93.7 The Fan High School Football Preview 2016 Class 5A: North Hills
North Hills
Allegheny Nine
College football isn't the only place where realignment and conference shuffling has ruined rivalries between teams that have traditional and/or geographical histories of playing grudge matches against each other.
The WPIAL's recent reclassification has left a number of teams playing in conferences against unfamiliar opponents and taking bus rides across town to places that don't make a lot of sense.
Just ask North Hills, who may be the best - or most egregious, actually - example of this as they are no longer in a North Suburbs-centric conference and instead will play road games at places like Upper St. Clair, Moon and Chartiers Valley.
That wouldn't be so bad if the Indians still had some of their traditional rivals on their schedule, but that's not the case.
True, they have a non-conference game against next door neighbor Shaler, but they don't play their biggest rival North Allegheny and also don't play two other long-time foes Seneca Valley and Butler.
The good news, though, is that the Indians have a lot of returning talent from a team that finished 3-4 in the rugged Northern Eight conference.
The Indians only graduated 15 seniors from last year's team and they have plenty of leadership as there are 24 seniors on this roster.
That includes their entire offensive line and senior running back Nick Santucci, so they should again be a force running the football.
