First Posted: 5/7/2015
WEST PITTSTON – The best, most versatile athletes in high school tend to show off their ability by playing three sports – one each in the fall, winter and spring.
Wyoming Area has developed its own tradition. The Warriors have athletes who juggle two sports in the same season.
This spring alone, Wyoming Area has four athletes who were part of Wyoming Valley Conference Division 2 track and field teams while simultaneously playing another sport – helping the softball team remain in title contention and assisting the brand-new boys and girls lacrosse programs get off the ground.
In an era when young athletes are more frequently pressured to commit to one sport year-round, Wyoming Area takes a different approach to help its various sports programs remain competitive.
“We have a lot of great athletes who are multi-sport athletes,” said Joe Pizano, who serves as the school’s athletic director and, as head track and field coach, is one of the coaches who manages players being in his and other programs at the same time. “We have girls who take it serious, we have girls who only come days when they can, and it works for everybody.”
Making it work
One of the things that makes the situation work is the acceptance by Wyoming Area coaches that a member of their team may not always have that sport as a top priority, not only throughout the entire year, but within the particular season.
“Our administration has been great and so have the head coaches with allowing the kids to do it,” Pizano said.
Those coaches talk early and often to help manage expectations.
“First of all, the kid has a dominant sport usually,” Pizano said. “As long as the coaches, the athletes and the families communicate before the season and everybody knows, there’s not a problem.”
Jeff Skursky, an all-star football player in the fall, is a javelin thrower and a defender on the first-year boys lacrosse team.
Marcyssa Brown and Alexa Malloy, already established as major contributors on the track team, added their athleticism to the new girls lacrosse team by joining that sport after the season had started.
Bree Bednarski had been a softball starter first when she added track last spring. The junior is now a major threat in four events – the 100- and 200-meter dash, the 400 relay and the javelin – and often the most accomplished Warrior at the end of a track meet despite it arguably being her third priority in the spring.
Bednarski, who was selected to the USA Field Hockey Under-17 Junior National Squad last summer, still works out in that sport. The first-team, all-stater, University of Michigan recruit and 2014 WVC scoring champion attends USA Field Hockey’s Futures training each weekend and finds time on many weekdays to work on her stick skills.
And, she is a leader of two spring varsity sports teams. She is the leadoff hitter and center fielder on a 9-3 softball team.
“It keeps me busy,” Bednarski said.
And, with a little luck, the Warriors have been able to use her in competition all spring.
“It just happened to work out where the meets and invitationals that would have been a conflict with a softball game got rained out,” Pizano said. “And, when we rescheduled, the days when we run, they don’t play.
“Everything worked out great.”
Bednarski had days when she got in an hour of softball practice before winning four events at track.
Not the first time
Bednarski is not the first to follow this path.
Syracuse University field hockey captain Serra Degnan competed in track and softball at the same time during the spring while at Wyoming Area.
Danielle Stillarty, a four-year starter in girls soccer, became an all-star kicker as a senior at Wyoming Area in 2013. She followed the example of Katie Scalzo, an all-star kicker who carried over some of her skills from the soccer field during the time when girls in the WVC still played their soccer in the spring. Stillarty added the twist of doing both sports at the same time.
A.J. Lenkaitis, a current Wyoming Area senior who is headed to Temple University to continue his football career, got started as an all-star punter and kicker while he was still playing soccer.
Nick O’Brien and Trent Grove, two of the school’s top athletes in recent years, led the baseball team while competing in track and field. Grove wound up fourth in the state in the javelin in 2013 earning a shot at a college career in track and field only to then have Temple drop the sport after he got started there.
Dante DeLuca, a current Wyoming Area sophomore, was both a swimmer and basketball player in the winter of his freshman year before concentrating on basketball this year.
Keeping tradition alive
Brown, Malloy and Skursky have helped keep the school tradition alive.
Brown has played twice on the field in lacrosse, but put in most of her time as a goalie, making as many as 19 saves in a game.
“I just wanted to try something new with this being my senior year,” Brown said.
She found that something new while watching her brother, Darius Brown, play on the Wyoming Area boys lacrosse team and her younger siblings, Ethan Hosier and Emma Hosier, play youth lacrosse with the Valley Laxerz.
“Ethan taught me how to play,” she said of the 13-year-old who showed her some of the stick skills involved in the sport before she attended her first practice.
Brown, who also plays basketball at Wyoming Area, puts her main emphasis on track where she is part of the 1600 relay team that set a school record in this week’s title-clinching win at Lake-Lehman. She is also a district qualifier in the long jump and triple jump in the sport that she began in eighth grade, leaving behind years of youth softball.
Malloy already had experience in mixing two activities at the same time. She has been a cheerleader for four years while also playing soccer.
Now, she has two sports at the same time, getting ready for a district lacrosse playoff game against rival Pittston Area and the district track championships where she will run the 400 and be on the title-contending relay team with Brown.
“Since I was in track since seventh grade, I put that first,” Malloy said. “Probably the hardest part is deciding whether to go to which practices first, but the coaches have been really good working with me.”
Malloy, who played attack first and has recently put in some time at midfield, and Brown add experienced varsity athletes to a team where a significant majority of the players are freshmen.
The cooperation allows the school to boost the numbers and competitiveness of its programs while often competing as a small Class AAA school against opponents with larger enrollments.
“It only works if everybody supports it; if everybody knows going into it,” Pizano said. “We don’t have kids taking advantage of two coaches, saying ‘Hey I’m here’. You don’t have coaches thinking a kid’s at one practice and the other coach thinks he’s at your practice.
“As long as everybody communicates, I think it’s a win-win situation.”
The Warriors have the results to prove it.
