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Uniontown High School football coach Cedric Lloyd.
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Uniontown High School votes to remain in WPIAL for football

Andrew Stein/Post-Gazette

Uniontown High School votes to remain in WPIAL for football

Another high school came close to pull­ing out of the WPIAL for foot­ball be­cause its team is strug­gling to be com­pet­i­tive.

The Union­town school board voted, 6-2, Mon­day night to stay in the WPIAL, but the school se­ri­ously was con­sid­er­ing drop­ping out of the league for foot­ball only, and pos­si­bly play­ing an in­de­pen­dent sched­ule next sea­son against teams from out­side the WPIAL. Union­town has played WPIAL foot­ball for al­most 100 years.

In mid-Oc­to­ber, Al­bert Gal­latin de­cided to leave the WPIAL for foot­ball only, be­gin­ning in 2019. Al­bert Gal­latin and Union­town are in Fay­ette County and Al­bert Gal­latin made its de­ci­sion be­cause it strug­gled for de­cades to be com­pet­i­tive.

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“We had pub­lic com­ment at the meet­ing,” said Dan Bos­nic, as­sis­tant su­per­in­ten­dent of the Union­town Area School Dis­trict. “A cou­ple par­ents spoke. But the board just felt that the best de­ci­sion to make at this time is to stay.”

Drew Dindl goes over a play with members of the Albert Gallatin High School football team. Dindl and athletic director Duane Dupont recommended to the school board that the Colonials football team no longer compete in the WPIAL, a recommendation the board approved Monday night.
Mike White
After decades of struggle, Albert Gallatin will leave WPIAL in football

Be­fore the meet­ing, Bos­nic dis­cussed why leav­ing the WPIAL was be­ing con­sid­ered.

“We’re just try­ing to eval­u­ate ev­ery op­tion for our stu­dents,” Bos­nic said. “We ob­vi­ously have strug­gled greatly in re­cent years. We want to see if there’s an­other av­e­nue that might give our stu­dents a bet­ter chance to have suc­cess on Fri­day nights.”

Union­town fin­ished 0-10 this sea­son in WPIAL Class 3A. Union­town is the big­gest school in Class 3A, in terms of en­roll­ment. The Raid­ers have not won a game since the 2016 sea­son, have lost 22 in a row and have gone 3-45 in the past five years.

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But since 2000, Union­town has had five win­ning sea­sons, the  most recent in 2009. In 2001, Union­town was 9-1. Union­town has won two WPIAL ti­tles (1962 and 1965), but the Raid­ers have made the WPIAL play­offs only 14 times in school his­tory.

Union­town started this past sea­son with close to 40 play­ers, but was down to about 20 by the sea­son’s end for var­i­ous rea­sons.

Bos­nic said Al­bert Gal­latin’s de­ci­sion to leave the WPIAL was not the im­pe­tus for Union­town’s de­par­ture from the WPIAL.

“We had these dis­cus­sions prior to Al­bert Gal­latin mak­ing that de­ter­mi­na­tion,” Bos­nic said.

Cedric Lloyd, Union­town’s coach, did not com­mit one way or the other about leav­ing the WPIAL.

“What I’ve been let­ting ev­ery­one know is I’m pre­pared to try and make us bet­ter,” Lloyd said. “That might mean some­thing dif­fer­ent to a lot of dif­fer­ent peo­ple. But I’m in this to im­prove our stu­dent-ath­letes and make them bet­ter.”

Mike White: mwhite@post-ga­zette.com and Twit­ter @mwhite­burgh.

First Published: December 4, 2018, 1:38 a.m.

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Uniontown High School football coach Cedric Lloyd.  (Andrew Stein/Post-Gazette)
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