PITTSBURGH — Having grown up in Butler, Donovan Slater made a tough decision before his freshman year in high school.

“I'm a Christian and I wanted to go to a Christian school,” Slater said.

Now a senior at Central Catholic, Slater is carrying a 4.3 grade point average. At 6-foot-3, 285 pounds, he is in his third year as a starter on the Vikings' offensive line. He is going to continue his academic and football career at Yale next year.

Slater started at right tackle as a sophomore before moving to center his junior year. He is playing center again this year.

“I talked about the position change with my coaches after my sophomore season,” Slater said. “I was thinking about my future in football and not many tackles in college are 6-3. They are a few inches taller than that.

“The coaches agreed I'd be better off at center and everything has worked out.”

So far this season, the Vikings are 3-1 — winning their last three games by scores of 48-7 over Shaler, 55-14 over North Allegheny and 55-6 over Hempfield — while averaging more than 320 yards per game.

Central's entire starting offensive line is back from last year's WPIAL and PIAA Class AAAA state championship team.

Since Slater became a starter in 2014, Central has won 29 of 33 games. It has reached the WPIAL finals twice and won the title once.

“All we want to do is get back to Hershey,” Slater said.

If they do, he will be a big reason why.

“Donovan calls all our line signals up front,” Central coach Terry Totten said. “He's a very intelligent player in addition to his physical skills.

“We've watched him grow and mature as a center over the past two years. He never stops working at it.”

Slater grew up in Meridian and played junior high football for Butler.

“It was a very hard decision,” he said. “It's tough suddenly not playing football with the guys you have been with all your life.

“It was just the right decision for me. The guys I play with at Central, we're like brothers. We spend so much time together all year. We really drew close to each other.”

Slater isn't sure what his role will be at Yale, which is coming off winning seasons of 6-4 last year and 8-2 in 2015.

“Whatever the coaches want, I'll do,” he said. “I drew interest from other Ivy League schools ... Harvard, Columbia, Brown ... but just like Central, when I visited Yale, the fit was there.

“I'm just working on improving my craft. You can always perfect the things you do on the field, whether it's getting lower leverage, running faster or reading things better.”