Aston-Middletown wraps up stellar summer
The Aston-Middletown Little League 11U all-star team recently completed an outstanding run in postseason play.
AstonMiddletown won district and sectional championships and placed third in the state tournament.
Among the members of the team were Matt Roberts, Lucas Dienno, Will Stanton, Jack Signor, Anthony Aquila, Logan Howe, Lucas Zalota, Jaidyn Rivera, Nash Grant, Liam Wray, Rohan Kutty-Martin, Anthony Thatch, and Chase Kmett.
Stan Zalota, Jordan Grant, Jack Signor, and Dan Kutty-Martin were the team’s coaches.
•••
The late Frank Saviski was one of the outstanding players who helped Tinicum A.C. win five consecutive Delco Baseball League playoff championships in the early
1970s.
Saviski’s grandson — also Frank Saviski — was the player/manager of the 2019 Concord Canes team that played for the Delco League title Sunday.
During the Delco League playoffs, the younger Saviski was delighted to listen to the stories he was told about his grandfather by some of the elder Saviski’s teammates who came to see the Canes play.
Among the former Tinicum players who attended the playoff finals were pitcher Wayne Burns; outfielder Mike Marinchak; Billy Ford, who pitched and played the outfield; and catcher Fred Hoge, who shared stories of the Frank Saviski who was their teammate. They also worked in mentions of some other Tinicum players, including third baseman/ catcher Joe Grace, outfielders Dick Mahoney and Frank Ryan, infielder Clay Schroeder, and manager Lou Soscia.
•••
The Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association recently honored a number of officials for 30 or more years of service. The ceremony took place at the PIAA’s
25th annual Sports Officials Convention in Harrisburg.
Among those recognized was Dennis Keegan of Aldan, who became a PIAA baseball umpire in
1987.
Keegan, who has assigned umpires to work scholastic and Delco League games over the years, worked the 2011 state championship baseball game in which Conestoga defeated SpringFord, 6-3, in 10 innings.
After spending part of his summer in Florida, Keegan has returned to his job as a member of the Upper Darby High football coaching staff.
••• MyNeshia McKenzie, a two-time AllDelco selection in basketball at Springfield, where she scored 1,191 career points, has joined the women’s basketball coaching staff at Saint Joseph’s University as a video specialist.
She spent the last two seasons as an assistant coach at Holy Family University. Before that, she played professionally for one season in Portugal, leading Boa Viagem in scoring and rebounding, and two seasons in Romania, where she was named to the all-league team as a member of the Phoenix Galati team.
At Rider University, she set the school record for career rebounds
(1,143), ranked third on the all-time scoring list
(1,619) and twice was named to the All-Metro Atlantic Conference first team. •••
Arianna Segich, who played softball at Penn State-Brandywine, recently signed as a free agent with the E1 Pro Ballers of the American Softball Association (ASBA), a second-year pro league based in Mobile, Alabama.
Segich, who completed her playing career at Brandywine in the spring, is the school’s career leader in hits (212). She stole 153 bases in 153 games from 2016-19, including 68 as a senior.
She had a .421 career batting average, with 16 triples, 14 home runs, and 92 runs batted in. She was named to the all-conference team four consecutive years.
••• Allyson Heavens, an All-Delco lacrosse selection during her days at Garnet Valley, recently was named an assistant coach at Rutgers University.
Heavens, who played for Garnet Valley’s first state champion lacrosse team, was a captain at Penn State in 2016 when the Nittany Lions competed in the NCAA Final Four.
She was an assistant coach at La Salle from
2017-19, working as the team’s defensive coordinator as well as the program’s social media and recruiting coordinator.
••• Helen Koskinen Perretta (Class of 1986) and the 1979, 1980 and 1981 field hockey teams will be among the 2019 inductees into the Archbishop Prendergast Hall of Fame in October.
Perretta was an AllDelco basketball player at Prendie before playing at Villanova University, where she earned All-Big East and All-Big 5 honors.
•••
The recent passing of former Daily Times sports writer Bob Franklin brought back memories from so many days in Times newsrooms in Chester and Primos.
In the 1960s, “Bobby Dean” wrote often about local bowlers and covered men’s softball league games in addition to his stories about high school football, basketball and baseball. He was the pitcher for the Times softball team in the old Chester Control Pitch League that included a slick fielding infielder named Rich Westcott and a solid outfielder by the name of Ed Gebhart.
They didn’t win that many games, but they had a lot of fun.
•••
Dr. John T. Dolbin Jr. of Pottsville died Aug. 8 at Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest in Allentown. He was 70.
Dolbin, an all-state football player at Pottsville High who starred in football and track at Wake Forest University, was a starting receiver for the Denver Broncos against the Dallas Cowboys in Super Bowl XII.
Before joining the Broncos in 1975, Dolbin played for Schuylkill County Coal Crackers of the Seaboard Football League and spent the
1974 season with the Chicago Fire of the World Football League.
In an early September Seaboard contest in
1971, the Aston Knights halted the Coal Crackers 23-game unbeaten streak. It was the only game Schuylkill County lost that season.
In the rematch in late October, Dolbin caught a pair of scoring passes from Harry Wallaesa in the second quarter, and the host Coal Crackers got a short touchdown run from Wayne Liddick in the second overtime to earn a 26-20 decision.
Dolbin, who worked as a chiropractor for 33 years, served as team chiropractor for the Villanova football team when his son, Josh Dolbin, played for the Wildcats.