HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL PREVIEWS CONTINUE WITH BECAHI, DIERUFF
Dave Lutte begs to differ with anyone who suggests you can’t go home again.
Lutte feels right at home at Dieruff High School where the former Husky football player and longtime assistant is the new head coach.
The Huskies are coming off back-to-back 3-7 seasons and were 22-47 in seven seasons under Kyle Beller, who resigned and is now a member of the Bethlehem Catholic coaching staff.
Beller did a good job in restoring a program that was 7-92 over the previous decade and had lost 30 straight games when he took over in 2012. “The one thing we’re trying to instill here is a different attitude,” Lutte said. “We’re going to go at Bethlehem Catholic in the opener [Aug. 24] 1,000% and when you go at somebody 100% you never know what can happen on a football field. Crazy bounces can happen. Crazy things go your way and the next thing you know, you’re in a football game. We want to keep our kids positive and disciplined.”
After a recent practice, Lutte asked the team leaders for input. What can be done for them to make things more productive? What can the coaches do so that concepts are easier to understand?
“We want to have dialogue with them,” Lutte said. “We want their input. We have to do this together. It can’t be just the staff. These young
men have been playing football for a long time; it’s fair to let them have their input to a degree.”
Dieruff had about 60 kids out for the team during heat acclimatization week. A dozen of them are seniors with a large sophomore class of about 30.
“When they were freshmen, the sophomores and juniors went 8-2 and 9-1, respectively,” Lutte said. “Now we’ve lost some kids from that group here and there, but the core is still here. To go back even further, the junior kids were the 140-pound champs at East Side Youth Center.”
Lutte isn’t talking championships yet. He wants to set realistic goals for a group that might be a year away from contention.
But the Huskies are approaching the season with a new sense of determination. Lutte spent 27 seasons as an assistant coach, including several at Nazareth where he worked on teams coached by Rob Melosky and Tom Falzone and said he’s never been around a more hard-working group of kids than those he has at Dieruff.
“I couldn’t be happier with the kids,” he said. “They bring it every day.”