WPIAL's best and worst over the past quarter century

 By Mike White | Thursday, Aug. 28, 8:35 p.m.

Who had the best football program in the WPIAL in the past 25 years? You can find out tomorrow.

Our first Varsity Xtra section of the year comes out tomorrow with a preview of the football season. The cover story is about a project we worked on this summer, putting together the records of the past 25 years for all of the 123 teams in the WPIAL.

We’ll wait until tomorrow to unveil the best program of the past quarter century. But you might be able to guess. Here is a hint: The school begins with an ‘A.’ and plays in Class AA.

Here are some other stats I can reveal from the past 25 years:

• Upper St. Clair and Aliquippa have qualified for the playoffs the most of any team in the past quarter century. They both qualified 23 times. Jeannette and Monessen are next in line, qualifying 21 times. North Hills and Woodland Hills are next, qualifying 20 times.
• The team with the worst record over the past 25 seasons is West Shamokin with a 6-42 reocrd, a .125 percentage. But West Shamokin has been in the WPIAL only five years, so it’s really not fair to say the team has been bad for 25 years.
• The next-worst record belongs to Albert Gallatin. I never realized how bad this program has been until we crunched the numbers. The Colonials have won only 44 games in 25 years. Their record is 44-198-2, good for only a .184 percentage. They made the playoff once. The record includes a few years when the school was called Tri-Valley.
• Five teams have never been in the playoffs at any time in the past 25 years. They are West Shamokin, Deer Lakes, Southmoreland, Avella and Summit Academy. But Summit Academy has been in the WPIAL for only 11 seasons.

To see how every team has done over the past 25 years, get tomorrow’s Post-Gazette.