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Pioneers win UNICO game

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Small Business Saturday celebrated in Wilkes-Barre

<p>KINGSTON &#8212; Not even a cold November rain could dampen their spirits.</p><p>There were hugs. High-fives and pats on the back.</p><p>Some pulled each other aside to catch up. Others shared jokes and busted on each other.</p><p>Really, for soccer alumni of four local high schools, it was about getting together for old time&#8217;s sake.</p><p>Graduates from Wyoming Seminary, Wyoming Valley West, Lake-Lehman and Coughlin gathered Saturday morning at Nesbitt Stadium with the hopes of starting a new tradition.</p><p>It was the first Wyoming Valley Conference men&#8217;s soccer alumni game.</p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s good to get people from our soccer community back together, especially some of the older guys. It&#8217;s definitely fun,&#8221; Lake-Lehman grad Kevin Konicki said. &#8220;It&#8217;s a good opportunity to see some of my former teammates. Some of them you only see once a year at our own alumni game.&#8221;</p><p>The scoreboards weren&#8217;t turned on at Nesbitt Stadium, although the goals still counted.</p><p>There were no officials. Rather, it was like school-yard rules &#8211; call the fouls and penalties yourself.</p><p>There was no bracket. Instead, short pool-play matches to make sure each school had the chance to face off with each other.</p><p>&#8220;We are just looking to get some of the guys back together that we haven&#8217;t played with in a long time,&#8221; Valley West&#8217;s Aaron Littzi said. &#8220;We have friends on the other schools, so it&#8217;s going to be nice to catch up with them as well.&#8221;</p><p>According to Stephen Molitoris, a Seminary graduate and one of the event organizers, the idea has been floated around for the past few years.</p><p>The notion came about at the school&#8217;s alumni game.</p><p>Yes, it was nice to get together with your fellow classmates and school&#8217;s grads. It was fun to catch up and see what direction life was taking them.</p><p>But what if you put on the old &#8220;jersey&#8221; again against teams from the WVC?</p><p>&#8220;These schools have been having alumni games on their own. Now, it&#8217;s a chance to catch up with some of the other local athletes and have the schools play against each other one more time,&#8221; Molitoris said. &#8220;This is a perfect time because you can maximize the people who come home for the holiday. It&#8217;s going to be fun. Myself and a few of the guys from the different schools play pick-up matches regularly. So they went back to their schools and contacted their alumni directors about getting a team together. We are thankful that Wyoming Seminary was gracious to allow us to use their facility.&#8221;</p><p>OK, so they weren&#8217;t actual &#8220;game&#8221; jerseys like they used to wear.</p><p>Yet, it was easy to tell which school was represented.</p><p>Coughlin donned its normal red. Lehman put on black t-shirts with yellow writing. Seminary&#8217;s alumni wore baby blue, similar to North Carolina. And Valley West had white with maroon lettering.</p><p>&#8220;This is more of a dry run this year; to see how it goes,&#8221; said Coughlin&#8217;s Eugene Burke, who also helped organize the event. &#8220;I know there were a few more schools that expressed interest. Hopefully, we can organize something next year and have it benefit a good cause. For me, it&#8217;s great. It&#8217;s an opportunity to play with some of my former teammates and kids that I played with when I was younger. I&#8217;m actually surprised that we got this many in such a short time.&#8221;</p><p>Yes, the pick-up matches were spirited with a lot of laughter.</p><p>Even when the opposition scored, you can see both teams congratulate the player.</p><p>On this day at least, the score really didn&#8217;t matter much.</p><p>&#8220;I think this is something we can continue to grow,&#8221; Molitoris said. &#8220;I know I talked with people from Dallas who were interested, and they just couldn&#8217;t logistically get together for today&#8217;s date. Hopefully, we can get bigger each year. Just calling everyone to see if there was any interest, it was great. Even if they couldn&#8217;t come to play today, it was nice to catch up with them and see how things were going in their life. Today is a great moment for everyone here.&#8221;</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Former Wyoming Valley Conference boys soccer players hold an alumni game at Nesbitt Stadium on Saturday. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/web1_WVC-Larger.jpg</photo0><caption0>Former Wyoming Valley Conference boys soccer players hold an alumni game at Nesbitt Stadium on Saturday. </caption0><photoCredit0>Submitted photo </photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Tom Fox</p><p>For Times Leader</p></bylineMeta></div>

Soccer alums hope to start new tradition