They also became fast friends and kindred spirits.

Along with their mutual love of football, both young men harbored a desire to eventually become Catholic priests.

“I had never met him before until he showed up at BG when we were both in the 11th grade,” Norris said of Pleva. “He came over from Altoona, and I remember during (football training camp), he had told me that he was thinking about becoming a priest.

“I was thinking about it too but I hadn’t told anybody,” Norris said. “It was cool to have somebody else to talk to about the possibility of becoming a priest.”

Mirror photo by Patrick Waksmunski /
Father Michael Pleva is pictured in his parish.

Their vocational callings have since blossomed into reality for both Father Norris and Father Pleva, whose plates are now both extremely full as priests in the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese.

Norris is in charge of St. Therese’s parish in Altoona, and is also the vocations recruiter for the diocese, a position in which he discusses the value and importance of the life of a Catholic priest with young men who have a desire and interest in pursuing the vocation. Norris is also now the chaplain at Bishop Guilfoyle, having come full circle in his life after graduating from BG with Pleva in 2013.

Pleva, who is in charge of two parishes in Blair County, St. Matthew’s in Tyrone and St. Joseph’s in Bellwood, lives an equally busy life.

“We’re both pretty busy so we don’t get together as much as we would like, but it is cool to have one of my peers from all the way back in high school to kind of bounce ideas off about the life of being a priest,” Norris said.

It’s a very responsible, demanding life, but also a very fulfilling one, according to both priests. The Catholic clergy is involved in a myriad of functions within the church, including, but not limited to, ministering to the sick and dying, presiding over weddings, baptisms, funerals, and daily and weekly Masses, providing personal counseling and/or referrals for a variety of life problems and situations, and hearing confessions and offering the sacrament of reconciliation.

“We have a lot on our schedules,” Pleva said. “But it’s rewarding because it offers the opportunity to help people on their faith journeys, walking with them through the good times and the bad, and being present to people as Jesus was present to his disciples and to everybody who he encountered.”

The vocation also requires a strong element of personal sacrifice and emotional flexibility.

“(Balancing) your emotions can be a very difficult thing,” Pleva said about the greatest challenges of being a priest. “You could have a 10 a.m. funeral and a 1 p.m. marriage ceremony just hours apart, and it’s not humanly possible to hide your sense of grief for a family who has just lost a loved one. (The emotional highs and lows of such different circumstances are) just part of the nature of the vocation.”

Catholic priests are not permitted to marry, and they are required to live a life of celibacy and chastity, which can often be a very significant sacrifice as well.

“Having a spouse and having children is kind of the normal way of having happiness in this life,” Norris said. “So there is a lot of sacrifice with (joining the priesthood). It’s a lifelong commitment, but I think that the rewards are there as well.

“I get to become a part of a lot of different people’s families, and I think the way the church says it is that I am sacrificing one wife in order to be present to many families,” Norris said.

The importance of vocations

Both Norris and Pleva both developed an interest in the priesthood early in life, as altar servers.

“I was interested probably since when I was in grade school,” Norris said. “I started altar serving, and through being up on the altar assisting the priests during Mass, I started to get an interest in the priesthood.

“Then over the course of middle school and high school, I kept thinking about the idea of becoming a priest, but I kind of put it on the backburner because I was dating and thinking about what I wanted to do with my life, and that wasn’t a number one priority at the time.”

In fact, when Norris was attending Saint Vincent College in Latrobe — where he was also a member of that school’s NCAA Division III football program for four years — he actually broke away from practicing his faith for a brief period of time.

“I ended up not practicing the faith for a bit in college, but I found myself to be kind of lacking what I had before, (which was) the relationship with Christ,” Norris said. “And that brought me back to practicing my faith again, and once I (resumed) practicing the faith again in my junior year of college, I started to think about the priesthood again. I saw the need for priests, because there weren’t a lot of priests.”

The educational demands and requirements for the priesthood are also very stringent. After graduating from BG, Pleva had four years of minor seminary training at Gannon University in Erie, followed by four years of major seminary training at Saint Vincent College.

Norris, meanwhile, completed a four-year double major (theology and criminology) undergraduate degree at Saint Vincent College, then went through five years of seminary university at St. Mary’s University in Baltimore, Md.

“After deciding again for the priesthood when I was at Saint Vincent College, I thought to myself that God seems to be calling me in this direction, and the least that I could do is to give a year to the seminary, and see what happens,” Norris said. “A year turned into five, and I became a priest.”

For a variety of reasons, vocations to the priesthood have dwindled over the last decade, resulting in some priests, like Pleva, pulling double duty at two different parishes. Lay people like deacons have also taken on a more significant role at Catholic Masses.

“We need more vocations to the priesthood,” Pleva said. “There are a lot of churches, and we just staff them as best as we can. Growing up, the faith practices of my family — and in particular, my grandparents — really helped me to spark an interest in becoming a priest, but today, religion and the church are the last things that people think about sometimes.”

In his role as the vocations recruiter for the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese, Norris is hoping to effect a change in that way of thinking.

“I’m going around and talking to young men at parishes and at schools like Bishop Guilfoyle and Bishop McCort, and then at colleges, to encourage them to think about becoming a priest,” Norris said. “Last year, I had 12 high schoolers at BG who did a discernment group with me to talk about the priesthood for six weeks, and I’ve got 13 more lined up to do it with me this year.

“We had some events over the summer for college students, and we were getting about a dozen at those, so it seems like the guys are receptive to it,” Norris added. “It seems like there is a lot of interest among that Gen Z (population) — the late high school to college age group. They’re starting to come back to the faith, and there is interest in the priesthood and in religious life.”

Starting a dynasty

Bishop Guilfoyle Academy has become the elite football program in the PIAA Class 1A classification under the direction of head coach Justin Wheeler, who is now in his 15th season as head coach of the Marauders.

The Marauders have won five PIAA Class 1A state titles (2014, 2015, 2016, 2021 and 2024), and also reached the state championship game in 2019 before losing that game in overtime.

As big, physical linemen who stood six feet tall and weighed in at over 200 pounds during their high school playing days at BG, Pleva and Norris both brought an element of toughness to the playing field, according to Wheeler.

“Both were competitors, and both were big, strong physical kids who helped us to turn the program around,” Wheeler said of Norris, who was a two-year starter on the offensive line and was also part of a rotation system on the defensive line for the Marauders, and Pleva, who was a two-year starter on defense at nose guard and also saw playing time as needed on the offensive line.

“We had skill kids back then, but the line was a question mark for us,” Wheeler said. “(Pleva and Norris) helped us to develop our offensive and defensive lines, and we started to make some positive turns as a program.”

Indeed, after winning a total of only three games combined over the 2010 and 2011 seasons, BG bounced back to post a 9-3 record and reach the semifinal round of the District 6 Class 1A playoffs in 2012, when Pleva and Norris were both seniors.

The Marauders made it to the district championship game the following November, and won their first state title the next season.

The self-discipline that participating in a varsity sport requires helped both Pleva and Norris in their vocations as priests.

“Coach Wheeler is an amazing coach, and with any sport, you have to have the discipline aspect — which involves sacrificing certain things in order to grow and become better at the sport,” Pleva said. “And that’s like anything in life — if you really want something and you’re drawn to it, you (exercise) self-discipline, and participating in athletics helps you to do that, for sure.”

Wheeler said that seeing Norris and Pleva grow as individuals and becoming priests has been as fulfilling for him as any of the five state championships that the Marauders have won.

“They were always great, great kids when they were here in high school,” Wheeler said. “We’ve been blessed to have a lot of great kids in this program, but they were definitely two of the best. I’ve really gotten to know Norris, who works here as our school chaplain, so things have kind of come full circle with him, from him being a good athlete at the school to him coming back here and ministering to the students himself.

“I’ve experienced a lot of great things here, but as a Catholic myself, to have two (former players) who are strong in their faith become priests and help with the next generation, has been one of the most special things that I’ve had happen in my career,” Wheeler said. “It’s been great to see.”