On the move again: Aliquippa ‘shocked’ after learning it will be bumped to Class 5A next season

Aliquippa is moving up a classification yet again this year.

At this rate, it might not be long before the Quips are playing alongside the Steelers in the AFC North.

Aliquippa football coach Mike Warfield said Thursday morning that the school was notified by the PIAA earlier this week that the Quips will be forced to play in Class 5A for the upcoming two-year cycle (2024-25 and 2025-26) under the PIAA’s competition classification formula. The school has already appealed the decision.

“I was totally shocked because I had conversations with other reporters, and they said we were staying in 4A,” Warfield said. “But when we got this letter, we were totally taken aback.”

Aliquippa won a PIAA Class 4A championship this past season after reaching the title game a season earlier. Based on Aliquippa’s boys enrollment, the Quips should have been playing in Class 1A last season and should be playing in Class 2A next season. But instead of competing in the state’s second-smallest classification, the Quips will play in the second-largest one.

The reason for the bump isn’t success, though. It’s transfers. Warfield said he was stunned to learn that the PIAA had Aliquippa down for 23 transfers — yes, 23! — in the current two-year cycle. One of them, he said, was junior running back and Penn State recruit Tikey Hayes, who has started at Aliquippa since he was a freshman. The Quips had 40 players total on last year’s team.

Warfield said the Quips did have two transfers, but neither ever played in a game.

“I just don’t understand it,” Warfield said. “Two kids who they counted as transfers had zero stats. Zero stats. No tackles. No rushing yardage. No pass receptions. All zeros.”

This marks the second time that Aliquippa has been moved up because of the competition classification formula, which can bump teams up a class that both go far in the postseason two years in a row and have at least three transfers over that period. When the PIAA moved from four to six classifications in 2016, Aliquippa chose to play up two classes in Class 3A instead of staying in Class 1A. But due to the competition classification formula, the Quips were moved to Class 4A beginning in 2020 and have been there ever since. They have responded by winning three WPIAL and two PIAA titles in that time.

“It’s just hard to put into words as far as what this rule is doing to one school,” Warfield said. “It’s not fair. There are other programs who win and aren’t punished, but it seems like the more we win, the more we get punished for it.”

Warfield said Aliquippa was given 10 days to appeal the PIAA’s decision, which it has already done. In 2022, Aliquippa won its appeal with the PIAA after the state’s governing body tried to move the Quips to Class 5A for the current two-year cycle.