West Shamokin Wolves Varsity Football Preseason Preview

by Jake DeLuca

From the Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League (WPIAL) and now back to the Heritage Conference, the West Shamokin Wolves varsity football team is preparing for another season, but this time in a different league.

West Shamokin Wolves Head Coach Jon McCullough knows that the competition will be different.

“The biggest difference is we don’t know much about the teams we are going to be paying and vice versa, they don’t know much about us. As far as how we’re approaching this season, we aren’t approaching it any differently than what we’ve done in the past. We still have our way of how we do things, and we are going to continue to coach and prepare the same. I expect our players to do the same too. More or less, it’s just not having the familiarity with the opponents that we are going to see this year.”

The new conference will allow for a more level playing field for the Wolves. Most of the teams that West Shamokin played last season had twice the amount of players. Last season in District 7 of the WPIAL, the Wolves (having a 32 man roster) went up against teams like Deer Lakes (54 man roster) and Freeport (71 man roster).

West Shamokin finished 4-6 last season, which is a nice improvement compared to where they were in 2010 and 2011 posting a 0-20 record, which helped notch their place in sports history with a 46 straight game losing streak.

That was then and this is now though, and under Head Coach Jon McCullough the Wolves have posted a respectable .500 record at 15-15.

Now in the Heritage Conference, McCullough is excited for the future of West Shamokin athletics.

“I’m excited about the move (to the heritage conference); we are going to play schools that are similar to us. It also gives us a conference that is set for the foreseeable future, compared to the WPIAL which changes every two years or so. It’ll be nice to develop consistent rivalries, not just for football but for our whole athletics department (at West Shamokin) to play the same teams.”

West Shamokin has five starters returning on offense and defense this season, so they still have some positions to fill. As the roster continues to fill up, Coach McCullough is confident that he has the players to fill the void left by the 2016 graduating class.

“We had some good kids who graduated last year, so we need to see some kids step up and take a more prominent role this year. I’m excited about that. We have a good group of kids coming back and I’m confident that we’re going to have some kids step up and replace the productivity the graduates had.”

At the start of next week, the Wolves will begin to practice in full pads and gear which will give those new players a chance to shine before their first scrimmage.

West Shamokin will host a tri-scrimmage with Union High School (Rimersburg) and Punxsutawney High School.

“We have had a tri-scrimmage for the past two years. We are pretty familiar with it (tri-scrimmage), usually one team is off (the field) and then you rotate it (the teams) through so everyone gets the same amount of repetitions. It’s not ideal, but we make it work,” McCullough explained.

Coach McCullough did not want to give a prediction for the season, because “talk is cheap” and he would rather let it play out on the field. However McCullough does expect his team to be highly competitive in their new conference.

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