Every generation of WPIAL football has a team people swear was the greatest.
The 1995 Penn Hills Indians. The 1994 McKeesport Tigers. Great teams from Central Catholic, Upper St. Clair, Woodland Hills, North Allegheny, Gateway, Aliquippa and others all belong in the conversation.
But when I put every era on the table, one team still stands above the rest.
The 1987 North Hills Indians.
They finished 13-0, won the WPIAL Class AAAA championship and ended the season ranked No. 1 in the nation by USA Today. That alone puts them in rare company.
But their dominance is what makes them my greatest WPIAL team ever.
A Defense That Was Almost Untouchable
North Hills outscored its opponents 435-20 during the season and recorded 11 shutouts.
But here’s the number that has always jumped out at me: The first-team defense didn’t allow a point all season. The 20 points North Hills surrendered came against reserves.
Think about how difficult that is.
Football isn’t basketball, where one dominant player can take over a game. Eleven players have to function together. One missed assignment, one broken tackle, one blown coverage or one big play can ruin a shutout.
North Hills went an entire season without its starting defense allowing anyone into the end zone.
That’s not just talent.
That’s preparation, discipline and an entire unit playing connected football.
They Became Even Better When It Mattered Most
Great teams are supposed to be tested in the playoffs. North Hills responded by becoming even more dominant.
The Indians beat Central Catholic 36-0 and rival North Allegheny 28-0 to reach the WPIAL championship game at Three Rivers Stadium.
Waiting for them was Mt. Lebanon. North Hills won 21-0.
Three playoff games against three of the better teams in Western Pennsylvania. Not one point allowed.
There was no dramatic last-second championship victory. No lucky bounce. No surviving and advancing.
North Hills simply lined up and imposed itself on everybody standing between it and a championship.
The Loss That Helped Create a Monster
What makes the story even better is what happened before 1987.
Jack McCurry had already turned North Hills into one of the WPIAL’s premier programs. The Indians won the 1982 WPIAL championship and shared the 1985 championship with Gateway after their title game ended in a scoreless tie.
Then came 1986.
North Hills returned to the championship game and lost to Gateway, 7-6. One point separated them from another title.
They came back the following year and left nothing to chance.
Over the three seasons from 1985 through 1987, North Hills went 37-1-1. The only loss was that one-point championship defeat.
That’s sustained dominance.
But 1987 was when everything came together.
Jack McCurry’s Masterpiece
Jack McCurry became one of the legendary coaches in WPIAL history, but the 1987 season may have been his masterpiece.
McCurry was named USA Today’s National Coach of the Year, a fitting honor for the coach of the country’s top-ranked team.
And what I appreciate about that North Hills team is that the story isn’t centered around one superstar carrying everybody else.
They had outstanding players.
Running back Duane Hitchcock earned all-state recognition and was a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Fabulous 22 selection. Eric Renkey earned Parade All-American honors. There was high-level talent throughout the roster.
But when people remember that team, they remember North Hills. Not one player.
The team.
That’s the ultimate compliment.
You Have to Respect the Era
Comparing teams from different generations is never perfect.
Football changes. Schemes change. Training changes. Classification systems change.
That’s why context matters.
The WPIAL’s largest classification in that era was a weekly grind. Western Pennsylvania was still producing an incredible amount of football talent, and traditional neighborhood programs were loaded.
There wasn’t today’s six-classification system creating six different WPIAL champions.
North Hills came through the biggest classification and dominated it. That’s an important part of the résumé.
The Coaches Remembered
Years later, the reputation of the 1987 Indians hadn’t faded. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette surveyed 125 WPIAL coaches about the best team of the previous 40 years.
North Hills was the overwhelming choice.
I put a lot of weight into that.
These weren’t people looking back at a record book decades later. Many of those coaches lived that era, studied those teams and understood exactly how difficult it was to dominate WPIAL football at that level.
The entire 1987 North Hills team was later inducted into the WPIAL Hall of Fame as part of its inaugural class in 2007.
That’s a team whose legacy became bigger than one championship.
Why They’re No. 1
I’ve studied a lot of great WPIAL teams while putting together these historical rankings.
Some had more recognizable names. Some eventually produced more college or professional players.
And because Pennsylvania didn’t begin statewide football championships until 1988, North Hills never had the opportunity to add a PIAA championship to its résumé.
You can’t hold that against them. They beat everybody they were allowed to play. Then the national rankings did the rest.
That’s ultimately why I have the 1987 North Hills Indians as the greatest WPIAL football team ever. It’s not nostalgia. It’s not because they played in an older era.
It’s because of what happened on the field.
They reached the highest level available to them, dominated the WPIAL’s largest classification and finished as the No. 1 high school football team in America.
Western Pennsylvania has produced a lot of legendary football teams.
But nearly four decades later, everybody else is still chasing the standard North Hills set in 1987.