Wilkes football is off to a 6-1 start with lots of Lehigh Valley contributions
Becahi basketball standout Julian Thomas receives national recognition
The announced crowd for the Lebanon Valley-Wilkes college football game Saturday afternoon at Schmidt Stadium in Kingston, Luzerne County was 635.
Because the second half of the game was played in a steady downpour, those 635 fans were drastically reduced by the time the game ended.
That didn’t matter to Colonels defensive end Adam Piston. The sophomore from Parkland was all over the field for Wilkes, making five tackles including 2½ for negative yardage as Wilkes shut out Lebanon Valley in the second half and posted a 30-20 Middle Atlantic Conference victory.
The win improved Wilkes to 6-1 overall, 5-1 in the MAC where the Colonels are in second place behind only Delaware Valley with three games left in the regular season.
“We got it done today,” Piston said. “It’s all about the effort. We had effort everywhere. We get effort at practice every day and it showed out on the field during the game.”
Piston is one of 17 players from the Lehigh Valley area who either played high school football in the Colonial League or Eastern Pennsylvania Conference on the Wilkes roster.
The defense features three Valley kids in the starting lineup with Parkland graduate Angel Ramos and Whitehall product Steele Hess joining Piston upfront. Starting punter Alex Orlando is from Emmaus and on
offense Nazareth graduate Aidan Palochik.
Mason Smeland from Palisades, Lance Priestas from Liberty, and Zion Jones from Easton are a few of the others on the roster. The numerous Lehigh Valley kids on the Colonels roster are not a surprise.
Head coach Jonathan Drach, who is in his fourth year and third season in charge at Wilkes, considers the Lehigh Valley a fertile recruiting ground.
“It’s such a great area as far as high school football goes,” Drach said. “We’ve done really well down there. We’ve been getting great, tough, blue-collar kids who work their butts off and do well academically. That’s what we’re looking for and that’s an area we’ll
continue to focus on.”
Drach is an Illinois native who was a three-year starter at quarterback at Western Michigan. He coached at Hobart for 11 seasons before coming to Wilkes in early 2018. He inherited a program that was winless in 2017 and quickly turned it around with the Colonels winning six games in 2018 and eight games in 2019 before COVID-19 canceled the 2020 season.
“I recruit the Lehigh Valley myself and for me, coming into this position, I wanted to find kids who wanted to buy in what we’re doing and continue to improve,” he said. “I think we’ve found a niche in that area.”
Of course, while the Lehigh Valley offers a wide array of talent,
it’s also a competitive recruiting market since there are two FCS-level programs in Lehigh and Lafayette, two Division II programs in East Stroudsburg and Kutztown, and two Division III football-playing programs in Muhlenberg and Moravian all within an hour’s drive from either Allentown, Bethlehem or Easton.
Muhlenberg has become a national power in Division III with an appearance in the NCAA semifinals in 2019 and under Nate Milne, the Mules also are loaded with locals.
But that hasn’t stopped Drach from coming into the Valley and going after some of the Valley players best-suited for Division III.
“When you get a couple of guys and they make an impact, they go back to their schools and create that word-of-mouth and they start to recruit for you,” he said. “We’ve been great at Parkland and Whitehall and Emmaus and we’ve been great at other places too and we’re looking to add more. For us, finding the best and the brightest is always going to be a priority.”
Piston said he has been trying to get more Parkland kids to consider Wilkes.
“It’s a tight-knit family here,” he said. “We’re close and we play as a team. It has been an easy transition for me to come here.”
Piston, Hess, and Ramos are all among the top eight tacklers on the Wilkes defense. They have also combined for 15 tackles for loss.
“I’m loving it,” Hess said. “We’re winning and that’s the most important thing. I’m getting good playing time and making plays. I just have to thank my coaches for putting me in the right position and we’re killin’ it right now.”
Hess said it was Drach who won him over in the recruiting process.
“He’s a great coach and a great person,” Hess said. “It just felt right to come here. It helps to have all kinds of Lehigh Valley kids here. This is still good football here. It might be D3, but we’re still going against grown men on every play. I get to play football and go to school. What else could I ask for?”
Orlando, who has been averaging 42½ yards per punt with a long of 63 yards and has had six of his 20 punts downed inside the 20, said he Wilkes provides a great atmosphere for football.
“I looked at Fairleigh-Dickinson, Moravian and I am big on academics, but Wilkes had the program I was looking for and in terms of football the coaches have been great,” Orlando said. “It’s great that the coaches have faith in me to put me on the field as a freshman and should what I can do.”
There is some bantering that goes on between the local kids when it comes to Lehigh Valley scholastic rivalries.
But the group is very unified when it comes to its goal.
“We’ve got one goal in mind and everything we do on and off the field is geared toward that one goal and that’s to win the MAC championship,” Orlando said. “We lost to Widener last week and it stung, but Coach Drach told us that it’s the failures in life that make the great times even greater. We’ve got some great times ahead.”
Honor for Thomas
Former Bethlehem Catholic basketball standout Julian Thomas received the Middle Atlantic AAU Collegiate Scholarship, worth $2,000, which is given to someone who has made contributions to the AAU community and has done his part to raise awareness of “the critical role AAU participation plays in the lives of America’s youth.”
Thomas, who was a part of two league and three district title teams at Bethlehem Catholic, is a student in his second year at F&M where he is also a member of the F&M men’s program. F&M couldn’t play last year due to COVID-19 restrictions, so while his career was on hold, Thomas started a career as a basketball official.
Thomas had to write an essay about the impact AAU had his life. He stressed the importance of academics in his life.
“This scholarship just shows that the work I put in the classroom definitely paid off and gave me some recognition,” he said. “It also shows student-athletes in the Lehigh Valley that if you prioritize your academics as well as your athletics, it’s going to pay off in the long run. I’m very appreciative and honored by this award.”