All year long, this is exactly where Wayne Wade and the Clairton Bears expected to be.
Gearing up for its second consecutive trip to Acrisure Stadium, No. 2 Clairton (12-1) will kickstart a four-game slate of championship games by battling it out for the WPIAL Class 1A title at 11 a.m. Saturday morning after rattling off 12 wins in a row by a combined score of 600-55.
What the Bears didn’t expect to see on the other side, rather than a rematch of last year’s 21-20 thriller against the two-time defending champion Fort Cherry Rangers, was the No. 4 Laurel Spartans (12-1) crashing the party for the first time since 1989.
To Wade’s credit, though, he is always one to have his teams prepared for the unexpected. After all, this is his seventh trip to the championship game in 12 years at the helm after succeeding the legendary Tom Nola at Clairton — and he was also one of Nola’s top assistants when the team put together its famed 66-game win streak.
“It never gets old. I learned that as a kid,” Wade said. “We had a very good Little League baseball team. I started when I was 4 or 5 as a bat boy, and we went seven or eight years in a row to the championship, and it never got old. That’s the goal of every team, ever.”
Having raised four WPIAL championship banners of his own since taking over as head coach but none since 2019, Wade knows how much it means to the players, the school and to the community to be back in the big game. And with a senior quarterback like Jeff Thompson surrounded by a handful of big-time playmakers, the Bears are closer than ever before to securing their 15th WPIAL crown.
After dealing with injuries that prevented him from throwing for much of last season, Thompson has come back with a vengeance this fall, passing for 2,158 yards and 36 touchdowns with only four interceptions on the year. Of course, it helps having a variety of weapons to spread the ball around to, including Deon Lovelace-Pompey, Brandon Murphy, Michael Ruffin, Taris Wooding and Donte Wright.
“This group has been there and been a part of the playoffs and the playoff picture since they were freshmen,” Wade said. “They’re battle tested. They’re ready. They’re focused. We’ve had some great weeks of practice these last few weeks. … It’s going to take a great football team to beat us.
“We’ve got some unfinished business.”
But while scoring points in bunches is nice, Clairton has always taken immense pride in its fierce defense above all else — and this year’s unit has been one of its best ever, with nine shutouts on its ledger (all consecutive) and an average of just 5.6 points per game allowed.
“Our defense has been able to stop pretty much everybody’s run game this year,” Wade said. “I feel if our defense comes to play, we can be champs on Saturday.”
As for Laurel coach Brian Cooper and his Spartans, there are actually no shortage of parallels to Wade and his Bears, believe it or not.
For one, both coaches were hired in 2014, and both teams bring identical 12-1 records into the contest. Both coaches also played back in the same era, although Cooper wasn’t playing at Laurel when Wade quarterbacked Clairton to a 27-20 win over the Spartans in the 1989 Class 1A title game. Cooper was a lineman at nearby Wilmington High School, and he then went on to win several district titles there as defensive coordinator along with a state title in 2008.
Although Laurel will be playing the underdog role on Saturday morning, make no mistake about it — these Spartans are packing plenty of firepower in their own right.
“We spread the ball around,” Cooper said. “We try to make it so you can’t focus on one person.”
Senior quarterback Luca Santini (5-11, 164) doesn’t exactly fit the mold of your prototypical pocket passer, but his numbers (75 for 135, 1,275 yards, 21 TDs, 6 INTs) have been stellar this season. Still, Laurel likes to rely heavily on the run, and Cooper knows the Bears will be intent on slowing down both Nathan Hill (724 yards, 15 TDs) and Kolton Carlson, who leads the team in both rushing and receiving with 33 catches for 688 yards and 90 carries for 836 yards to go with 19 total TDs.
“[Carlson] is such a talent,” Cooper said. “He has great hands, probably the best I’ve ever coached. He runs the ball effectively, and he throws the ball effectively. With his type of talent, we’re able to do a lot of different things. It’s going to have to be all hands on deck in order to beat them.”
Coming off their massive 24-14 upset win against No. 1 Fort Cherry last Friday, the Spartans are riding high with the confidence that they can beat any team put in front of them — even Clairton. But there’s something to be said for that championship experience of having been there before, even if the Bears came up just short last year in that dramatic one-point loss against the Rangers.
Will it make a difference on Saturday? There’s only one way to find out.
“Clairton is obviously a good football team,” Cooper said. “They have great speed all over the place. They throw the ball well, they run the ball well, and they play great defense, which makes for a winning combination. We have to limit their opportunities to make those plays and stop them from making those splash plays.”
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly referred to Brian Cooper as the former head coach at Wilmington High School.
Steve is a sports writer at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike. Email him at srotstein@unionprogress.com.
