Derry Area’s new coach returning home
Some 43 years after graduating from Derry Area High School, Vince Skillings is coming home.
Skillings, 61, who graduated from Derry as an all-state running back in 1977 before embarking on a successful college career as a defensive back at Ohio State, was announced June 4 as the Trojans’ new football coach for the upcoming season. He will replace Tim Sweeney, who turned the program around after a winless 2013 season and enjoyed a highly successful six-year run at Derry before leaving to take over as the new head coach at Baldwin.
“It’s always been my goal to be a head coach, and to be a head coach at Derry,” Skillings said. “I always had that dream.”
Unlike Sweeney, who took over a team that had lost all 10 games by an average of more than 50 points per game the previous season, Skillings doesn’t have such a tall task in front of him. Instead, his challenge will be to keep the Trojans rolling after posting a 20-5 record over the past two seasons, including a trip to the WPIAL Class 3A championship game in 2018.
In six seasons as a coach, Sweeney led Derry to a 49-18 record and three trips to the WPIAL semifinals. So while Skillings has plenty of different coaching philosophies he has absorbed over the years, he doesn’t intend on trying to switch too many things up at his alma mater.
“I’m recruiting the former staff now to come and join me and pick up where they left off and build on what coach
Sweeney has already constructed,” Skillings said. “I’m not trying to change or compete against his accomplishments, because they’re legendary. I’m just going to be myself, have fun, and let the players be themselves, because it’s about them anyway.”
At Ohio State, Skillings had his fair share of memorable moments. He played two seasons under the legendary Woody Hayes before the Buckeyes coach threw an infamous punch at a Clemson player who had just made a game-sealing interception toward the end of the 1978 Gator Bowl.
The sideline erupted into an allout brawl, and Skillings watched the chaos unfold right in front of him. He said he knew right then and there Hayes would not be allowed to coach again.
“I thought the game was over and Clemson guys were just twirling their helmets in celebration until I saw someone get knocked out,” Skillings said. “I just kind of stepped back out of the way and let the big boys fight. It was crazy to watch, though. I’m surprised I didn’t get hit.”
The next season, Ohio State went undefeated during the regular season and met fellow unbeaten Southern California in the 1980 Rose Bowl for a chance to capture a national championship. Instead, the Trojans’ Heisman Trophy-winning tailback Charles White ran for 247 yards and the winning touchdown, and the Buckeyes lost, 17-16.
After graduating in 1981, the Dallas Cowboys selected Skillings in the sixth round of the 1981 NFL draft. A hamstring injury in training camp doomed his chances of making the team, though, and he then spent parts of three seasons in the Canadian Football League before giving up his playing career for good in 1984.
Skillings spent the next 35 years bouncing around various coaching positions, starting out in midget league football in Derry and eventually working his way up to the college game, serving as an assistant at Edinboro in 1995 and California (Pa.) in 1996.
In 1998, Skillings received his first head coaching position at the junior high level, taking over at Ligonier Valley Junior High School and coaching from 1998 -2001. He then took a brief hiatus before returning to coaching in 2004 at Westerville South High School in Ohio. Skillings then moved on to West Oaks Academy in Orlando, Fla., before his most recent stop as the head coach at United Junior High School in Armagh, Pa., about 12 miles north of Johnstown.
Now, Skillings believes the time is finally right for his first high school head coaching position — and for him, it couldn’t have come at a better place.
“This was the year. I’ve been praying about it for a while. The other times I applied, I didn’t really feel it was the right moment,” Skillings said. “I’m just thankful and amazed that my first head coaching position would be at Derry, and again I thank God for making that dream come true.”
Other coaching news
In other WPIAL coaching news, Kyle DeGregorio was approved by the Pine-Richland school board as the Rams’ new girls basketball coach on Monday, as expected.
DeGregorio, 60, has spent the past 37 years in the WPIAL coaching either boys or girls basketball in some capacity. He spent the past two seasons as Baldwin’s girls basketball coach, leading the Highlanders to a 13-11 record and a victory against Central Dauphin, the No. 1 team in the state in Class 6A, in the 2020 PIAA playoffs.
Similar to Baldwin’s program before DeGregorio arrived, PineRichland is in need of a major turnaround after going 8-33 the past two seasons.
“I don’t see why I can’t do the same things with those girls, too, that I did at Baldwin,” DeGregorio said. “I did the same thing at Belle Vernon, I did the same thing at Baldwin with the boys. The challenge is so motivating to me, and it just gives me something every day to get up and figure out.”
Elsewhere, WPIAL Class 4A runner-up Southmoreland announced the hiring of former assistant Amber Cernuto to replace Brian Pritts, while Moon elevated interim coach Meghan Mastroianni to the position of full-time head coach.