A-K Valley high school notebook: Coaches get call to Hall

By: HSSN Staff
Sunday, July 22, 2018 | 11:12 PM

Longtime Alle-Kiski Valley baseball coaches Dave and Dennis Montgomery will get their call to the Hall this week, as the twin brothers will get inducted into the PA American Legion Hall of Fame on Saturday in Boyertown.

The brothers have spent nearly the past 25 summers coaching Legion ball after taking over the old Freeport team in 1995. They merged that program with Kiski in 2007 to form the current Kiski Valley team, which includes players from Armstrong, Burrell, Freeport, Highlands, Kiski Area and Leechburg.

Kiski Valley has three District 31 titles under the Montgomery brothers, the most recent coming in 2016.

The Montgomery brothers also coached at Ford City before it merged with Kittanning in 2015 to form the Armstrong School District.

Long division

The Alle-Kiski Valley’s handful of hockey teams will be moving to new divisions in 2018-19 after the PIHL released its alignment for the upcoming season.

Plum will drop from Class AAA to Class AA after one season in the higher classification. The Mustangs won the Class AA Penguins Cup championship in 2017 before slipping to 7-10 in their one Class AAA season.

Deer Lakes, Fox Chapel, Freeport and Kiski Area all remained in Class A in the new alignment, but that classification saw the biggest overall change by switching from one division to three. Deer Lakes, Fox Chapel and Freeport were slotted into the 10-team North division, where teams will play each other twice each.

Kiski Area will play in the South/East division with Bishop McCort, Greensburg Salem, Indiana, Norwin and Westmont Hilltop. Teams in that division will play each other twice, the six South/West teams once and two more games within the South/East.

Freeport’s new Harley

Harley Holloway, a basketball standout formerly of Kiski Area, moved to Freeport this summer and will enroll in the school for the 2018-19 year.

A 5-foot-7 sharpshooting guard, Holloway scored a team-high 17.6 points per game while shooting 42 percent from 3-point range as a sophomore at Kiski Area. The two-year starter also averaged five rebounds and four assists per contest and was named first-team all-section in Section 1-5A.

Freeport coach Fred Soilis said Holloway played with the Yellowjackets during summer workouts and in summer league play. She was a student in the Freeport School district before attending Kiski Area starting in high school.

Bitar end

A knee injury did what few football teams could last season: slowed Burrell’s Logan Bitar.

The Burrell rising senior running back, the leading returning rusher in the Alle-Kiski Valley and one of the top in the WPIAL, had surgery last week to repair a torn meniscus in his knee, leaving his status for the season up in the air.

Bitar said the typical recovery time after such an surgery is about three months. He suffered the injury while playing in the Westmoreland County Coaches Association basketball shootout earlier this month. Bitar also led the basketball Bucs in scoring last season.

Last season Bitar rushed for 1,231 yards and seven touchdowns as Burrell’s featured back, averaging 5.4 yards per carry. He also caught eight passes for 98 yards and recorded 39 tackles and an interception on defense, getting named a Valley News Dispatch All-Star.

The King is back

Freeport brought in a King to lead its offense.

Longtime Knoch football coach Mike King will take over as Freeport’s offensive coordinator this fall, adding more than two decades of experience to the Yellowjackets’ coaching staff.

King coached Knoch for 19 seasons, resigning after the 2016 season. He led the Knights to an 86-103 record and eight playoff appearances, including a WPIAL Class AAA runner-up finish in 2011. He also was Knoch’s athletic director.

Quarterback Austin Romanchak, running back Conor Selinger, wide receiver Isiah Bauman and tight end Garret Schaffhauser are among the returning skill players for Freeport, which finished 7-3 in 2017, taking second place in the Class 3A Allegheny Conference and losing in the first round of the WPIAL playoffs.

Doug Gulasy is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Doug at dgulasy@tribweb.com or via Twitter @dgulasy_Trib.