Running back Xzavyier Blackshear (12) will be one of Pittston Area’s seniors in line to play for new coach Joe DeLucca next fall. DeLucca, who was hired Tuesday, takes over for Nick Barbieri.
Tony Callaio file photo | For Times Leader
Pittston Area will turn to Joe DeLucca and his 30 years of experience in education and coaching to lead its football program.
DeLucca landed his first varsity football head coaching position when the Pittston Area school board voted 9-0 Tuesday to appoint him as the new leader of the Patriots.
“I’m just incredibly honored and excited to work with the tremendous kids we have and our school community, our supportive parents and administration, and the board’s support as well,” DeLucca said. “It’s a tremendous school district.”
DeLucca, the director of administrative services for the Luzerne County Intermediate Unit, has spent six of the last seven seasons as special teams coach with the Patriots. He stepped away during the 2021 season, the sophomore year for his son, Drew, who just completed a successful three-year run as Pittston Area’s starting quarterback.
Joe DeLucca first coached at Wyoming Seminary as a head junior high coach and varsity assistant in 1994.
Since then, he has coached at Wyoming Area, his alma mater, as well as Mid Valley and Pittston Area. He was a head coach in track and field and cross country as well as a junior high basketball and track coach and a varsity assistant in football on three Wyoming Area championship teams and one at Pittston Area.
During the same three-decade stretch, DeLucca has worked as a teacher, counselor, assistant principal and interim superintendent at local high schools and in administrative positions at the intermediate unit.
The experience coaching special teams will be helpful as DeLucca becomes a head football coach.
“We put a lot of time and dedication into special teams over the last several years, which we will continue to do,” DeLucca said. “Our kids have bought into that. It’s a major facet of the game, which we take seriously.”
DeLucca said offensive and defensive schemes will be dependent on the team’s personnel.
“Our main thing is to put people in the right spots,” DeLucca said. “I don’t want to build an offense and make kids fit into a particular scheme.
“I want to fit the scheme around who our players are. I don’t believe in putting round pegs into square holes.”
DeLucca hopes to meet with the players Thursday morning and lead the work that some of them have already been doing in the offseason.
“First and foremost, our number-one goal is to increase our dedication in the weight room,” he said. “We’re going to strive to be bigger, stronger, tougher, faster. That’s the number-one mantra.
“It doesn’t matter what scheme you run if you don’t take care of that first.”
DeLucca replaces Nick Barbieri, who retired from coaching after the 2023 season. Barbieri led a turnaround that included the first division championship in 20 years – the 2022 Wyoming Valley Conference Division 2 title – at the program, which had its greatest successes while coached by his late father, Bob Barbieri.
“Coach Barbieri certainly has left Pittston Area on solid ground,” DeLucca said. “He ran a top-notch, first-class program. I’m honored to follow in the footsteps of him and his late father, who created a legacy there while coaching at Pittston Area.”
DeLucca is a 1990 graduate of Wyoming Area where he played football under Frank Parra.
Recruited to play football at Mansfield University, DeLucca instead played baseball for a year there and continued that sport after transferring to Bloomsburg University, where he became a team captain.
