The Walker Era
Young high school football head coaches in Pittsburgh are expected to live up to some lofty expectations. There are not many areas around the country that take high school football as seriously as western Pennsylvania does. North Allegheny football head coach Art Walker quickly exceeded expectations when he took over the North Allegheny program nearly 20 years ago, and he has now cemented himself as one of the all-time great coaches in Pennsylvania.
The year is 2005. North Allegheny Athletic Director Bob Buzzuto hired 34-year-old Art Walker as head coach of the football team. The move came as a shock to many, as Walker had just rebuilt the Central Catholic football program from the ground up and led them to a 16-0 season, winning both a WPIAL and PIAA state championship in 2004. Some continue to say that this is one of the biggest factors in today’s rivalry between North Allegheny and Central Catholic. Former Tiger Head Coach Jim Rankin (a state champion in his own right) had just retired after a disappointing 6-4 season, and there was a lot of work to be done.
Walker’s father, Art Walker Sr., was himself a five-time WPIAL champion head coach for Mt. Lebanon.
In 2005, after his hiring, Walker Jr. built himself a very impressive coaching staff to support him throughout his new tenure as head coach. Many familiar names joined the program: Todd Fuller, an intermediate school P.E. teacher; Darrin McMillon, intermediate school history teacher; Chris Sestili, a NASH business teacher; Mike Buchert, a longtime offensive line coach and retired NASH math teacher; Dom Gliozzi, a longtime and recently retired NASH English teacher; Doug Brinkley, the current defensive coordinator and NAI counselor; Kevin Thompson, the current linebackers and special teams coach and NASH counselor, and finally coach Walker’s own father.
In the first season of the Walker era, the team went 5-5 and lost in the WPIAL playoffs to Woodland Hills. It was not long before the team found success, though, as in 2006 the Tigers went 9-3, losing in the WPIAL semi-finals. They finished the season as the 10th-best team in Pennsylvania. In 2007, the Tigers went 11-1 before losing to Gateway in the WPIAL playoffs. In three of his first five seasons from 2005-2009, Coach Walker won the section title. He made the playoffs all five seasons.
Walker and Co. also produced many great players during this time period. Headliners include Tom Keiser, a defensive end who attended Stanford before making it to the NFL, and the Watts twins, defensive juggernauts Zach and Corey, who attended Army West Point and Lafayette. Many other players went on to be successful college athletes, including Geoff Greco (Georgia Tech), Tom Ricketts (Penn State), Ryan Schlieper (Pitt), Wes Henderson (Navy), and Marek Lapinski, who unfortunately passed away just a few years after graduating.
In the three seasons that followed, the Tigers reached the top of the mountain. The years of 2010, 2011, and 2012 cemented North Allegheny as one of the best football programs in the state.
In 2010, the Tigers flipped the script after their 9-2 2009 campaign and went 15-1, with the only loss coming to rival North Hills. The Tigers went on to defeat Woodland Hills to claim the program’s second-ever WPIAL title. In the state championship match, Walker’s squad defeated La Salle College High School, shutting them out 21-0 and securing the programs second state championship. The Tigers were also without their star running back throughout the state playoffs, Alex Papson, who accumulated 2,482 yards and 32 touchdowns, but this did not affect the Tigers, as they won each of their 3 state playoff games by a respectable amount. Thus, the NA football dynasty had begun.
2011 was another year of greatness. With a team mostly full of juniors, the Tigers repeated easily as WPIAL champions with a win against Upper St. Clair in an overtime thriller. An undefeated season was within sight up until the PIAA semifinals against Central Dauphin, where the Tigers dropped a heartbreaker. The game was very back-and-forth, ending 23-20 in favor of Central Dauphin on a last-second field goal. Either way, a successful 29-2 over the last two seasons sets the Tigers up for their mastery of a 2012 season.
The 2012 season for the Tigers is widely known as the best season in school history. The 16-0 Tigers took down every team they played with ease, their closest game coming against Woodland Hills in the WPIAL championship, in which they won 21-14. The Tigers also faced off against two future NFL stars, Miles Sanders (Woodland Hills) and James Conner (McDowell), and respectively shut both of them down. The Tigers won the section, WPIAL, and State championships this year, and won 63-28 in the state championship, the largest margin of victory ever and the most points scored in a title game up until that point.
Over the course of these three years, the Tigers went 45-2 and built a legacy that will never be forgotten in the state. This year was also capped off by coach Walker winning National Coach of the Year, breaking countless state records throughout the year, and finishing as the ninth-ranked high school football team in the nation. (ESPN, MaxPreps)
Throughout these three great years, the tigers again produced many impressive Division I players. Some of these players include Rob and Patrick Kugler, brothers who went to Purdue and Michigan respectively, Mack Leftwich, the two time state champion quarterback, attended UTEP, Matt Steinbeck: Bucknell, Vince Czerniewski: UTEP, Gregg Garrity: Penn State, Brendan Coniker: Richmond, Jeremy Gonzales: Pitt, Jack Henderson: Pitt, Justin Haser: Ohio, and Alex Papson, one of the best running backs in the state in 2010, attended Gannon. Rounding out the notable players is current NASH P.E. teacher Lucas Hook, who attended John Carroll University.
In the following years, it was hard to compete with the success of the undefeated 2012 Tigers team. The Tigers failed to reach the WPIAL championship again until 2020, in a game in which they lost to Central Catholic. In each of the 6 seasons from 2013-2019, the Tigers made the playoffs, which is still an impressive feat. In these years, another team from the North dominated the WPIAL–Pine Richland–a team that boasted multiple NFL players and Division I-level athletes, just like the tigers.
In 2013, the Tigers had a successful season, finishing 7-4 and losing to Upper St. Clair in the WPIAL quarterfinals. The story was quite similar in 2014, as the Tigers finished 8-3 and lost to Penn Trafford in the quarterfinals as well. Both of these years cannot be considered down years, but compared to that 2012 team that most of the players were a part of, they did seem to be.
Until 2020, the Tigers did not make it back to the WPIAL championship. From 2013-2016, the Tigers fell in the quarterfinals each year. Then, from 2017-2019, the tigers made it to the semifinals but did not make it any further from there.
A lot of these non-historic seasons came at the hands of the Pine Richland Rams. They had outstanding players, especially at the quarterback position, throughout these years. Ben DiNucci, a James Madison recruit, eventually made it to the NFL and even started in a game for the Dallas Cowboys. Directly following him was Phil Jurkovec, a Notre Dame commit.
These years were not championship years, but they did boast a plethora of great players, many of whom had and are still having great collegiate careers. Many famous names headline this list, such as Joey Porter Jr., a Penn State commit and now Pittsburgh Steelers starting cornerback, and Cade Hoke, son of famous Pittsburgh Steeler Chris Hoke and older brother of current lineman, Lincoln Hoke, went to BYU. Other players throughout this time include: Niko Mermigas and Ethan Maenza: Dartmouth, Griffin Sestili: Temple, Oluwaseun Idowu: Pitt, John Vardzel: Pitt, Derek Devine: Virginia, Josh and Jacob Lugg: Notre Dame and Harvard, Ethan Maenza: Dartmouth, Luke Collela: Princeton, Sam Sheridan: Lehigh, Nick James: Georgetown, Parker Titsworth: Ohio, Corey Melzer: Penn State, and Dante Caputo: Wisconsin. Griffin Sestili is the son of former coach and current teacher Christopher Sestili. Two other notable players are now current coaches, Corey Cavanaugh and Riley Truman, who came back to coach the new generation.
The Tigers may not have won a championship during this period, but it was a great period nonetheless. Coach Walker won numerous 6A Coach of the Year awards, and the Tigers won three section titles. There were many games that could have gone the Tigers’ way and resulted in a championship, but not every year can be a championship year. These years, however, did lead to a new dynasty in the 2020’s.
From 2020-2024, the Tigers became victorious once again. Once again, the Tigers did not miss the playoffs over these four years, and coach Walker willed his team to three more WPIAL championship appearances.
2020 was the year of the pandemic, and the year of the Tigers. Almost. The 2020 team had a shortened season, playing only five regular season games. They came face-to-face with rival Central Catholic in the WPIAL championship game for the first time in the Walker era. The Tiger’s high-powered offense, fueled by current Penn State tight end Khalil Dinkins, was not enough to take down Central Catholic and lost in a heartbreaking WPIAL championship game, handing coach Walker his first WPIAL championship loss since 2001. The Tigers flipped this script quickly over the next few years.
2021 was another great season, but once again the Tigers bowed out in the WPIAL semifinals against Mt. Lebanon. This Lebo team was a team like no other, not better than the 2012 Tigers, but very close. The Blue Devils beat the Tigers in a close 17-28 game, Mt. Lebanon’s closest game of the entire playoffs, en route to a state championship. This team had many flaws, but many great moments and players. The underclassmen from this 2021 team clearly learned a lot, including how to win.
Finally, in both 2022 and 2023, the Tigers broke their 10-year championship drought and emerged victorious. In both seasons, the Tigers went 9-1 in the regular season before beating Canon-McMillan in the WPIAL semifinals. The Tigers were fueled by the high-scoring show on turf, Logan Kushner and Khiryn Boyd. In both championship games combined, Boyd hauled in 226 yards and four touchdowns. These two championships were near deja-vu moments, as both games were high-scoring and featured a Tiger’s comeback towards the end of the game.
The 2022 squad went on to the state playoffs and ultimately fell to State College in the state quarterfinals. In 2023, though, it was a different story: the 2023 team went on and beat McDowell and Harrisburg en route to the state championship. In this state championship, the Tigers were matched against Philadelphia private school powerhouse St. Joseph’s Prep. This team featured many highly touted recruits, including two four-star wide receivers. The game did not go in the Tigers favor, but this team will go down in history as one of the best in Tiger history.
In this era, the Tigers once again produced many star athletes. Among these are many familiar names such as Khalil and Kolin Dinkins: Penn State, Nate Hoke: BYU, Jacob Porter and Tyree Alualu: Temple, Campbell Melzer: St. Francis, Nate Spak: Delaware, Rourke Kennedy: Bucknell, Daniel Sellers: Richmond, Cam Chmura: Marshall, and Kevin O’Donnell, Abdallah Daud, Khiryn Boyd, Logan Kushner, and Aidan Buggey all attending Duquesne.
With the 2023 championship, coach Walker reached his seventh overall WPIAL title as a coach, gaining bragging rights over his father, who won six in his career as head coach.
Since his emergence as a head coach in 1998, Coach Walker has proven himself in Western Pennsylvania and has now become arguably one of the best high school coaches in the country. Walker has reached the playoffs for 25 straight seasons dating back to 2000, and he was recently named NFL National High School Coach of the Week.
Last Saturday, the Tigers entered their third straight WPIAL championship matchup with friendly foe, Central Catholic. Walker chased his 6th WPIAL title at North Allegheny and 8th overall as he pursued a second three-peat, but the team unfortunately could not clinch the win. The squad finished the season 10-2.
Yet if Walker’s history is any indication, the Tigers will be back in the hunt again next year. The Walker era is nowhere near over, but the story so far has been one of the greatest in Tiger history.
