Wescoe steps down as girls basketball coach at Liberty
Andy Wescoe has resigned after four seasons in charge of the Liberty High girls basketball program.
Wescoe’s teams went a combined 16-60, including 2-9 in a pandemic-shortened 2020-21 season. Due to COVID-19 concerns, Liberty didn’t play a game until Jan. 21.
The Hurricanes beat rival Freedom late in the regular season but lost 45-28 in a rematch with the Patriots in the first round of the District 11 6A tournament.
Liberty also dealt with the loss of assistant coach Mike Atkinson, who died on Feb. 3 shortly after suffering a heart attack. Atkinson, who was 56, was a longtime friend and former adult basketball teammate of Wescoe’s.
In a release, the Bethlehem Area School District and Liberty High School expressed regret that Wescoe was resigning.
“Coach Wescoe has spent the better part of the last four years impacting and mentoring our girls in the Liberty girls basketball program,” Liberty athletic director Fred Harris said in a release. “We are thankful for Andy’s service and wish him the best. Andy has left an indelible mark on both the school and the athletic program in his charge.”
Wescoe was well known in local basketball before taking the Liberty job. He played in two District 11 boys basketball title games as a player at Allen in 1984 and 1985 and then was on the Parkland staff in 1997 when the Trojans reached the district finals before losing to Whitehall in a five-overtime thriller.
He also played at Lafayette for legendary coach Butch van Breda Kolff.
Wescoe was Liberty’s fourth coach since John Tone resigned in 2009 after 23 seasons in charge.
Applicants interested in the position are encouraged to submit a resume and letter of interest to Harris at Liberty.
Family tradition, by George
Chuck Frantz is best known these days as the president of the Lehigh Valley Yankee Fan Club and the vice president of the Northampton Area School District board of directors.
But Frantz is also a Tri-County Baseball League Hall of Famer.
He played baseball for Dick Tracy at Dieruff High School in the early 1970s and 51 years ago the lefthander pitched for the Huskies in an East Penn League game against Reading at the city’s iconic George Field.
In 1995, Frantz was back at George Field to watch his son Chuck play for the Northampton Legion team when it beat Boyertown 2-0 for the Pennsylvania American Legion Region 2 championship as Northampton advanced to the Region 1 national tournament in Middletown, Connecticut.
On Friday night Frantz was back again at George Field to watch his grandson Charlie, a high school sophomore, making his varsity debut at
Wilson West Lawn High School against Reading. Wilson won 21-3 and the young Frantz scored three runs as a pinch-runner and played second base for an inning.
“There was a lot of history that came together Friday night and it touched me and had me thinking back to my son’s playing days and my own,” he said. “At Dieruff, Coach Tracy was a great coach and always seemed to start me against our toughest opponents. It was fun pitching back then and I’m very proud of my days at Dieruff and in the Tri-County League. I threw hard but now if I had to throw the ball to my grandson I don’t know if I could do it because my arm is shot from all the pitches I threw when I was young.”
Lackawanna-bound Booth
Standout Dieruff wide receiver Jayden Booth will continue his career at Lackawanna College.
That’s the same school that helped to send Emmaus product Kevin White on to West Virginia and the NFL.
Booth had 20 catches for 365 yards and two touchdowns last season and made 47 tackles on defense.
He was a first-team selection in the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference’s Lehigh County Division, a second-team safety, and an honorable mention choice on the all-area team.
Looking forward to 2022
For the second straight year the 41st Lehigh Valley Old Time Athletes and Friends Reunion, scheduled for June 5 at the Agri-Plex at the Allentown Fairgrounds,
has been postponed due to coronavirus concerns. The group will try again to bring Lehigh Valley’s sports community together on June 4, 2022.
New leader of the Golden Bears
Renee Hellert was recently hired as the new athletic director at Kutztown University.
Hellert came to Kutztown from Moravian College where she was associate athletic director. She began her duties at Kutztown on March 29.
A former basketball and softball player from Westerly, Rhode Island, Hellert spent 19 years as an administrator and gives Moravian AD Mary Beth Spirk plenty of credit for her advancement in college athletics.
“Mary Beth has been a huge mentor for me and given me the opportunity to grow and develop as an athletic director,” Hellert said. “They have done amazing things at Moravian and I can’t talk about them enough and how great their athletic programs and academic programs are and Mary Beth has a lot to do with the success of the athletic programs, 100%.”
Hellert said she learned mentoring, leadership, and communication skills from Spirk.
“She is a great leader and does a great job in building relationships and communicating with our coaches,” Hellert said of Spirk. “She does that really well and one of the biggest things I’ve learned is how to find the right people to be our coaches. I was looking at a lot of the resumes coming in of prospective candidates and where they have been, but Mary Beth is the best at judging character. She can judge a person in about 30 seconds. She has a really good feeling for people and is a really good person herself.”
Hellert has become AD at a challenging time for all colleges.
Like virtually every school in the country, Kutztown lost seasons last spring, fall, and winter due to the pandemic.
The spring sports program is back up and running while following the appropriate protocols required by COVID-19, but it’s hardly business as usual.
“We have to make sure we’re keeping our student-athletes safe,” she said. “We must make sure we’re following everything in regard to testing and social distancing and we have to make sure we’re working with our coaches and athletic trainers with our practice plans, policies, and procedures. You have to make sure everything is in place for traveling, for eating, for locker rooms, for hosting games. There’s a lot of administrative work that needs to be done. It’s definitely a challenge across the board.”
Hellert enjoys the Lehigh Valley and is hopeful more area athletes will give Kuztown a look when making their college decision.
“At Moravian, we spent a lot of time looking at where our athletes are coming from and 60% of our student-athletes come from the Lehigh Valley,” she said. “So I am really about talking to the coaches and want to see if there’s an obstacle and how can we bring in more local student-athletes. I’m looking at specific programs in the Lehigh Valley and I want to know if there’s reasons why we’re not getting recruits from those areas. Is there something we can improve on our end to make Kutztown more attractive to those students?”