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Times Leader Player Of The Week

WVC coaches appalled by actions of Texas players

A connection through marriage hooked up the Holy Redeemer football program with some much-needed equipment.Redeemer coach Scott Dennis and Kasey Kesselring, Headmaster of Montverde Academy in Florida, are married to sisters. Montverde Academy, well known nationally for its basketball program, decided to add football in 2012. After a three-year experiment, it scrapped football but was left with all the equipment.So a phone call from Kesselring to Dennis started things in motion.&#8220;He called me up and said &#8216;If you can ship it up, you can have it,&#8217;&#8221; Dennis said. &#8220;They donated it to our school, so we ended up with almost 40 brand new shoulder pads &#8212; air-cooled ones that are awesome, they&#8217;re Riddell &#8212; and also 40 helmets. We needed it because we had 30 kids on the junior high and 31 on the varsity. We wouldn&#8217;t have had enough equipment.&#8221;Dennis and Redeemer athletic director J.P. Aquilina didn&#8217;t have a dollar figure on how much it cost to ship the equipment north. But the cost of the equipment alone made the expense worthwhile.&#8220;If you do the math, it&#8217;s $350 for a helmet, $350 for shoulder pads. Especially for top-of-the-line ones,&#8221; Dennis said. &#8220;That&#8217;s another thing. It moved our program ahead. Where I want to be in five or six years, that stuff helps us get there a lot sooner.&#8220;Those shoulder pads are lighter, they&#8217;re air-cooled, they&#8217;re a lot better than the stuff we had before.&#8221;The helmets were yellow &#8212; Montverde&#8217;s football outfits resembled Scranton Prep &#8212; so there was an added expense of having them repainted. But again, it&#8217;s cheaper to paint a donated helmet than to buy a new one. So once again, Redeemer came out ahead on the exchange.BEEN THERE, DONE THATDallas defeated Scranton 13-7 last Friday on a diving catch by receiver Ryan Martin with 2:36 remaining. Sounds familiar? It should.Martin was the guy who went up against three Lake-Lehman defenders in last year&#8217;s regular-season finale and caught a 37-yard touchdown pass in the end zone as time expired. The point-after gave Dallas a 27-26 win and a spot in the District 2 Class 3A playoffs.Matt Harrison threw both TD passes.BEEN A LONG TIMEHazleton Area&#8217;s Adrian Otero had a big game in last Friday&#8217;s 22-20 upset of Coughlin, rushing for 107 yards and a touchdown and intercepting two passes.Otero returned his first interception 34 yards for a touchdown at 8:16 of the third quarter to give the Cougars the lead for good. The interception touchdown was the first for Hazleton Area since 2010 when Brian Campbell returned a pick 61 yards for a score against Tunkhannock in Week 4.NEW FIELDWilliamsport has switch from grass to turf and will play its first home game on the new carpet on Friday.The change leaves just six of 17 WVC teams still playing on grass &#8212; Hanover Area, Nanticoke, Northwest, Pittston Area, Tunkhannock and Wyoming Area. There haven&#8217;t been any rumblings about those schools going to the fake stuff.HISTORY LESSONCrestwood defeated Berwick twice in 2014, but the Dawgs turned the tables last Friday with a 34-14 win. History was on Berwick&#8217;s side.No WVC team has ever defeated a Berwick team coached by George Curry three consecutive times. Hazleton Area and Wyoming Valley West have posted at least three consecutive victories against Berwick, but that was when Gary Campbell was the coach.HELP WANTEDThe Berwick School District was once again advertising for the position of head football coach for the 2016 season. Curry submitted a letter of resignation this summer, but the 70-year-old said prior to the season he would like to return for one more year if his health permits. Curry believes he has something special in the current junior class.STAT OF THE WEEKAfter defeating Tunkhannock 30-7 in Week 6 of the 2014 season, Pittston Area has managed just 19 points in its last five games. The Patriots have allowed 170 in that span.It will be difficult to reverse that trend Friday as Pittston Area hosts Valley View, which is coming off a 27-0 victory over Mid Valley.TRADING PLACESMifflin County, which plays at Williamsport on Friday, hired a new head coach in the offseason. Brent Hartman came over from East Juniata, where he was 2-8 in his only season at the helm. Of course, that left East Juniata without a coach until the school hired George Miskinis.Miskinis was the head coach at Mifflin County the past four years. So, in a rarity, the two schools swapped head coaches.<style>
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<div class="neCaption">Holy Redeemer running back Thomas Engle runs between Holy Cross defenders Paul Marmo and Cory Miller during Saturday&#8217;s game at Wilkes-Barre Memorial Stadium. Redeemer was able to get equipment donated to the program by Montverde Academy through a connection coach Scott Dennis has with the Florida school. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/web1_hr_hc2_faa1.jpg</photo0><caption0>Holy Redeemer running back Thomas Engle runs between Holy Cross defenders Paul Marmo and Cory Miller during Saturday&#8217;s game at Wilkes-Barre Memorial Stadium. Redeemer was able to get equipment donated to the program by Montverde Academy through a connection coach Scott Dennis has with the Florida school. </caption0><photoCredit0>Fred Adams | for Times Leader </photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta>By John Erzarjerzar@www.timesleader.com</bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta>Reach John Erzar at 570-991-6394 or on Twitter @TLJohnErzar</shirttailMeta></div>

Redeemer gets equipment through donation