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Saturday, May 18, 2024 | 11:01am
Shane Dunlap Trilive
Mike Fioren will coach the Franklin Regional girls volleyball team in 2019.
It appears Franklin Regional has found the perfect person for the job.
Mike Fioren checked all the boxes the district was looking for when searching for a coach for its first boys volleyball team, which will start next spring.
Not only did Feolene coach the Panthers' girls team for eight seasons, winning a WPIAL championship and finishing as PIAA runner-up in 2020 before stepping down in '21 for family-related reasons, but he also started Norwin's boys program in 1994 and coached there for 10 years.
“I always wanted there to be a men's team in FR,” Fiorene said. “I never moved on. I love competing, I love big challenges. If you have a passion for coaching, it never leaves you.
“Seeing athletes grow from point A to point B is what drives me. There are a lot of athletes at FR. I'm not just looking for something to do; These are people who want to do something.”
Franklin Regional Athletic Director Zach Kessler approached Feoren again about coaching.
Feolène said Kessler said “magic words” when she told him there was a program for middle school students.
“It’s an important part of any program,” Fioren said. “(I was) in hook, line and sinker.”
Ferrone has a bit of a sense of déjà vu. He left Norwin when his twin daughters were born. When they went to college, he left Franklin Regional.
Now, as his daughters are about to graduate, he is preparing for a new chapter.
“There’s nothing better than building a program from the bottom up,” he said. “We finished in the top four in the WPIAL our last year (at Norwin), but we had a lot of great kids from our first year.”
Norwin's current coach, Mike Palaszak, is a center hitter for Feorean, and his setter, Nick Lynn, is a coach at Penn-Trafford.
“As always, my goal is to put FR on the boys volleyball scene,” said Fiorene, who teaches third grade math and science at Norwin. “We're heading into a really talented section that's well-coached. We want to be competitive while we're young, play in a few tournaments and move on from there.
“I've always said it takes five years to build a new program. But the players who build the program in the first five years set the standard for all subsequent years.”
Aside from the obvious, Feoren said coaching boys is a little different than coaching girls.
“The biggest difference is this: Boys play games to bond, girls play games to bond,” he said. If you've coached both, this is easy to understand. ”
The new team will meet for the first time in the first week of May.
A gym is also scheduled to open in the summer.
Feorene said he has started recruiting players. Kessler, whose son Andrew plays on Grove City's club volleyball team, said Cam Lowell, a basketball standout, may have been blessed with a great talent for volleyball.
However, Lowell is a senior and will be graduating in a few months.
“I've used living in the community to my advantage,” Fioren said. “I brought in a 6-foot-2 (athlete) during Easter Mass and continued to talk about the sport to all the local kids who will be entering middle school next year. The other day, the cashier's arm at Shop 'n Save I noticed that he was longer than his legs, so of course I asked him if he was going to FR. Unfortunately, he is a senior this year.
Bill Beckner Jr. is a TribLive reporter covering local sports in Westmoreland County. He can be reached at bbeckner@triblive.com.
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