Shady Side Academy delays football season until Week 3

By: Chris Harlan
Friday, August 28, 2020 | 8:34 PM

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Shady Side Academy won’t start football season until Week 3, a decision meant to limit potential exposure to coronavirus.

The voluntary delay, which involves all contact sports, was revealed Friday by the school’s administration, coach Chuck DiNardo said. The football team will skip its preseason scrimmage and two regular-season weeks.

The new opener is Sept. 24 at Sto-Rox.

“With our administration, the main thing is trying to limit our exposure interscholastically,” DiNardo said.

The players will continue to practice daily.

“We had a long meeting as a team today and talked about it,” DiNardo said. “We’re taking the same approach we’ve taken all summer. Let’s be really grateful that we get to come out here and practice today. Let’s get better.”

Shady Side Academy was scheduled to scrimmage Springdale on Sept. 4 and host Carlynton for a nonconference game Sept. 18. A Sept. 11 game against Summit Academy already was canceled when Summit decided to not play football this season.

DiNardo’s team went 5-5 last season and reached the WPIAL Class 2A playoffs.

The school will take an approach similar to some colleges by putting an emphasis on staying healthy for conference games, he said. The remaining five-game schedule includes four conference matchups against Serra Catholic, Apollo-Ridge, Steel Valley and Ligonier Valley.

“We want to make sure we’re playing our conference games,” he said, “and we’re still able to compete for a WPIAL berth, a conference championship and a WPIAL title.”

The biggest challenge will be jumping into the middle of the season against teams that already played a couple of games. Shady Side Academy won’t play a scrimmage before its nonconference matchup at Sto-Rox.

“It’s going to be a different year, but it’s a different year for everybody,” DiNardo said. “For us, a big thing is going to be entering a season when other people have a head start ironing out the mistakes. There’s a reason that Week 1 games look like Week 1 games. All of the kinks have to be worked out.

“We’re going to have to get into midseason form without the luxury of making those mistakes in games.”

Chris Harlan is a TribLive reporter covering sports. He joined the Trib in 2009 after seven years as a reporter at the Beaver County Times. He can be reached at charlan@triblive.com.

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