Roman Catholic, Father Judge moving to PIAA Class 6A in football sets up a Catholic League super playoff

In the last four years, the Catholic League’s six-team Red Division has dominated in the PIAA state football championships.

But starting in the fall, it’ll be much tougher for the division’s elite — St. Joseph’s Prep, La Salle College, and Roman Catholic — to win a state title.

Roman, which won its first state crown in a 5A rematch with Bishop McDevitt in December, is moving to 6A, the largest classification, for at least the next two years in football. That means St. Joe’s Prep, La Salle, and Roman will compete for one of 16 state playoff spots.

Additionally, Father Judge, another Catholic Red member, will be participating in 6A instead of 5A for at least the next two years because of an increase in enrollment. So for the first time, there will be a four-team, two-week Catholic Red 6A playoff before the state playoffs.

BJ Hogan, the athletic director at Lansdale Catholic and the Catholic League chairman, said the four teams, which will have played each other in the regular season, will be seeded. The Catholic super-playoff will be held Oct. 30-31 and Nov. 6-7, although sites will be determined later.

“This will have a look and feel of the good old days of the Philadelphia Catholic League,” Brett Gordon, the La Salle coach, wrote in an email of the upcoming tournament. “With the current state of the Catholic League Red Division [and] with the amount of talent, an extra week of competitive football is a good thing. Philadelphia Catholic League football has never been stronger than it is right now.”

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At the end of the 2025 season, MaxPreps had La Salle (13-1), Roman (12-3), and St. Joe’s Prep (5-5) as its top three, followed by Malvern Prep (8-2), a non-PIAA team, and Pittsburgh Central Catholic (13-2) as the best teams in Pennsylvania.

La Salle beat Malvern Prep last year. Central Catholic’s only two losses were to La Salle. The Prep lost twice to La Salle and to two opponents ranked in the MaxPreps top 15 nationally. La Salle’s only loss was 39-36 to Roman on Sept. 26.

For the last five years, the Prep and La Salle, ferocious rivals for decades, had played each other for a second time in November for the right to represent Catholic Red in the 6A state playoffs. The winner of that game has gone on to win the last four state titles.

“We are really excited about our opportunity to compete in a playoff and continue to put our league on display,” Roman coach Rick Prete wrote in an email. “I think our division offers three or four of the best programs in Pennsylvania regardless of classification.

“Some would consider it unfortunate that a couple really good programs will be left out of the playoff, but that’s the way it’s designed, so that’s what it is. We will approach it one week at a time, as this puts so much more emphasis on league play.”

Meanwhile, Imhotep Charter, the Public League school that lost to eventual 6A state champion La Salle in the first round of the state playoffs last year, has been reclassified as a 5A team because of the competition formula, which assesses postseason success.

Imhotep won the state 5A title in 2023 a year after losing the championship game. The Panthers were a 6A team the last two years but lost to the Prep and La Salle — both eventual state champs — in the first round of the state playoffs.

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Roman’s move to 6A also opens the field in 5A, especially for public schools in the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh suburbs. The Cahillites defeated Springfield (Delaware County), which entered the game with a 14-0 record, in the state semifinals last year.

Along with enrollment figures and the number of transfer students, the PIAA uses its competition formula, instituted in 2018 for football and tweaked late in 2024, to address balance. Schools earn “success points” over a two-year window: four points for playing in a state final, three in a semifinal, and so on.

Roman and McDevitt, the perennially powerful Catholic school from Harrisburg with 260 boys, move to 6A because they played each other in the Class 5A finals in the last two years, with McDevitt winning in 2024 in overtime. Both did so with five or more transfer students, another competition formula factor.

With nine state titles since 2013, St. Joe’s Prep had what was considered an off year in 2025. But the Hawks beat Roman, 40-39, on Oct. 10 and gave La Salle two tough games before big crowds, falling 31-20 on Oct. 4 at Franklin Field and 24-14 on Nov. 1 at Villanova. A year earlier, the Prep won the state title four weeks after toppling previously unbeaten La Salle.

The Catholic Red Division also includes Bonner-Prendergast (6-5), which won the Class 4A championship in 2024, and Cardinal O’Hara (10-5), which beat Bonner for the 4A Catholic League title last year and won two state playoff games before losing to eventual state champion Southern Lehigh.

As if the Catholic League regular season and the Catholic Red tournament were not tough enough, Roman has scheduled a scrimmage against Imhotep plus nonleague contests against St. John Bosco from Southern California, Don Bosco Prep from North Jersey, and DeMatha Catholic from suburban Washington.