Category: Latest News

By Matt Chandik

As far as head coaching debuts go, Matt Lindeman’s rookie campaign as the Penn Wood boss a season ago couldn’t have gone much better.

Sure, the Patriots could have won the state championship, but consider this. Penn Wood posted an 18-9 campaign, a stark improvement over a 12-11 season in 2015-16, and reached the state tournament for the first time since 2011 before falling to Williamsport. In 2011, the Patriots reached the Class AAAA semifinals before bowing out to Mount Lebanon in overtime.

Lindeman’s first year also produced a Del Val championship with a 9-1 league mark, and a big part of that was a heavy reliance on a group of eight or nine seniors who’d been through it all before.

So, because of that, Lindeman and the Patriots will have to try to produce an encore with a blank slate.

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By Matt Chandik

Mike Doyle recently upgraded his players’ wardrobes with some championship shirts, but not in the way you might think.

Doyle and his Penncrest team fondly looked back at last year’s run to a District 1 Class 5A championship and a spot in the state tournament, but the longtime coach now needed them to focus on 2017-18, not 2016-17.

“I got them all T-shirts that said, ‘2017 District Champs – Penncrest’ on the front,” Doyle said. “On the back, they say, ‘Who cares?’”

The message was impossible to ignore. That was last year, and this is a whole new year. All last year’s hardware does is make the target on the Lions’ back just a little bit bigger, and they know it, too.

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By Rick Obrien

Dave McFadden stepped down as the Strath Haven boys’ basketball coach after two seasons on Wednesday, citing personal reasons.

“I have two young sons — Fin, who is 3 1/2, and Landon, who is 2 1/2,” he said. ” I need to do right by them and my family. The time commitment of being a coach was cutting into the time I was spending with them.”

Last season, McFadden guided the Panthers to a 14-9 record, the Central League playoff tournament final, and a berth in the PIAA District 1 Class 5A tournament.

“This was probably the most difficult decision I’ve had to make in my life,” McFadden, 32, said. “But I had to do what I had to do.”

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By Matthew De George

When the Ridley boys basketball job opened up in March, Kevin Kelly saw a chance for a homecoming.

For two-plus decades, Kelly has coached anywhere and everywhere in Southeastern PA. But the chance to return to Ridley, where he got his first job under legendary coach John DiGregorio in the early 1990s, was something he’d long prized.

“Ridley’s a job that, ever since I started coaching, I always wanted to coach there,” Kelly said Tuesday after obtaining board approval to be hired as Ridley’s new boys hoops coach. “It’s an extremely special place and a special program. It was just by chance that it opened up now, and I couldn’t pass up the chance to get back into Delaware County and back to Ridley.”

Kelly takes over for Mike Snyder, who led Ridley on its most successful era before retiring in March. Snyder won a pair of Central League titles and qualified for three PIAA tournaments in six seasons, posting a 104-53 record. The Green Raiders went 11-11 last season, missing the District 1 Class 6A playoffs.

Inheriting a program with such a track record particularly appealed to Kelly, challenges and all.

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By Neil Geoghegan

The first academic year using the PIAA’s expanded classification system recently ended. And even though we are only halfway through the initial two-year experiment, some interesting impressions have already formed.

“Change is always difficult and sometimes it takes a while to accept things,” said West Chester Henderson Athletic Director Ken McCormick. “In five or 10 years from now, most won’t even know we did this.”

What is ‘this?’ Well, in October of 2015, after 10 months of debate, the PIAA Board of Directors voted to expand the district and state playoff classifications for a total of 11 sports starting with the 2016-17 season. Football, boys’ and girls’ basketball, baseball and softball was increased from four to six classes. Boys’ and girls’ soccer and volleyball was expanded to four, field hockey to three, and boys’ and girls’ lacrosse to two.

The primary stated goals for the change were twofold: to create a more even playing field, and to give more teams an opportunity to participate in the postseason.

“One of the goals was to give teams more of an opportunity, which it certainly did,” said Chris Lunardi, the athletic director at West Chester Rustin.

It also addressed some of the enrollment inequities, according to Lunardi. For example, the previous 4A classification for District 1 football, he pointed out, included Rustin – which has an enrollment of just over 1,200 – to North Penn, with over 3,000.

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By Matthew De George

Dr. Juan Baughn sits forward in his chair, his erudite cadence acquiring a slight lilt as a smile curls up on the corners of his mouth. In his crisp black suit and orange paisley tie, even the orange crystal on his right ring finger seems to glint a little brighter.

“I think technology has changed,” Baughn was saying from his office in the renovated bowels of Chester High School. “I think America has changed. Even Chester has changed. But Chester basketball, expectations are the same today as when I started in 1970.”

The interim Superintendent of the Chester Upland School District had the occasion to share a conference table with the latest occupant of a Chester throne Baughn knows well — Keith Taylor, hired as the new leader of the Clippers boys basketball program. Many things have changed in Chester since Baughn helmed the Clippers from 1970-74.

But as Taylor assumes one of the most exalted and highest pressure jobs in Pennsylvania basketball, one thing hasn’t changed: What is expected of Chester High’s program.

Predecessor Larry Yarbray seemed to fulfill many of the qualifications that Baughn and athletic director Andre Moore listed for Taylor. A pedigree of Chester basketball. A familiarity with the district and the program’s storied history. A commitment to advancing student-athletes and placing them in college classrooms, not just gyms.

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By Matthew De George

After 13 years as a top assistant for the late Fred Pickett, Keith Taylor interviewed in 2008 to be the heir apparent to the legendary Chester boys basketball coach.

When the job went to another of Pickett’s protégés, Larry Yarbray, it was a difficult time for Taylor.

“It was hard in the beginning, just to come around; had to get myself together after that,” Taylor told the Daily Times Thursday. “But I always kept abreast of things that were going on in the program.”

It took nearly a decade to receive the delayed payoff, but the long-coveted post atop one of the state’s most illustrious basketball programs is at long last Taylor’s.

Taylor, another storied name in the program’s annuls, was approved by the Chester Upland School District board Thursday night to replace Yarbray as the high school’s varsity boys basketball coach.

Taylor’s credentials are quintessentially Chester with a lineage that connects to every Clippers coach of the last five decades. The 1987 Chester graduate is in the school’s 1,000-point club (1,048, 18th-most all-time) and Hall of Fame. He was twice on teams that lost in the Eastern Final, as a sophomore in Cliff Wilson’s last year at the helm and as a senior under the tutelage of Alonzo Lewis. Both times, Taylor and the Clippers lost to Carlisle and future NBA player Billy Owens, winners of four consecutive state titles then.

Taylor’s mentorship from Pickett is well known, and the coach who preceded Wilson, Dr. Juan Baughn from 1970-74, is the district’s interim superintendent.

(click on this link for the full article)

 

By Matthew De George

Larry Yarbray’s tenure at one of the state’s premier basketball programs has ended.

Per a source, Yarbray’s contract will not renewed by Chester High School, ending his nine-year term as the Clippers head boys basketball coach.

Yarbray went 214-53 since taking over from the late Fred Pickett in 2008. He led Chester to back-to-back PIAA titles in 2011 and 2012, the latter a perfect 32-0 season led by current Brooklyn Nets forward Rondae Hollis-Jefferson. The Clippers lost in the state final the following year to Lower Merion and made the state semifinals in 2014.

Yarbray oversaw a disastrous 2014-15 season in which the Clippers stumbled to a 14-11 record following the injury of All-Delco point guard Khaleeq Campbell, the first time since 1992-93 that the Clippers failed to make the state tournament. The 2016-17 Clippers went 22-7 but needed playbacks to reach the PIAA Class 5A tournament after a homecourt loss to Upper Merion. Chester’s season ended in double-overtime at the hands of Abington Heights, 65-61, March 19.

Yarbray’s winning percentage of 80.1 is nearly identical of that of his mentor Pickett (80.5), though in four fewer seasons. It’s also in line with previous Chester greats like Alonzo Lewis (77.9) and Cliff Wilson (79.9) over comparable tenures.

Yarbray is a 1988 grad of Chester High. An All-Delco guard as a senior, he went on to play at Coppin State.

By Keith Groller

A proposal that would attempt to slow the number of transferring student-athletes by making them ineligible for a year is drawing statewide attention.

But even though many local athletic directors admit that transfers are a big issue, several say this proposal has little chance of passing in its current form.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that the Pennsylvania State Athletic Directors Association has proposed that a student-athlete would be automatically ineligible for a year of varsity sports if they transfer after starting ninth grade. However, the transferring student can gain eligibility by meeting one of five exceptions.

•A “bona fide” move by parents, which would exclude renting an apartment in a school district just to play sports there.

•A legal change of custody by a court of common pleas.

•Closure of a school.

•A hardship case, such as bullying or harassment, that would prompt a student and his or her parents to leave a bad situation for a better one.

•A transfer to a residential public school, which means someone transferring from a private school to a public school would be eligible while a student going from a public school to a private school would not.

By Mathew De George

Tyler Norwood has another line item to put on his resume.
The 2016-17 Daily Times Boys Basketball Player of the Year was voted second team all-state in Class 5A, as selected by members of the media.
Norwood averaged 23.0 points per game for District 1 champion Penncrest. The junior guard is getting a number of low Division I looks after a breakout campaign that included his 1,000th career point.
Also on the second team is All-Delco John Harrar of Strath Haven, who averaged 19.5 points per game in earning Central League MVP honors. Chester’s Jamar Sudan is on the third team in Class 5A.
Episcopal Academy’s run to a share of the Inter-Ac title yielded a pair of second team picks on the Class 4A team. Forward Nick Alikakos, who averaged 17.0 points per game, and point guard Conner Delaney (18.8 ppg) got the nod. Both were recognized as All-Delcos. Alikakos will continue his career at the United States Naval Academy, while Delaney is ticketed for Johns Hopkins.
Villanova signees Collin Gillespie of Archbishop Wood and Dhamir Cosby-Roundtree also earned all-state honors in their respective classes.
Gillespie, a 6-2 guard, was named Class 5A Player of the year after leading the Vikings (28-3) to the PIAA title in that classification. Gillespie averaged 22.7 points per game and guided Wood to 22 straight wins to close the season. Wood’s John Mosco was selected as the Class 5A Coach of the Year.
Cosby-Roudtree, a 6-8 senior forward, teamed with Class 3A Player of the Year Quade Green to lead the Saints to the PIAA crown. Cosby-Rountree averaged 16.6 points per game, while Neumann-Goretti coach Carl Arrigale was named Class 3A Coach of the Year.
The players and coaches of the year had a decidedly Eastern PA flavor. Reading’s Lonnie Walker IV and Rick Perez earned Class 6A Player and Coach of the Year honors, respectively. Daron Russell and Andre Noble of Imhotep Charter were the Player and Coach of the Year in Class 4A. Tamir Green of Constitution was the Class 2A Player of the Year, while Win Palmer of Sewickley was the Coach of the Year. Kevin Anderson from St. John Neumann in Williamsport was the Class 1A Player of the Year, while Rick Mancino of Kennedy Catholic was the Coach of the Year.