Mike Vukovcan It’s hard to believe but the 2025 Fall sports season is quickly coming to an end.
With that in mind, it’s shaping up to be an exciting stretch run for a few of the Hopewell varsity sports teams.
The Vikings football, boys’ soccer and girls’ volleyball teams have a lot of important games coming up over here next couple of weeks with possible section titles and playoff spots at stake.
Here’s a look at each team and what they’ll be battling for.
HOPEWELL GIRLS VOLLEYBALL TEAM:
We’ll start with the Lady Vikings because they have the clearest situation. Here’s a look at the current standings with 4 matches left in the season.
CLASS 2A SECTION 1:
Hopewell 9-1
OLSHÂ 8-2
Avonworth 7-4
Quaker Valley 6-4
What’s On the Line? Hopewell closes the season with matches against New Brighton, Freedom, Aliquippa and OLSH. Barring a huge upset, Hopewell will win their next 3 matches, so will OLSH. That means, the last match of the season will be for the section championship. On October 16th when Hopewell travels to OLSH, if they can win, they will be sole section champions. If OLSH wins, those two programs will be co-champions.
By the way, tomorrow night is the last regular season home match of the season and Senior Night for Hopewell, let’s pack the gym and congratulate this team and the seniors for a GREAT 4 years. The match against New Brighton will begin at 7:30 PM.
HOPEWELL FOOTBALL TEAM:
This can be a bit more complicated however, it also can be easy.
CLASS 3A/WESTERN HILLS CONFERENCE:
Avonworth: 3-0
Central Valley: 3-1
North Catholic: 2-1
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Beaver: 2-1
Hopewell: 2-2
WHAT’S ON THE LINE? Hopewell finishes the season against Freeport (6-1) in a nonconference game along with two home games against Central Valley and North Catholic.
The top 3 teams in the conference automatically qualify for the playoffs, which means right now, Hopewell is on the outside looking in. However, if Hopewell can beat both Central Valley and North Catholic they’d qualify for the playoffs for the first time since 2012. If they split, there’s a good chance they’d get a playoff spot.
There’s one other way they can possibly qualify. Because of an uneven number of teams in Class 3A, a couple Wild Card spots are awarded to teams. A lot like teams that earn a bid to March Madness in college basketball, the WPIAL football board looks at the resumes of teams that just missed qualifying automatically. They’ll take into consideration strength of conference along with non-conference wins and 3 wild card teams. Hopewell already holds an impressive win over highly ranked New Castle, so if they can pick up a win over Freeport on Friday, that would be another very impressive non-conference win.
Hopewell wants to earn their way win by beating North Catholic and Central Valley, but if that doesn’t happen, this Friday’s game could prove to be important.
Here’s the remaining conference games for Central Valley, North Catholic and Beaver.
Central Valley: vs. Quaker Valley, at Hopewell
North Catholic: at Beaver, vs. Avonworth, at Hopewell
Beaver: vs. North Catholic, at Quaker Valley, at Avonworth
HOPEWELL BOYS’ SOCCER:
After a slow start to the season, the boys’ soccer team is getting hot at the right time and pretty much control their own destiny. The top 4 teams in the section qualify.
CLASS 2A/SECTION 2:
Quake Valley: 11-1-1
Avonworth: 11-1-1
Beaver: 11-3
Central Valley: 9-4
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Hopewell: 6-5
WHAT’S ON THE LINE? This is a bit more complicated but bottom line is if Hopewell is able to close the season with wins over Quaker Valley, Mohawk, Keystone Oaks and Ellwood City, they would get in the playoffs.
