Year in review — Top stories of 2025: Mayhem at MASH, Tigers win PIAA gold

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Editor's note: The Meadville Tribune is re-visiting the top eight Crawford County-area sports stories from 2025. The series began Saturday and continued Monday, Tuesday and today. Two stories ran per day in no particular order.

Meadville's basketball season ends in chaos

Meadville's boys basketball team ended tragically in March.

Despite leading a PIAA Class 5A first round playoff game 63-55 against Uniontown, a melee in the stands erupted and ultimately cost the Bulldogs their season. The brawl spilled onto the floor and both teams benches emptied. Days after the fracas, the PIAA ruled the game a double forfeit because of "blatant violations from both teams."

"The kids are obviously disappointed, but we are just looking at some legal options right now," then-Meadville head coach Mark McElhinny said. "I feel it was an unjust decision by the PIAA. I don't have all the facts yet since they waited so long to announce it, but we definitely want to know what they think we should have done."

It ended up being the final game for five Meadville seniors — Kellen Ball, Lucas Luteran, Jack Burchard, Kamarii Pope and Gunnar Luper. Luteran and Burchard are each 1,000-point scorers and playing college basketball at Washington & Jefferson and Gannon, respectively.

"I was heartbroken and just began thinking about everything we have gone through to get to this point in our careers. We have been playing together since fourth grade with John Burchard as our Coach, and have been looking forward to playing together as seniors," Luteran said. "John has been a role model for us and even acted as a second father to many of us throughout our lives.

"We all had very similar reactions. We gathered together in the gym and we're reminiscing on our playing time together. Guys were emotional, it was something I will never forget."

In the months following the brawl at Meadville Area Senior High School the Meadville City Police filed charges against seven people, two Uniontown adults, two Meadville adults, and three 16-year olds.

Maplewood wins PIAA championship

The Maplewood girls volleyball team added to its trophy case in November.

The Tigers won the PIAA Class 1A volleyball championship in a 3-1 decision over Tri-Valley at Cumberland Valley High School. It was the seventh PIAA title in program history and first since 2022.

“I'm so happy for this group of girls. They're undersized, they're not big-stud hitters, they're just all good. We don’t have a weak position out there,” Maplewood head coach Sheila Bancroft said. “They're just all good from No. 1 to No. 16 all the way down. They battle and practice with each other and make each other better.

Seniors Maggie Means, Mylee Crawford, Bree Neely and Samantha Stanford were freshmen for the 2022 title, giving them two PIAA golds in their career.

In the title match, Means tallied 34 assists, 14 digs and two kills. Lilly Stevenson led the offense with 13 kills. Neely and Bailey Moyer each added nine kills. Lydia Slagle had four kills. Lexy Potosky led the defense with 15 digs. Crawford and Neely each had 12.

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