Spring 2025

What an odd little school this Faith Christian Academy is out of Quakertown, Sellersville, Roseto or wherever. FCA is playing Freedom for the 2A state championship in baseball. In trying to find info on the LIons -- like their W-L record -- all I could come up with is 2-0! Double take. You're this far along in the playoffs and you're only 2-0??? But that's what FCA is listed as: 2-0! Not sure if they are only counting their wins in the playoffs (?). Whatever... I did bump them up to 3-0 since Monday's victory in the semifinals hadn't been included yet.

Never knew there was such a thing as the Abbott Six Star Medal. One attains it by running the New York City, Boston, Chicago, Berlin, Tokyo and London marathons. Greg Loeffert ran the Tokyo and London races this spring to complete the feat. Loeffert, who played on Franklin's 2001 state championship basketball team, ran his first marathon, the New York City, in 2007. His whole family was in London in April to see him get No. 6. Joe Henderson told Loeffert's story in the June 5 edition of The Derrick/The News-Herald. Loeffert, according to his brother, Jeff, has 39 marathons under his belt and has done one in under three hours --another goal reached. His inspiration is Jack Fultz, a 1966 Franklin graduate who won the Boston Marathon in 1976.

Kye Winslow, Rocky Grove student and standout swimmer for Franklin, is headed to Shippensburg.

Duly noted: The first six and seven of the nine batters who took the field for Louisville against Vanderbilt Saturday sported better than .300 batting averages. Vandy had just one player over .300, the first baseman, Riley Nelson who is at .351...

Things gleaned from reading X (mainly Tom Reisenweber, who keeps track): D-10 baseball title for Titusville was first for Rockets...Back-to-back softball titles and 11 in all for Cambridge Springs (Rocky Grove gave Spa better game in the semis)...Harbor Creek has seven softball titles...Mercyhurst eight-time winner in baseball...

Track Leftover II: Central Clarion (a Clarion/Clarion-Limestone co/op) not only won the 2A state title 400 relay, but earned medals in the other two, taking sixth in the 1600 and eighth in the 3200. Heralded QB Jase Ferguson who plays hoops for C-L in the winter, went out for track this spring and ran the second leg of the sprint relay. And one of the runners on that relay is a freshman.

Track Leftover: So, now that the state track meet is over, it can be said that Oil City faced two state champions in opponents' backfields during the 2024 football season. Nolan Carey of Corry, who threw for 234 yards and three touchdowns in a 26-21 decision against the Oilers, won the 2A javelin, and sophomore Vinny Feliciano of Mercyhurst, who scored on an 83-yard run after the Oilers were comfortably ahead, won the 100. Feliciano was 18/120 and caught a 55-yard TD pass. One of Carey's TD passes went to another state champ, hurdler Blake Cook. 

Ben Webber, an Oil City High School graduate who has been at ESPN since 2000, won another sports Emmy May 20, this time for his work on College Game Day (Rece Davis, Lee Corso and those guys). Webber is a coordinating producer at ESPN. He's a Westminster College graduate who starred in swimming in high school and before that was a fixture in the Oil City Little League, if not on the field then in the press box. Webber was the subject of this excellent feature story by John Dudley in the Erie Times News in 2017.

Roman McFall, former Oil City High School football/basketball prospect whose family moved away after his freshman year, received the outstanding male athlete award at Canyon High, a 6A school in New Braunfels, Texas. He also received the coveted Spirit of Canyon award, which is given at the end of the night.

Will McMahon has signed a letter to attend Penn State-Behrend. Last fall it was announced that the Oil City three-sport star was going there for golf, now it's baseball......Nikki Petro, a jumper on the Oil City girls track team, is headed to Mercyhurst, according to a "tweet"" on X. The university launched its Division I track program (for both men and women) in November.​

Saw in the paper where erstwhile star wrestler Dane Wenner of Cranberry is class valedictorian and headed to Penn State where he plans to major in electrical engineering. In addition to his many accomplishments in wrestling and track (school record 13-7 pole vault last year), Wenner is a four-time state qualifier in cross country and golf. Didn't realize that. The salutatorian is none other than Kayla Hanna, one of the stars of the state championship cross country team. She's plans to attend Slippery Rock where she will be in the accelerated physician assistant program -- with a minor in Spanish.​

osing.

Oil City's  Jackson Dilks (photo here by Kelly Malek) reached the D-10 semifinals where he lost to eventual three-time champion Gavin Ferretti of Cathedral Prep. Jaxon Klapec and Carter O'Dell beat a team from Titusville May 8 to advance to the  quarterfinals of the D-10 doubles tournament before losing. Dilks was later named Oil City's valedictorian. He's going to Columbia to study economics and politcal science.

Franklin's Jay Prettyman signed a letter-of-intent to continue his running/academic career at Memphis (the basketball school). Prettyman's older brother, Caleb, is a freshman at Penn State where he is listed on the cross country roster. The Prettymans have given Franklin a powerful 1-2 punch in the distance races for the past five years. Jay added to his resume by running a  meet record 9:42.06 at the Redbank Valley Invitational on May 8. (Photo by Christy Fackler).