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Many of the players who make up Wyoming Valley Conference boys lacrosse are still new, or at least relatively new, to the sport.
As the conference prepares to embark upon its third season Tuesday, half of the head coaches are also new to their current position.
Shaun Rohland moves from Crestwood to Wyoming Area where he starts the program and makes the Warriors the WVC’s eighth team. The men who lead three of the other seven teams will be serving as high school head coaches for the first time.
Brian Zabroski replaces Rohland at Crestwood. Drew Abatangelo takes over at Dallas while Brandon Kelley is the new coach at Lake-Lehman.
The longest-established coach and program remains the team to beat.
Nanticoke graduate Jeff Krasulski leads Delaware Valley, which had played a schedule of New York and New Jersey teams before the conference started the sport and is 24-0 with both championships in the WVC. The Warriors have also won all four titles since District 2 began conducting tournaments.
The new coaches are all scheduled to go against each other in the openers.
Rohland will host his old team when Wyoming Area makes its debut in the sport with a game against Crestwood.
Back Mountain rivals meet when Lake-Lehman heads to Dallas for a night game.
For Rohland, the assignment is new, but the task is similar.
The Pittston resident had coached as an assistant at Harrisburg for two years before moving to the area. He became an assistant coach at Crestwood for one season then was the head coach of the Comets the last two seasons, improving from 1-11 in 2013 to 5-7 last year.
“It’s almost the same as situation as Crestwood,” Rohland said. “When I came in as an assistant, it was only their second year.”
“I didn’t start from the ground up like we are at Wyoming Area, but there are a lot of similarities between the two teams.”
Zabroski has served as a youth coach in the Mountaintop Area Lacrosse Association and a club travel team coach with the Zombies, which is made up of players from all around northeastern Pennsylvania.
“A lot of these kids I’ve been coaching since the youth level,” Zabroski said. “The kids who are seniors right now started youth lacrosse in Mountaintop as U13s after some of them had played in the Back Mountain.
“It’s kind of nice to see the first generation of players who are going to senior-out this year.”
Abatangelo takes over for Rich Cohen at Dallas, which has only lost to Delaware Valley in conference play and has reached all four District 2 championship games.
Krasulski remembers Abatangelo from coaching against him when he was a player at Valley Central, N.Y., one of Delaware Valley’s early opponents.
Abatangelo was an all-star defender and four-year starter at Misericordia University where he is still enrolled in the Doctorate in Physical Therapy program.
“I’ve always wanted to coach,” said Abatangelo, who was appointed in February. “I was just looking for something I could do with my schedule and that was close in the area.”
Kelley played youth lacrosse with the Back Mountain Bandits from sixth to eighth grade. He left the area and played at Hershey before the 2013 graduate returned and completed his high school career back at Lake-Lehman.
An undergraduate student at Misericordia, Kelley assisted T.J. LaBar as Lake-Lehman coach last season. He also has officiated and assisted in coaching with Back Mountain Youth Soccer.