Wilson Area - New Head Coach

[RoverNation05]

Wilson, the 2006 PIAA champs in 2A, announced the hire of Mike Fleming as their head coach.

Fleming is was an All State pick at center for Easton in 2014 and paved the way for Shane Simpson’s 2,00 yard, 40 touchdown season as Easton won 12 straight to start the year before falling in D11 finals in overtime. After Easton, Fleming was a 4-time All PSAC tackle and II All American at East Stroudsburg.

Fleming was previously the offensive and defensive line coach at Wilson. Before joining the Warrior program, Fleming coached the lines for Easton’s junior high program. He is a social studies teacher in the Phillipsburg School District in New Jersey.

Fleming replaces Wilson alum Chris Labatch, who went 20-41 in six seasons, but led Wilson to the first winning season since 2010, going 7-4 in 2021. The Warriors went 8-45 in the five seasons before Labatch took over. Labatch was a captain on the 2006 state champs and was an all state pick at linebacker.

 

[BradlyPitt]

two thoughts about Wilson

how the hell did they lose to South Park in 2005 and then beat Pryor and Jeannette in 2006?

also back in 2006 I visited a friend at Cal U of Pa, it was about 35 degrees out and there was this girl with bushy curly hair wearing flip flops and tshirt that said Wilson High School cheerleading and it was the same colors as this school

friend said her name was Alyse, I thought she's probably crazy for dressing like that in this weather and she's hot as hell

 

[RoverNation05]

The Wilson run is one of the great anomalies - they’d never won a postseason game, period, before going to back-to-back state finals. It’s also a bizarre district - it’s literally inside the Easton school district, Wilson Borough is a neighborhood in Easton and the school also gets kids from an adjacent township. Kind of no real reason for it to exist. They’ve always had a really good wrestling program - national caliber in the late 90s/early 00s when Dave Crowell was coaching before he left for Nazareth.

Wilson’s big thing was they were an early adopter of the Air Raid. They were one of the first i high school team I remember running the Mike Leach offense and just blitzed people through the air. I think Lenahan threw for 350+ yards in both of those state finals. Everybody caught up to them schematically, but for a while they were both pretty good and totally different than everybody.

The reason they lost in 2005 and won in 2006 I’ve always chalked up to inexperience. They had like two seniors on that 2005 team and blew a late lead. They were also pretty small and South Park really leaned on them. They had their entire team back the next season, plus a year of maturity, and just played a more complete game against Jeannette. And Matt Evancho gets a lot of credit around here for scheming to slow down Pryor, who had negative yards in the second half.

They’re never going to get back to that, but they can be a competitive team in 3A/4A (they’re right on the border usually) if they keep on the upward trajectory.