Clairton crushes Shenango for a spot in Class A finals

By JEREMY SELLEW

jsellew@yourmvi.com

While the road to Heinz Field usually goes through Clairton, this year the Bears have built a highway to North Hills.

The Bears will have a chance to defend their WPIAL Class A championship as they dispatched Shenango, 55-16, in a semifinal game Friday night at Norwin, invoking the mercy rule with about five minutes to play.

“We also seem to fight through these games,” Clairton coach Wayne Wade said. “I have a guy that could have hit 2,000 (yards) tonight, we took him out. We took the quarterback out. We had a ton of penalties tonight, too. We just fought our way through that second half.”

After Shenango went 18 plays, ate up nearly 10 minutes of the first quarter and got a 25-yard field goal from Aiden Johnston to open the scoring, it was all Bears.

Clairton scored 33 unanswered points, and it started on the second offensive play when quarterback Jonte Sanders rolled 82 yards for the game’s first touchdown.

“Last week when we played here, I think Jonte only threw the ball seven times. I don’t even think he had a rush,” Wade said. “He didn’t have to because Dontae (Sanders) was doing Dontae things.”

To read the rest of the story, please see a copy of Saturday’s Mon Valley Independent, call 724-314-0035 to subscribe or subscribe to our online edition at http://monvalleyindependent.com.