Aliquippa is not in our reading area, but a hot topic for decades in Western Pennsylvania has been the illegal recruitment or at least enticement of student athletes to move within school districts.

How far back does it go? How about Joe Montana's dad getting a job at a car lot in Butler so his son could attend a bigger school with a rich football tradition (Butler) instead of Ringgold back in the early 1970s. It was thought it would help his recruitment, but after a few days of not convincing the football staff that he was better than the incumbent quarterback, a homesick Joe headed back to the Mon Valley, then to Notre Dame and the San Francisco 49ers and finally Canton, Ohio.

Then there was basketball star Danny Fortson from Altoona, who joined his AAU basketball “brother” at Shaler, which just happened to be a loaded team that year. He went on to star at the University of Cincinnati and play in the NBA.

It's been going on for years, but probably much more at private schools and Catholic schools than at the public schools. Butler fans might also remember the three Texans who blessed the New Castle basketball program about 20 years ago.

People are always screaming about the recruitment advantage, but someone at the PIAA and the WPIAL decided they had seen enough of at least one school's success. They decided to spend valuable time in their very well-paid position to try and bring parity to high school sports and came up with the absolute dumbest possible solution ... at least if they care at all about the safety of student athletes.

Aliquippa High School in Beaver County has less than 120 male students in grades 9-11. Yet the kids can play some great football.

The reward for their success has been determined that if they win, they will be forced to play against much bigger schools.

By advancing to the PIAA Class 4A final this season — the Quips won the crown Thursday — they sealed the punishment of success and will be required to play up at the 5A level moving forward against schools with almost five times as many boys in the system such as Pine-Richland and Penn-Trafford.

While Aliquippa's talent is without question, the depth of the team and the ability to play one side of the ball is very questionable. So when a 14-year old Aliquippa player is injured going up against an 18-year old player from a much larger school — let's line up the attorneys wanting a piece of the WPIAL.

That will be easy pickings for any of our legal experts in the area. The two most important facts here are, first, if you have been to Aliquippa, you should know no one chooses to move there and secondly, they actually qualify to be playing at the lowest level in the classification system which is 1A. They already elect to play up three classifications in order to face better competition so to better prepare the players to make it at the college level and find their ticket out of Aliquippa.

Yes, they all seek the golden ticket out of Aliquippa. Maybe the real punishment should be forcing some from these horribly successful programs to sit on the WPIAL and PIAA boards.

That would stop them from ever wanting to win again. And while we are at it, let's schedule all future WPIAL meetings to be held in downtown Quipville. Maybe the board members will want to move their favorite scholar athletes there.

Congratulations Aliquippa, not just on winning but for making the powers that be so much afraid of your success that they make decisions which can only lead to their own demise.

Ron Vodenichar is president and publisher of the Butler Eagle.