Penn College women in UE soccer semis, wrestlers set to rumble
Sunday, October 30, 2022
The Pennsylvania College of Technology women’s soccer team is headed for the United East Conference semifinals, while the college’s wrestlers are ready to roll into their season entering a new era under a new head coach.
ON THE HORIZON
Women’s soccer
The Wildcats (6-2 UE and 9-8-1 overall) enter the UE playoffs as the third seed and will open against second-seeded Penn State Harrisburg (7-0-1, 12-3-3) on Friday at tournament host Penn State Berks, immediately following a noon match between top-seeded Berks (7-0-1, 11-5-2) and St. Mary’s (Md.) College (5-3, 7-8-4). Friday’s winners will clash at 1 p.m. Saturday for the championship and a berth in the NCAA Division III tournament.
After a 1-5-1 season start, the Wildcats have rolled since late September, winning eight of their last 11 matches, five by shutout, and outscored their opponents 60-14, including five double-digit wins. They take a four-match win streak into the postseason and first-year coach Ian Scheller couldn’t be happier.
“If you told me that I was going to be sitting with this team right now, above .500, going into the semifinals, not as the bottom-ranked team, I would have taken that in a heartbeat. That’s honestly how I feel,” Scheller said.
“One thing we knew when we came in during the preseason was that we were going to be a little inexperienced on the defense. We were planning on starting two freshmen … but we knew we had a lot of offensive talent,” Scheller said. “We had been trying a few combinations of players in the forward line plus in our attacking-the-field position, and it was just a matter of time and getting the chemistry down.”
Keying the offense have been junior Kaelynn Sheetz, of Elizabethtown; and sophomores Cassie Johnson, of Richland; and Sara Darlington, of West Chester.
During the final week of the regular season, three-goal efforts by Sheetz and Johnson overcame an early 0-1 deficit in a 6-1 nonconference home victory against Marywood University on Wednesday, while Sheetz and Darlington each scored two goals in a 6-1 win at Wells College on Saturday.
In Saturday’s match, Johnson assisted on two goals and broke the Penn College NCAA-era (since 2014) record for assists in a season with 11 and she also became the first player in modern history to reach the 10/10 Club, with 10 goals and 11 assists. Sheetz, who earlier in the week was named the UE Player of the Week for her third time this season, has scored a modern single-season record 21 goals thus far.
“When I met Sheetz, I told her she could be the best striker in this conference. One thing she is, is a pure finisher. When she is in front of the goal, if you give her enough chances, she is going to score,” Scheller said.
“When you have players like Darlington and Johnson, who can do the things to get the ball in a dangerous position for Sheetz to do the job and finish the game for you, she’s always going to. Those three are starting to click. They really are starting to build that chemistry and allowing themselves to become a force in this conference,” the coach continued.
Defensively in goal, sophomore Nicole Lichtinger, of Erie, owns a 1.53 goals-against average.
“We sat down at the beginning of the year and I told her she was one of the best goalkeepers that I’ve trained. I knew that this year was going to be big,” Scheller said.
In regular-season matches, Penn College lost at Berks, 5-3; lost at home to Harrisburg, 5-0; and beat St. Mary’s on the road, 3-2.
Commenting on the other playoff teams, Scheller said:
“(Against Harrisburg) we’ll have to be a little bit more patient on the defensive side. They keep the ball very, very well. We weren’t quite as sharp offensively at that time (Sept. 20 loss), so we really couldn’t make them pay on the other end. We were still trying to figure ourselves out at that time. At halftime, it was 1-0, and the second half they opened the floodgates on us. This time we have to keep the focus and no matter what the score is, we have to keep pressing and keep going the entirety of the game.”
“(Against Berks) we were trailing, we gave up a pretty silly first goal and we were kicking ourselves for that. We were able to battle back and put ourselves into a good position to take the lead at one point. They are a very, very strong offensive team, unlike Harrisburg, which is more methodical. Berks will go at you the entirety of the 90 minutes and they will run at you and create chances. This time around, with a few adjustments plus the form that we’re currently in in terms of putting the ball in the back of the net, I think have a really good opportunity to overturn that result, especially on a neutral venue.”
“(Against St. Mary’s) although we beat them on their ground, we understand we have to respect them because they are a very good team. They are set up similarly to Harrisburg where they want to keep the ball, they want to be methodical, they want to string passes together.”
“When we came in, we had very set objectives as a team, where we wanted to be and what we wanted to do overall over the course of the season in terms of personal and team growth. The team has worked their backsides off from the first day they stepped on campus. They are focused. They are ready to go,” Scheller said.
“I am going to take this week to make sure that they really enjoy it because you don’t know if you’ll ever get back to a semifinal. When you step on the field you’re going to take the chances you have and hope that you come out better at the end,” the coach added.
Final United East regular-season standings: Penn State Berks, 7-0-1; Penn State Harrisburg, 7-0-1; Penn College, 6-2; St. Mary’s (Md.), 5-3; Lancaster Bible College, 4-4; Penn State Abington, 3-5; SUNY Morrisville, 2-6; Wells College, 1-7; Gallaudet University, 0-8.
Wrestling
Young, coachable and committed. That’s how first-year coach Pankil Chander describes his team. And, the return of NCAA regional fifth-place finisher Noah Hunt, along with the addition of several top-notch high school freshmen – including PIAA state champion Isaac Cory – should help as the program continues to build.
The Wildcats are scheduled to open their season Saturday in the Ned McGinley Invitational at King’s College.
A four-year wrestling starter at Wilkes University from 2013-17, Chander comes to Williamsport after spending the previous two seasons as the assistant coach at Springfield College in Springfield, Massachusetts. Out of college, he spent a year as a volunteer assistant coach at Bloomsburg University and then two seasons as the assistant coach at Gettysburg College.
“Overall, we have an incredibly young team that needs to accumulate experience when it comes to competition. I think we’ll see early on that the inexperience of this young team may show,” Chander said. “I have noticed that this team has many quick and eager learners; this lends itself to significant growth curves as the year goes on. This also is encouraging when considering the progress this team can make throughout the season.
“We hope to be competitive as a tournament team since we have several individuals that know how to advance through a bracket well. I anticipate we’ll have a competitive dual team with most of our lineup being able to compete with anyone. Our dual success will largely depend on if we can pick up bonus points with our stronger weight classes and have productive performances at the developing ones.”
Hunt, a junior from Muncy and projected to start at 133-pounds this season, had a team-best 16-12 record a year ago mostly in the 141-pound weight class.
Joining him from last year’s team that posted a 5-13 dual meet record are senior Ryan Berstler, of Middletown (125); sophomore Patrick Snoke, of Northampton (133); senior Colin Jens, of Centreville, Maryland (141); junior Logan Ledebohm, of Mechanicsburg (141); junior Andy Muzika, of Chalfont (149); sophomore Cullen van Rooyen, of Dresden, Ohio (149); sophomore Anton Easterbrook, of Wyomissing (157); and junior Gabriel Kennedy-Citeroni, of Blairsville (197).
Cory, of Montoursville (projected 184), captured the Class AA 189-pound title earlier this year. A four-time state qualifier, he finished seventh in the state in 2020 at 160 pounds and closed out his high school career with a 136-36 record.
Other newcomers of note include Mason Leshock, of Shamokin (157-165), a two-time state qualifier who was 117-63 during his high school career at Line Mountain; Liam Goodrich, of Cogan Station (141-149), a four-time PIAA District 4 place-winner with a 90-53 record at Jersey Shore High; Michael Sandacz, of York, the District 3 Class AAA runner-up at 113 pounds in 2022 at Central York; Billy Bumbarger, of Morrisdale, a District 6 Class AA place-winner at 215 in 2022 at West Branch High; Gage Sutliff, of Renovo, a four-time District 6 Class AA place-winner at Central Mountain High; Brett Patton, of West Chester; and Jake Kunselman, of Ridgway, a transfer student from Division II Davis and Elkins.
“Practice has been incredibly productive! We have covered significant ground in just two and a half weeks and the guys have responded well at every turn. From top to bottom, I have witnessed visible growth in each individual on our team. It is a coachable, fun and committed group,” Chander said.
Team strengths, Chander said, are “coachability and commitment. This team is full of student-athletes who are in demanding majors when it comes to time and academic rigor. Because of the time demands and hands-on labs, we have a couple days a week that we have 6 a.m. practices. This has been a preferred time of training for our guys, and that goes to show how committed and hard-working they are. They like getting up early, working hard, having fun and getting better with each other. They are also quick learners, which speaks to their coachability and potential to develop.”
“We need to continue applying a growth mindset in training and competition. As a young program, we haven’t had our first NCAA qualifier or All-American yet. It is tough to get over that hump as a team and program. We need to continually condition our mindset and approach to believe we are positioned to get over that hump,” the coach stated of areas that still need work.
“As we all know, the college wrestling season is a grind, unlike any other sport. A major key to our success will be remaining healthy, continually making gains in training and competition, and having teammates challenge, encourage and hold each other accountable,” Chander said.
“This is the first season as members of the Empire Collegiate Wrestling Conference with many of the teams also in the NCAA Mideast Region. There are some perennial powerhouses in both the conference and region with proven training systems that develop great wrestlers. Our conference tournament in the third weekend of November will allow us to have many great opportunities for our top performers to test their mettle against the best pretty early in the season and provide a benchmark on where we’re at,” the coach continued.
“Every other event on our schedule is considered nonconference, but our schedule was designed to be challenging to best prepare our team for the postseason. We are going to some events for the first time, like the always-tough Wilkes Open, the Waynesburg Invitational and a slate of duals at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio,” Chander said.
SCHEDULES/RECORDS
Women’s soccer
UE: 6-2
Overall: 9-8-1
Wednesday, Oct. 26 – host Marywood University, W, 6-1
Saturday, Oct. 29 – at Wells College, W, 6-1
United East Playoffs
(All matches at Penn State Berks)
Friday, Nov. 4 – Semifinal 1: Penn State Berks (7-0-1 UE, 11-5-2) vs. St. Mary’s (Md.) College (5-3 UE, 7-8-4), noon
Friday, Nov. 4 – Semifinal 2: Penn College (6-2 UE, 9-8-1) vs. Penn State Harrisburg (7-0-1, 12-3-3), immediately following semifinal 1.
Saturday, Nov. 5 – United East Championship: Friday’s winners, 1 p.m.
Wrestling
Saturday, Nov. 5 – Ned McGinley Invitational at King’s College, 9:30 a.m.
Saturday, Nov. 12 – tri-match with Penn State Mt. Alto, 4:30 p.m., and Muhlenberg College, 6 p.m.
For more about the United East, visit the conference website.
For additional information, visit the Wildcat Athletics website.
ON THE HORIZON
Women’s soccer
The Wildcats (6-2 UE and 9-8-1 overall) enter the UE playoffs as the third seed and will open against second-seeded Penn State Harrisburg (7-0-1, 12-3-3) on Friday at tournament host Penn State Berks, immediately following a noon match between top-seeded Berks (7-0-1, 11-5-2) and St. Mary’s (Md.) College (5-3, 7-8-4). Friday’s winners will clash at 1 p.m. Saturday for the championship and a berth in the NCAA Division III tournament.
After a 1-5-1 season start, the Wildcats have rolled since late September, winning eight of their last 11 matches, five by shutout, and outscored their opponents 60-14, including five double-digit wins. They take a four-match win streak into the postseason and first-year coach Ian Scheller couldn’t be happier.
“If you told me that I was going to be sitting with this team right now, above .500, going into the semifinals, not as the bottom-ranked team, I would have taken that in a heartbeat. That’s honestly how I feel,” Scheller said.
“One thing we knew when we came in during the preseason was that we were going to be a little inexperienced on the defense. We were planning on starting two freshmen … but we knew we had a lot of offensive talent,” Scheller said. “We had been trying a few combinations of players in the forward line plus in our attacking-the-field position, and it was just a matter of time and getting the chemistry down.”
Keying the offense have been junior Kaelynn Sheetz, of Elizabethtown; and sophomores Cassie Johnson, of Richland; and Sara Darlington, of West Chester.
During the final week of the regular season, three-goal efforts by Sheetz and Johnson overcame an early 0-1 deficit in a 6-1 nonconference home victory against Marywood University on Wednesday, while Sheetz and Darlington each scored two goals in a 6-1 win at Wells College on Saturday.
In Saturday’s match, Johnson assisted on two goals and broke the Penn College NCAA-era (since 2014) record for assists in a season with 11 and she also became the first player in modern history to reach the 10/10 Club, with 10 goals and 11 assists. Sheetz, who earlier in the week was named the UE Player of the Week for her third time this season, has scored a modern single-season record 21 goals thus far.
“When I met Sheetz, I told her she could be the best striker in this conference. One thing she is, is a pure finisher. When she is in front of the goal, if you give her enough chances, she is going to score,” Scheller said.
“When you have players like Darlington and Johnson, who can do the things to get the ball in a dangerous position for Sheetz to do the job and finish the game for you, she’s always going to. Those three are starting to click. They really are starting to build that chemistry and allowing themselves to become a force in this conference,” the coach continued.
Defensively in goal, sophomore Nicole Lichtinger, of Erie, owns a 1.53 goals-against average.
“We sat down at the beginning of the year and I told her she was one of the best goalkeepers that I’ve trained. I knew that this year was going to be big,” Scheller said.
In regular-season matches, Penn College lost at Berks, 5-3; lost at home to Harrisburg, 5-0; and beat St. Mary’s on the road, 3-2.
Commenting on the other playoff teams, Scheller said:
“(Against Harrisburg) we’ll have to be a little bit more patient on the defensive side. They keep the ball very, very well. We weren’t quite as sharp offensively at that time (Sept. 20 loss), so we really couldn’t make them pay on the other end. We were still trying to figure ourselves out at that time. At halftime, it was 1-0, and the second half they opened the floodgates on us. This time we have to keep the focus and no matter what the score is, we have to keep pressing and keep going the entirety of the game.”
“(Against Berks) we were trailing, we gave up a pretty silly first goal and we were kicking ourselves for that. We were able to battle back and put ourselves into a good position to take the lead at one point. They are a very, very strong offensive team, unlike Harrisburg, which is more methodical. Berks will go at you the entirety of the 90 minutes and they will run at you and create chances. This time around, with a few adjustments plus the form that we’re currently in in terms of putting the ball in the back of the net, I think have a really good opportunity to overturn that result, especially on a neutral venue.”
“(Against St. Mary’s) although we beat them on their ground, we understand we have to respect them because they are a very good team. They are set up similarly to Harrisburg where they want to keep the ball, they want to be methodical, they want to string passes together.”
“When we came in, we had very set objectives as a team, where we wanted to be and what we wanted to do overall over the course of the season in terms of personal and team growth. The team has worked their backsides off from the first day they stepped on campus. They are focused. They are ready to go,” Scheller said.
“I am going to take this week to make sure that they really enjoy it because you don’t know if you’ll ever get back to a semifinal. When you step on the field you’re going to take the chances you have and hope that you come out better at the end,” the coach added.
Final United East regular-season standings: Penn State Berks, 7-0-1; Penn State Harrisburg, 7-0-1; Penn College, 6-2; St. Mary’s (Md.), 5-3; Lancaster Bible College, 4-4; Penn State Abington, 3-5; SUNY Morrisville, 2-6; Wells College, 1-7; Gallaudet University, 0-8.
WrestlingYoung, coachable and committed. That’s how first-year coach Pankil Chander describes his team. And, the return of NCAA regional fifth-place finisher Noah Hunt, along with the addition of several top-notch high school freshmen – including PIAA state champion Isaac Cory – should help as the program continues to build.
The Wildcats are scheduled to open their season Saturday in the Ned McGinley Invitational at King’s College.
A four-year wrestling starter at Wilkes University from 2013-17, Chander comes to Williamsport after spending the previous two seasons as the assistant coach at Springfield College in Springfield, Massachusetts. Out of college, he spent a year as a volunteer assistant coach at Bloomsburg University and then two seasons as the assistant coach at Gettysburg College.
“Overall, we have an incredibly young team that needs to accumulate experience when it comes to competition. I think we’ll see early on that the inexperience of this young team may show,” Chander said. “I have noticed that this team has many quick and eager learners; this lends itself to significant growth curves as the year goes on. This also is encouraging when considering the progress this team can make throughout the season.
“We hope to be competitive as a tournament team since we have several individuals that know how to advance through a bracket well. I anticipate we’ll have a competitive dual team with most of our lineup being able to compete with anyone. Our dual success will largely depend on if we can pick up bonus points with our stronger weight classes and have productive performances at the developing ones.”
Hunt, a junior from Muncy and projected to start at 133-pounds this season, had a team-best 16-12 record a year ago mostly in the 141-pound weight class.
Joining him from last year’s team that posted a 5-13 dual meet record are senior Ryan Berstler, of Middletown (125); sophomore Patrick Snoke, of Northampton (133); senior Colin Jens, of Centreville, Maryland (141); junior Logan Ledebohm, of Mechanicsburg (141); junior Andy Muzika, of Chalfont (149); sophomore Cullen van Rooyen, of Dresden, Ohio (149); sophomore Anton Easterbrook, of Wyomissing (157); and junior Gabriel Kennedy-Citeroni, of Blairsville (197).
Cory, of Montoursville (projected 184), captured the Class AA 189-pound title earlier this year. A four-time state qualifier, he finished seventh in the state in 2020 at 160 pounds and closed out his high school career with a 136-36 record.
Other newcomers of note include Mason Leshock, of Shamokin (157-165), a two-time state qualifier who was 117-63 during his high school career at Line Mountain; Liam Goodrich, of Cogan Station (141-149), a four-time PIAA District 4 place-winner with a 90-53 record at Jersey Shore High; Michael Sandacz, of York, the District 3 Class AAA runner-up at 113 pounds in 2022 at Central York; Billy Bumbarger, of Morrisdale, a District 6 Class AA place-winner at 215 in 2022 at West Branch High; Gage Sutliff, of Renovo, a four-time District 6 Class AA place-winner at Central Mountain High; Brett Patton, of West Chester; and Jake Kunselman, of Ridgway, a transfer student from Division II Davis and Elkins.
“Practice has been incredibly productive! We have covered significant ground in just two and a half weeks and the guys have responded well at every turn. From top to bottom, I have witnessed visible growth in each individual on our team. It is a coachable, fun and committed group,” Chander said.
Team strengths, Chander said, are “coachability and commitment. This team is full of student-athletes who are in demanding majors when it comes to time and academic rigor. Because of the time demands and hands-on labs, we have a couple days a week that we have 6 a.m. practices. This has been a preferred time of training for our guys, and that goes to show how committed and hard-working they are. They like getting up early, working hard, having fun and getting better with each other. They are also quick learners, which speaks to their coachability and potential to develop.”
“We need to continue applying a growth mindset in training and competition. As a young program, we haven’t had our first NCAA qualifier or All-American yet. It is tough to get over that hump as a team and program. We need to continually condition our mindset and approach to believe we are positioned to get over that hump,” the coach stated of areas that still need work.
“As we all know, the college wrestling season is a grind, unlike any other sport. A major key to our success will be remaining healthy, continually making gains in training and competition, and having teammates challenge, encourage and hold each other accountable,” Chander said.
“This is the first season as members of the Empire Collegiate Wrestling Conference with many of the teams also in the NCAA Mideast Region. There are some perennial powerhouses in both the conference and region with proven training systems that develop great wrestlers. Our conference tournament in the third weekend of November will allow us to have many great opportunities for our top performers to test their mettle against the best pretty early in the season and provide a benchmark on where we’re at,” the coach continued.
“Every other event on our schedule is considered nonconference, but our schedule was designed to be challenging to best prepare our team for the postseason. We are going to some events for the first time, like the always-tough Wilkes Open, the Waynesburg Invitational and a slate of duals at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio,” Chander said.
SCHEDULES/RECORDS
Women’s soccer
UE: 6-2
Overall: 9-8-1
Wednesday, Oct. 26 – host Marywood University, W, 6-1
Saturday, Oct. 29 – at Wells College, W, 6-1
United East Playoffs
(All matches at Penn State Berks)
Friday, Nov. 4 – Semifinal 1: Penn State Berks (7-0-1 UE, 11-5-2) vs. St. Mary’s (Md.) College (5-3 UE, 7-8-4), noon
Friday, Nov. 4 – Semifinal 2: Penn College (6-2 UE, 9-8-1) vs. Penn State Harrisburg (7-0-1, 12-3-3), immediately following semifinal 1.
Saturday, Nov. 5 – United East Championship: Friday’s winners, 1 p.m.
Wrestling
Saturday, Nov. 5 – Ned McGinley Invitational at King’s College, 9:30 a.m.
Saturday, Nov. 12 – tri-match with Penn State Mt. Alto, 4:30 p.m., and Muhlenberg College, 6 p.m.
For more about the United East, visit the conference website.
For additional information, visit the Wildcat Athletics website.
No. 11-A