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Two days after the official schedule release for the inaugural season of Arena Football One, Wilkes-Barre’s expansion franchise entry in the league hired its first head coach.
The still-unnamed Wilkes-Barre team announced via social media on Thursday night that it had hired Shawn Liotta, the head coach at Burrell High School in western Pennsylvania and a former assistant and head coach in several arena leagues, to lead the team when the season kicks off in March.
“This is an exciting time for football fans in Northeast PA, arena football is back in a big way,” Liotta said in a quote released on the team’s social media platforms Thursday.
“I can’t wait to see our fans pack the house each week.”
Liotta spent nine seasons as a head coach across several arena leagues at the helm of the Erie Explosion, winning two league championships and two Coach of the Year awards in the now-defunct Continental Indoor Football League.
Liotta was also a member of the coaching staff at Duquesne University for two seasons and won a Div. I-AA (now known as FCS) national title as the running backs coach at Duquesne in 2003.
He was hired at Burrell in 2018 after stints at several other Pennsylvania high schools, primarily in the western half of the state but including a year at District 4’s Line Mountain.
The Wilkes-Barre arena team has yet to announce a team nickname, but it was announced on Tuesday that the team would open the AF1 season at home on March 15, the first of two consecutive home games to open up the year for Wilkes-Barre.
The team’s first-ever game will be played against the Nashville Kats, a fellow member of the AF1’s East Division. The two other East teams are the Albany Firebirds and the Orlando Predators.