Rockets, Raiders, Pioneers, Maples kick off football season
Lori C. Padilla
The 2025 high school football season gets underway tonight with four of the five Greene County teams set for action.
All are involved in non-conference games with 7 p.m. kickoffs even though one features a pair of Class A Tri-County South teams with Mapletown traveling to Avella.
The two have played each other twice the last several years with the second meeting counting in conference play.
Two county teams meet each other with Class A West Greene traveling to Class AA Waynesburg Central.
The other local team in action is Jefferson-Morgan, coming off a perfect regular season in 2024, which hosts Class A Chartiers-Houston.
Carmichaels will not play in Week Zero as is its usual practice under coach Ryan Krull. The Mikes host Sto-Rox in their non-conference opener next Friday.
George Messich, the dean of all WPIAL coaches, enters his 43rd season at the helm of the Maples and insists he still loves what he does as the first game of the season looms.
“I tell my wife Linda (Messich, Mapletown athletic director) all the time when it becomes a job, I’ll quit,” Messich said. “I was a fifth-grade teacher for 31 years and have been a head football coach for 43 years and to me they’re the greatest possible jobs in America. You know there were possible jobs in coal mines and power plants but to me, I’ve been blessed to be able to do what I’ve done here at Mapletown. I’m happy with the path I ended up on.”
Even after over four decades, Messich admits he gets nervous on opening day.
“I still get jitters before our first game,” Messich said. “Heck, I had jitters Friday night before our scrimmage game. It’s still an exciting time for me when the season starts.”
Messich said playing Avella twice a year is something both schools agreed upon.
“We’re two of the smallest Class A schools and we’re usually pretty evenly matched so both of us felt it made sense,” Messich said.
The two split their games last year with Mapletown, beset with injuries, winding up with a 1-9 record overall and 0-7 in the TCS while the Eagles finished 3-7 and 2-5.
Waynesburg and West Greene also met in last year’s opener with the visiting Raiders claiming a 42-7 victory at Kennedy Field.
A year ago West Greene, under first-year head coach Beau Jackson, went 4-6 overall but 4-2 in the TCS to tie Bentworth and Carmichaels for third place. The Pioneers, however, lost the automatic playoff spot to the Bearcats on a tiebreaker and neither they nor the Mikes were chosen as one of the WPIAL wild cards.
Carmichaels was 5-3 overall in 2024.
Waynesburg went 6-5 overall and 4-2 and tied for second in the Century Conference on its way to qualifying for the WPIAL playoffs where it lost a first-round game at South Allegheny. The Raiders, who surprisingly replaced Aaron Georgi as head coach in the offseason, chose veteran coach Joe Kuhns as his successor. Kuhns’ long resume includes a previous three-year stint at Waynesburg.
Jefferson-Morgan won at Chartiers-Houston, 35-6, in last year’s opener and will host this year’s meeting at Parker Field. The Bucs were 3-7 overall and 1-5 in the Black Hills Conference last year.
The Rockers are led by third-year coach Shane Ziats and senior star Deakyn DeHoet and put together an undefeated regular season and won the Tri-County South title last season. J-M finished at 10-1 overall after a 39-30 home playoff loss to South Side and was 7-0 in the TCS in 2024.