Aliquippa is going to have to stand on”, Matzie said. “They may have to go to court”. Families and people close to the situation, including Matzie, say that some of these alleged transfers are people just trying to keep a roof over their head.

Matzie says legislation is in place and they preparing to put pressure on the board of the PIAA. The first bill will state, “if you are using a rule to determine classification every two years, that rule can only be used by following the exact census of students in the school.” Under current census data, Aliquippa would be classified as a 2A school, in the past they were 1A, but chose to play up in 2A for many years.

The PIAA is an independent non profit organization, in which schools pay dues to, and doesn’t fall under any department of the state. Matzie calls them “quasi-government” and says he believes approximately 90 percent of their funding is coming from tax payer dollars.

Matzie would like to see a super majority implemented into the PIAA, which could give the PA Athletic Oversight Committee voting and veto power against the PIAA. He believes state legislation has the power to perform a takeover on the PIAA, adding “They got comfortable”, and “I’m gonna poke the bear”.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — The National Park Service withdrew a proposal Monday to take down a statue of William Penn at a Philadelphia historical site as part of a renovation that touched off a torrent of criticism over the legacy of the man who founded the province of Pennsylvania.

In a brief statement, Independence National Historical Park said it has withdrawn the proposal it had announced quietly before the weekend about a wider renovation of Welcome Park, located just blocks from the Liberty Bell and the National Constitution Center.

The proposal, it said, was released “prematurely” and hadn’t undergone a complete internal review.

“No changes to the William Penn statue are planned,” it said. The park service never explained the reason for the impetus to remove the statue.

The plan had also involved expanding the telling of Philadelphia’s Native American history and fixing up a deteriorating hardscaped park.

Taking down the statue of William Penn, however, looked like it might become the latest front in a fight over how to tell the nation’s history through its monuments.

Pennsylvania’s top Republican state House member, Rep. Bryan Cutler, had accused President Joe Biden in a statement of trying to “cancel” William Penn. Cutler called it “another sad example of the left in this country scraping the bottom of the barrel of wokeism to advance an extreme ideology and a nonsensical view of history.”

Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro took credit for the park service’s reversal, saying in a statement that “my team has been in contact with the Biden Administration throughout the day to correct this decision.”

Welcome Park is a section of a city block bordered by apartments and a bed and breakfast. It is named for the ship that brought Penn to Philadelphia from England in 1682 and is built on the site of Penn’s home, the Slate Roof House, which was demolished in the 1800s.

Penn founded Pennsylvania after King Charles II granted him a charter for over 45,000 square miles (116,500 square kilometers) of land in 1681.

Andrew Murphy, a political science professor and biographer of Penn at the University of Michigan, said it didn’t surprise him that some people would object to tearing down the Penn statue.

Murphy said that being a Quaker in Penn’s time meant dressing in plain clothes, using plain speech and worshipping in plain spaces. Quakers at times refused to have grave markers to avoid calling attention to themselves.

Penn claimed that he did not want Pennsylvania named after him and that King Charles II chose the name to honor Penn’s father, Murphy said.

Murphy wondered if Penn would have even wanted a statue of himself.

“It may or may not make a difference, but the idea of there being a statue of Penn himself, it strikes me as something that Penn himself might have been quite ambivalent about,” Murphy said.

(Matt Drzik/Beaver County Radio)

Hopewell graduate Paul Posluszny was named as a new member of the College Football Hall of Fame last night. He was selected as one of nineteen players and three coaches announced as members who will be formally inducted into the Hall of Fame later this year.

Following a WPIAL Championship in 2002 with the Vikings, “Puz” went on to play at Penn State University at linebacker for four seasons. He was a two-time winner of the Chuck Bednarik award for best defensive player in college football, adding the Dick Butkus award for top linebacker in 2005.

Posluszny was then drafted 34th overall by the Buffalo Bills in the 2007 NFL Draft for what would become an 11-year career with Buffalo and Jacksonville. He would earn a Pro Bowl appearance with the Jaguars in 2014, and helped Jacksonville to the AFC Championship in what would be his final season. He retired in 2018.

Former Pitt wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald will also be inducted this year. The Minnesota native played two seasons for the Panthers, catching for 2,677 yards in just 26 games. He finished as runner-up to Oklahoma QB Jason White in voting for the 2003 Heisman Trophy. He would then be selected 3rd overall in the 2004 NFL Draft by the Arizona Cardinals, where he would spend the entirety of his 17-year professional football career.

(Matt Drzik/Beaver County Radio)

The Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry announced Monday that $2.8 million in grant funding will be heading to the direct care workforce, in the hopes of improving job quality and advancement opportunities for direct care workers who handle patients with disabilities and older patients..

Organizations including local workforce development boards, non-profit and non-governmental entities, community-based organizations, healthcare organizations, and others are eligible to apply. 

Applicants may request awards of up to $600,000 each with a performance period beginning July 1, 2024, to February 28, 2026. The deadline to apply is Feb. 29, 2024.

                  St. Peter and Paul of Beaver                 2 Hour Delay

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The first U.S. lunar lander in more than 50 years rocketed to space Monday, launching a race for private companies to deliver experiments and other items to the moon.

Astrobotic Technology’s lander caught a ride on a brand new rocket, United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan. The Vulcan streaked through the Florida predawn sky, putting the spacecraft on a roundabout route to the moon that should culminate with an attempted landing on Feb. 23.

“We are on our way to the moon!” Astrobotic chief executive John Thornton said.

The Pittsburgh company aims to be the first private business to successfully land on the moon, something only four countries have accomplished. But a Houston company also has a lander ready to fly, and could beat it to the lunar surface, taking a more direct path.

NASA gave the two companies millions to build and fly their own lunar landers. The space agency wants the privately owned landers to scope out the place before astronauts arrive while delivering NASA tech and science experiments as well as odds and ends for other customers. Astrobotic’s contract for the Peregrine lander: $108 million.

The last time the U.S. launched a moon-landing mission was in December 1972. Apollo 17’s Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt became the 11th and 12th men to walk on the moon, closing out an era that has remained NASA’s pinnacle.

The space agency’s new Artemis program — named after the twin sister of Apollo in Greek mythology — looks to return astronauts to the moon’s surface within the next few years. First will be a lunar fly-around with four astronauts, possibly before the end of the year.

Highlighting Monday’s moonshot was the long-delayed initial test flight of the Vulcan rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The 202-foot (61-meter) rocket is essentially an upgraded version of ULA’s hugely successful workhorse Atlas V, which is being phased out along with the company’s Delta IV. Jeff Bezos’ rocket company, Blue Origin, provided the Vulcan’s two main engines.

ULA declared success once the lander was free of the rocket’s upper stage, nearly an hour into the flight. “Yee-haw!” shouted chief executive Tory Bruno. “I am so thrilled, I can’t tell you how much.”

The Soviet Union and the U.S. racked up a string of successful moon landings in the 1960s and 70s, before putting touchdowns on pause. China joined the elite club in 2013 and India in 2023. But last year also saw landers from Russia and a private Japanese company slam into the moon. An Israeli nonprofit crashed in 2019.

Next month, SpaceX will provide the lift for a lander from Intuitive Machines. The Nova-C lander’s more direct one-week route could see both spacecraft attempting to land within days or even hours of one another.

The hourlong descent to the lunar surface — by far the biggest challenge — will be “exciting, nail-biting, terrifying all at once,” Thornton said.

Besides flying experiments for NASA, Astrobotic drummed up its own freight business, packing the 6-foot-tall (1.9-meter-tall) Peregrine lander with everything from a chip of rock from Mount Everest and toy-size cars from Mexico that will catapult to the lunar surface and cruise around, to the ashes and DNA of deceased space enthusiasts, including “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry and science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke.

The Navajo Nation recently sought to have the launch delayed because of the human remains. saying it would be a “profound desecration” of a celestial body revered by Native Americans. Thornton said the December objections came too late but promised to try to find “a good path forward” with the Navajo for future missions.

One of the spaceflight memorial companies that bought room on the lander, Celestis, said in a statement that no single culture or religion owns the moon and should not be able to veto a mission. More remains are on the rocket’s upper stage, which was boosted into a perpetual orbit around the sun reaching as far out as Mars.

Cargo fares for Peregrine ranged from a few hundred dollars to $1.2 million per kilogram (2.2 pounds), not nearly enough for Astrobotic to break even. But for this first flight, that’s not the point, according to Thornton.

“A lot of people’s dreams and hopes are riding on this,” he said.

(Matt Drzik/Beaver County Radio)

The concern and controversy over the recent announcement of Aliquippa football being assigned to play Class 5A football next season has made its way to Harrisburg.

State Representative Rob Matzie of Beaver County announced on Friday that he will be introducing legislation to analyze the operations, policies, finances and structure of the PIAA, including the process in which the PIAA classifies the levels at which schools compete in each sport.

Matzie says that the current way of operations puts student athletes in danger because of a lack of manpower and financial resources compared to the larger schools they would be competing against.

“I would wage this fight for Aliquippa or any student athlete in our commonwealth,” Matzie said. “Simply put, it’s unfair, unsafe and a dangerous disadvantage to our kids. What’s most disturbing is that I believe that this rule comes off as ignorant at best and arrogant at worst. Legislative action is necessary, and necessary now. Be assured, however, this is just the beginning. It’s been nearly 25 years since the last thorough review of the PIAA. It’s well past time for the legislature to have another look.”

(Matt Drzik/Beaver County Radio)

Pennsylvania State Police have released details about an assault following an attempted burglary in Franklin Township.

According to the report, 41-year-old Mark Drum got into an altercation with the unnamed 17-year-old would-be burglar when he noticed him walking down the stairs of his home. During the altercation, the juvenile suspect bit Mr. Drum’s son on the leg after he awoke to help his father, seized a pocket knife from the son, and proceed to slash Mr. Drum’s cheek before escaping barefoot from the scene. It was after the juvenile returned to the scene that he was taken into custody by Pennsylvania State Police.

No further details have been released.