Anybody affiliated with City League wrestling in any shape or form over the past 25 years is probably familiar with the name Chaney Lewis.
A 2000 graduate of Schenley High School, Lewis carved out a solid high school career as a two-time City League champion before starting his coaching career a few years later as an assistant at Prospect Middle School. He then spent seven years as an assistant at Brashear High School from 2006-12, where he played an instrumental role in the development of the City League’s first and only PIAA wrestling champion — the late Godwin Nyama.
Outside of his role as an assistant at the high school, Lewis would escort Nyama to and from club practices while helping raise funds by selling two boxes of candy per day to his co-workers at UPMC Presbyterian, all so Nyama could travel to tournaments around the country in the offseason. He also served as a mentor to several other wrestlers during his time at Brashear, giving them a positive influence to look up to on and off the mat.
It should come as no surprise, then, that his son is taking after his old man — and for Neighborhood Academy freshman Chaney Lewis Jr., now is the time to carve out his own legacy.
“I’ve been competitive my entire life,” Lewis Jr. said. “[My dad] is proud of me no matter what. But if I can make it up there, through his guidance — he would be pretty proud. … He definitely has done a lot [for me]. I do have to win for him.”
After leaving Brashear for his first head coaching job at Westinghouse in 2012, Lewis spent the next decade coaching the Bulldogs before moving on to take over the newly formed wrestling team at Neighborhood Academy in 2023.
“Being a City League coach for a long time, I still feel the similarities,” Lewis said. “We’re a WPIAL school, but 99% of my kids come from Pittsburgh Public Schools. So we’re dealing with the same things. And I’m OK with that. I’m accustomed to it, and I can deal with it.”
A tiny, tight-knit college preparatory private school in Garfield comprising mostly inner-city students, Neighborhood Academy is rapidly emerging as one of the premier small-school athletic hotbeds in the WPIAL. The Bulldogs’ boys basketball team reached last year’s WPIAL Class 1A championship game, and many have them tabbed as the front-runner to bring home the title this year. Plus, senior sprinter DeJuan Croumbles is the reigning WPIAL Class 2A 100-meter champion.
And although he is only just getting started in his high school career, it looks like a safe bet to call Lewis Jr. the “next big thing” in the neighborhood.
“I think about Godwin all the time,” Lewis said. “Sometimes I mention him at practice, when I talk about situations and what we had to overcome and how improvement can happen with just some hard work and doing the right things. The similarities are there.
“When Godwin was young, he was tough, but I think Chaney is ahead of him at this stage of his career.”

Through the first 13 matches of his high school career, Lewis Jr. was nearly flawless. Competing at 160 pounds, he went 13-0 while scoring bonus points in 12 matches, including five pins and four technical falls. His first true test came on Dec. 11 against senior Kyren Veasley of Highlands, who holds a career record of 76-26. After a back-and-forth scrap that lasted until the ultimate tiebreaker period, Lewis Jr. came out on top for a 3-1 victory.
Coming off a multiweek layoff over the holidays, Lewis Jr. began ramping up his training for the second half of the season. Speaking after practice Jan. 7, just a few days before entering the loaded Mid-Winter Mayhem tournament at IUP — one of the toughest in-season tournaments in the state — Lewis Jr. said he hoped to go undefeated all four years of high school.
Nothing wrong with shooting for the moon, right?
“I’ve always had big dreams,” Lewis Jr. said.
Easier said than done, of course. As Lewis Jr. would soon find out, no matter how tough or talented you are, there is always somebody tougher or more talented out there — especially as a 14-year-old freshman competing against some of the best 17- and 18-year-old seniors in Pennsylvania.
The Mid-Winter Mayhem tournament featured a handful of the top-ranked wrestlers in the state and even the country, with the 160-pound weight class headlined by Bishop McCort sophomore Melvin Miller and Altoona senior Luke Sipes. Miller is a reigning PIAA champion with a career record of 86-4 and one of the nation’s most prized prospects in the 2027 class, while Sipes is a North Carolina recruit and three-time PIAA medalist with a career record of 137-19.
Lewis Jr. received the No. 14 seed for the tournament, and he won his first match by an 8-5 decision against the No. 19 seed, Penn Manor’s Chase Harnish, in the Round of 32. He then took a 2-0 lead into the third period against No. 3 seed Hudson Spires of General McLane in the Round of 16, but Spires scored a takedown midway through the period followed by a pin with 19 seconds left to deal Lewis Jr. the first loss of his high school career.
Without much time to process the first setback of his career, Lewis Jr. regrouped and battled back with a pair of victories in the consolation bracket — first defeating Line Mountain’s Ethan Lenker via technical fall, 19-1, before taking out North Allegheny senior Kellen Buggey with a 17-9 major decision.
Only one win away from a spot on the podium, Lewis Jr. then ran into a tough matchup against No. 4 seed Jaden Wehler of St. Mary’s, a former PIAA qualifier who holds a combined record of 60-12 with 50 bonus-point victories over the past two seasons. Wehler won via technical fall to eliminate Lewis Jr. from the tournament with a record of 3-2.
“Both of Chaney’s losses were tough guys. He was in there in the first one. He was locked in,” Lewis said. “He bumped his knee up actually in that match. … His thing is, he tries not to complain too much. I think he held back a little too much. But he toughed it out. He wrestled. He didn’t complain. He still didn’t say anything to me. I had to get it out of him.
“He took it on the chin. He’s ready to keep working hard.”

The Mid-Winter Mayhem tournament served as a bit of a wake-up call to Lewis Jr., who won a pair of Keystone state championships in junior high while also twice finishing in fifth place at the prestigious PJW state tournament. Lewis Jr. is even more acclaimed on the freestyle and Greco-Roman circuit — the two styles contested in the Olympics — which he prefers to the folkstyle competition in high school. He compiled a record of 18-0 and earned All-American honors while competing at the 14-and-under national duals in both freestyle and Greco-Roman last summer.
But while Lewis Jr. has dreams of one day competing on the international circuit, first he must find a way to conquer the toughest state tournament in the country — all while competing for a school with only six to eight varsity wrestlers, depending on the day. Most of his Neighborhood Academy teammates have zero prior wrestling experience, meaning Lewis Jr. spends much of his time at practice showing his teammates the ropes and passing on his wisdom rather than doing his own training, almost like another coach on the mat.
“I can find a way to work hard without having people as good as me around,” Lewis Jr. said. “Even though it does help, I can always find a way around it.”
After practice at school, Lewis Jr. then heads to another practice at one of several clubs he attends. Although he likes to mix it up and visit different clubs around the area, Lewis Jr. spends most of his time at Division 1 Training Center, run by former West Mifflin standout and four-time PIAA medalist James Fleming, and South Hills Wrestling Academy, run by former Pitt coach and NCAA All-American Matt Kocher.
With so much of his life dedicated to the sport, it might be hard to envision a young teenager devoting any time or energy to other activities outside of wrestling — but Lewis Jr. finds a way.
“I just want to try out new stuff,” Lewis Jr. said. “I do have a bit of free time. … You just have to nip everything in the bud. You’ve got to get it done as soon as you can.”
Although he stands only 5 feet 6, Lewis Jr. can dunk a basketball. He grew up playing football but has since taken more of a liking to soccer, and he is still trying to decide which sport he would rather play next fall. He also said he plans on running track in the spring.
Outside of sports, Lewis Jr. is an avid musician who plays several instruments in his spare time, holding occasional jam sessions with fellow wrestlers from around the city. He often brings his bass guitar to school and has even discussed the idea of starting a music club with his classmates.
Oh, and he is an honor-roll student with a 3.9 GPA.
“I’m a busy person, too. I’m doing a lot myself. Single dad, I’ve got all the kids,” said Lewis, a father of three boys. “It’s rough, but you make it happen. The things that you love, you’ll fit into your 24 hours. … [Lewis Jr.] will stay up a little later and wake up a little earlier. He wakes up an hour and a half before he has to and gets some stuff done. And this is stuff I didn’t even know until I saw it.”

As a coach, Lewis is constantly searching for ways to push Lewis Jr. to his limits while also trying to build Neighborhood Academy’s program from the ground up. But as a father, he couldn’t be more proud of the way his eldest son continues to exceed even his wildest expectations.
“It’s a dream come true,” Lewis said. “For it to happen — you kind of hope for the best, but things weren’t forced on him. … He does what he wants. If he likes it, no matter what anybody else thinks, he’s going to do it.
“He has a cowboy hat and cowboy boots and wears them to school. And he’s been doing it since before Beyonce. He just likes it. That’s what he’s into. He’s just always been himself.”
One week after taking his first two high school defeats at the Mid-Winter Mayhem tournament, Lewis Jr. returned to action at the Allegheny County tournament, another chance to test his mettle and hone his skills against some of the top talent in the WPIAL.
After going toe-to-toe with some elite competition, Lewis Jr. earned his first spot on the podium at a major tournament with a sixth-place finish.
Lewis Jr. won his first two matches in lopsided fashion, one via first-period fall and another via technical fall, to advance to the quarterfinal round. There, he faced off with West Mifflin’s Cooper Dietz, a junior who entered with a record of 15-1 on the season with his only loss coming against reigning PIAA champion Maddox Shaw of Thomas Jefferson. After falling behind early, Lewis Jr. battled back to tie the score, 5-5, but in the end, it was Dietz who came out on top with a 9-7 decision after a four-point move in the third period.
After falling into the consolation bracket, Lewis Jr. rattled off a pair of dominant wins on Saturday to clinch his first Allegheny County medal. First, he decked Santo Cerminaro of North Hills with a pin in 1:58, then he earned his second win of the season against Buggey, this time via 20-4 technical fall.
That sent him to the consolation semifinals, where Lewis Jr. amassed an 11-5 lead against Fox Chapel’s Milo Chiu, only to get pinned with five seconds left in the bout. His tournament then came to a close with an 18-3 defeat against Moon’s Liam Costa in the fifth-place bout, bringing his overall record to 20-5 on the season.
“[The losses] just really helped us zero in on the things we need to work on,” Lewis said. “If we think we’re working hard now, we’ve got to work harder and smarter still. I think we’re doing some things well, but it’s not bad to adjust. … We just have to put the work in and get the experience and get tighter on the technique, and we’ll be all right.
“We’re headed down that path. It could be next year, [it could be] senior year. We’ll get there, but it’s the path you’ve got to take.”
Steve is a sports writer at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike. Email him at srotstein@unionprogress.com.