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WILKES-BARRE — The first three plays couldn’t have gone much better.
Cornerback Rafael McCoy breaks up a long pass. Defensive lineman Greg DeLeon shoots through a gap to stop the running back for a yard loss. Linebacker Richard Carey gets around blockers, lowers his shoulder and punishes another runner.
But as the Wilkes-Barre Area Wolfpack’s first-ever scrimmage wore on Saturday morning, it was obvious more work needs to be done to meld the Coughlin, GAR and Meyers football programs into a cohesive group. Wyoming Area shook off those early setbacks to score on its first four possessions against WBA, which was six days from its inaugural game.
“At times we looked good. I was happy with things we did,” WBA coach Ciro Cinti said. “At other times, I wasn’t happy. But the things I wasn’t happy with we can definitely correct. That’s the positive in it.
“What I love about today is we played one of the better teams in District 2, and that’s what we needed — to go against tough competition.”
Wyoming Area scored four times and WBA twice while the starters were on the field, but it gave the Wolfpack an excellent measuring stick to see how they’ve progressed. Wyoming Area won 11 games last season and is among the favorites for the District 2 Class 3A title.
“I wasn’t nervous at all,” said McCoy, who started for Coughlin last year. “We were practicing hard all week. We knew how good they were. We just tried to prepare for them getting the ball out quick. We have a lot of things to work on, but we weren’t nervous at all. We came in with a mantra that we were going to drive the ball right down the field.”
The teams started the scrimmage by each running 10 consecutive plays regardless of whether a first down would have been converted. Wyoming Area scored on its seventh play as receiver Brian Williams blew right past his defender and caught a 50-yard TD pass from Dominic DeLuca.
WBA needed all 10 plays to score when quarterback Kam Taylor connected on a lofted 11-yard TD pass to Maleek Robinson.
Although the play won’t go down in WBA lore as the program’s first-ever touchdown, it did have significance.
Taylor was the starting quarterback for GAR last season while Robinson was a receiver at Meyers. The two rival city schools played the final installment of the Backyard Brawl — which was first held in 1931 — last year.
“In the beginning, it really wasn’t awkward because we mostly knew each other. A lot of us were friends,” Taylor said. “Between GAR and Meyers, people thought, ‘Oh, they’ll butt heads.’ But we were friends off the field. It was more of getting to learn each others playing style, which we did.
“There’s really no conflict between the three schools.”
However, there has been the logistics of getting players to practice.
GAR and Meyers players were able to walk to preseason practices in the past. Now, only Meyers guys can do that because the team’s headquarters is Wilkes-Barre Memorial Stadium.
Cinti and his coaching staff have been running a pseudo-Uber service — minus the monetary charge, of course — for players from GAR and Coughlin needing transportation. The school district will take over that responsibility once the season kicks off.
A new high school to replace the three currently used is scheduled to open in the 2021-22 school year.
“It’s coming together beautifully, actually, like we’re a family,” McCoy said of team camaraderie. “It feels like we all go together to the same school, like we’ve all grown up together. We’ve been through a lot and been practicing for a while. It feels like we’re a family, we’re all one.”
As for the rest of the scrimmage, WBA didn’t fare as well after the 10-play segment. The remainder was conducted in game-like conditions, with a team needing to get a first down to retain possession.
The Wolfpack failed to do so in their first two possessions before Taylor threw a perfect pass for a 68-yard touchdown to McCoy, who had torched the Warriors secondary.
The Wyoming Area starters were pressed into fourth-down situations just twice and converted both. They scored three times, but twice had touchdown passes dropped that would have resulted in scores sooner.
Up next for the Wolfpack is a real game as they travel to Crestwood on Friday night.
“I’ve been looking forward to it since we’ve started,” Taylor said. “I think we’ll be ready. Crestwood is kind of a rivalry game to us so it will be nice to start off against them and see what we can do against them and to get out there and finally play a game as the Wolfpack.”
