District College category, Page 8
Westmoreland County campus clippings: Norwin, Franklin Regional grads earn PAC awards
A pair of local products claimed major awards in Presidents’ Athletic Conference basketball. Grove City senior guard Mara Polczynski (Norwin) was named the conference defensive player of the year, while Washington & Jefferson freshman guard Cam Rowell (Franklin Regional) claimed newcomer of the year honors. Polczynski, known for her ability...
After sitting out a year with injuries, Seton Hill softball’s Kassidy Wittig aims to build on award-winning 2024 season
Kassidy Wittig spent her entire freshman season in the Seton Hill softball team’s dugout. It was a fate she could have accepted if she’d been sitting because other players had proven themselves to be more capable. But Wittig didn’t even get a chance to show what she could do in...
Plum grad Johnny Ioannou building on breakout sophomore season as PS Fayette baseball looks to improve
As he was coming up through Plum’s high school baseball program, Johnny Ioannou knew he was being prepared to play at the next level. Under longtime coach Carl Vollmer, the Mustangs had produced a number of successful players, including two, Scott McGough and Alex Kirilloff, who went on to play...
A-K Vally campus clippings: Kiski Area grad Miller swims to gold for Edinboro
Eliza Miller originally began her collegiate career on the new Duquesne women’s triathlon team. But a change was made to a new environment as Miller, a 2024 Kiski Area graduate, returned to a familiar sport. She has made the most of her inaugural season with the Edinboro women’s swim team....
Westmoreland County campus clippings: Former Mt. Pleasant coach Chris Brunson wins 1st games at Waynesburg
Waynesburg started the Chris Brunson era with a pair of wins. Brunson, the former championship-winning coach at Mt. Pleasant, won his first two games as Waynesburg’s new softball coach, 3-2 and 14-0 (5 innings) over Penn State Altoona. Sophomore third baseman Brynn Charnesky (Southmoreland) had a double and RBI in...
Westmoreland County campus clippings: Latrobe grad Kiley Myers tosses no-hitter at Marist
Kiley Myers was as efficient as she was dominant in her first college softball no-hitter. The Marist grad student and Latrobe graduate blanked Long Island, 9-0, in five innings with precision. She had only two strikeouts but threw just 51 pitches and allowed one baserunner. The fast-throwing right-hander retired 10...
Former Westminster coach, College Football Hall of Famer Joe Fusco dies at 87
Wilkinsburg native Joe Fusco, a 2001 College Football Hall of Fame coaching inductee and one of the most successful coaches in the history of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, died Saturday. He was 87. Fusco served as Westminster’s head coach from 1972-99 and led the Titans to four NAIA...
Sophomore Kedrick Curtis blossoms in 2nd season with Seton Hill men’s basketball team
To most basketball observers in Westmoreland County, Kedrick Curtis is the kid who hit the miracle shot for Seton Hill. Against Glenville State on the last day of November, Curtis, a sophomore forward from Baltimore, heaved in a three-quarter-court shot as time expired to give the Griffins a 73-72 victory....
Deer Lakes grad Tia Germanich making difficult decision to choose bowling over softball pay off
Tia Germanich grew up in two worlds. One was softball. She played throughout her youth and, eventually, starred for Deer Lakes, earning second-team all-star honors from the Valley News Dispatch after her senior season. With her talent came opportunities to play in college, mostly from Division III schools. The other...
Franklin Regional grad Cam Rowell injects energy into Washington & Jefferson men’s basketball team
After a down year, the Washington & Jefferson men’s basketball team entered the current season hoping to get back on track. In 2022-23, the Presidents of coach Ethan Stewart-Smith went 20-7 overall, 16-4 in the Presidents’ Athletic Conference and reached the conference tournament semifinals. But W&J took its lumps last...
After dreaming of playing baseball, Kiski Area grad Glenn Fowkes becomes key member of Penn State Behrend swimming team
Glenn Fowkes had no intention of swimming at Penn State Behrend. In fact, until he reached high school, he had no intention of swimming competitively anywhere. Fowkes had been a baseball player throughout his youth, and when he reached his freshman year at Kiski Area, he, naturally, tried out for...
Westmoreland County campus clippings: Saint Vincent’s Jaden Gales hits career milestone
Junior Jaden Gales came back to Saint Vincent to rejoin his former teammates and make more memories with the men’s basketball team. While he was at it, he pocketed a milestone. Gales, a 6-foot-7 forward, scored his 1,000th career point in the Bearcats’ 78-62 victory over Waynesburg, his team’s sixth...
Inaugural men’s volleyball season off and running in Presidents’ Athletic ConferenceVideo
Brett Heckathorn has had a lifelong love for volleyball. A player at Butler, he went on to be a captain of Grove City College’s men’s club team. But coaching a men’s volleyball team wasn’t on Heckathorn’s radar. He had served as an assistant for the Grove City women’s team and...
Westmoreland County campus clippings: Seton Hill softball earns season-opening sweep
Yes, softball season is here again. Seton Hill wasted little time getting on the winning track, sweeping a doubleheader from the host team in Mount Olive, N.C. In a 6-5 win in eight innings, senior Brooklyn Fukushima went 3 for 4, homered and drove in three, including the go-ahead RBI...
Strong showing in Vegas, standout freshman class have Saint Vincent women’s bowling confident of title chances
There’s a popular ad campaign that says “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.” The Saint Vincent women’s bowling team wants to turn that notion on its head. For several years, coach Jeff Zidek has taken his team to the Collegiate Shoot-Out in Las Vegas. It is, Zidek said, one...
Plum grad Ta’Rasi Means reaches 1,000 career points for Penn State New Kensington men’s basketball
When he played basketball at Plum, Ta’Rasi Means was not a 1,000-point scorer. Means didn’t get any varsity time as a freshman, so that reduced his chances of reaching the coveted milestone. At Penn State New Kensington, three years has been more than enough for Means to hit the millennium...
Women step into head coaching positions for area men’s volleyball teams, part of what could be a growing trend nationwide
When Kate McCauley was hired as the Saint Vincent men’s volleyball coach in October 2021, she couldn’t help but feel like she was on an island. A woman coaching a man’s sport, after all, was rare. McCauley hardly thought of herself as a trail blazer, but she did harbor hope...
Westmoreland County campus clippings: Norwin grad Brianna Zajicek hits career-high in comeback win
A 15-point halftime deficit meant nothing to Brianna Zajicek. The Cedarville junior basketball player led a fervent comeback with a career day as the Yellow Jackets rallied past Findlay, 81-80, in the Great Midwest Athletic Conference. Zajicek, a Norwin alum, poured in a career-high 25 points on 7-of-13 shooting and...
Franklin Regional grad Kadyn Hannah helps steady ship after Cal (Pa.) men’s basketball team is ravaged by injuries
As a senior — one of only three on the roster — with two years of experience, Kadyn Hannah figured to take on a larger role with the Cal (Pa.) men’s basketball team this season. After spending his freshman season at La Roche then having his share of ups and...
Burrell grad Niko Ferra building skills, confidence under coach Vince DeAugustine with Seton Hill wrestling
The 2023-24 season might have been Vince DeAugustine’s first as a college wrestling coach, but after overseeing the Hempfield (16 years) and Norwin (two years) wrestling programs, he is no stranger to the talent around the WPIAL. So when he assumed the helm of Seton Hill’s program last season, he...
Gateway grad Jordan Edwards relishing opportunity on Princeton coaching staff
Jordan Edwards didn’t waste any time hitting the ground running after she was hired last June as an assistant coach for the women’s basketball team at Princeton. “Summer is the big evaluation period, and there is a lot of recruiting that goes into it,” said Edwards, a standout player at...
Westmoreland County campus clippings: Seton Hill women’s basketball moves up to No. 5 ranking
Seton Hill vaulted four spots in the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association Division II Coaches Poll, taking the No. 5 spot in the top 25. The Griffins (17-2, 11-1 PSAC) continue to look impressive in what has been one of their best regular seasons. The team also ranks fifth in the...
New Saint Vincent football coach Casey Goff comfortable with putting life into struggling programs
Casey Goff grew up the youngest of three brothers, so it would have been natural for him to try to keep up with the other two. In actuality, Goff, the new football coach at Saint Vincent, said he didn’t even try. Even the younger of his two older siblings was...
Kiski Area grad Abbie Johns shows plenty of promise in freshman season with Shippensburg women’s basketball
As college debuts go, Abbie Johns couldn’t have asked for much more. The Kiski Area grad opened her freshman season with the Shippensburg women’s basketball team by scoring 14 points in just 16 minutes against then-No. 10 Fayetteville State. In fact, Johns made her first shot: a 3-pointer late in...
Pitt-Greensburg men’s basketball team rights ship after rocky start, hopes to contend in AMCC
After winning its first two games, including a nail-biting overtime victory over Grove City in the opener, the Pitt-Greensburg men’s basketball team looked like it was on its way to a fast start. Then came the next seven games. The Bobcats won only one of them, a string that included...
