Scouts’ Alex Malone, Spartans’ Keegan Maher now get their kicks in football
2024 Berks football coverage presented by
Utilities Employees Credit Union
Alex Malone couldn’t miss this season.
No matter if he kicked soccer balls or footballs he was going to be part of a championship team at Conrad Weiser.
He opted for football and was a key part of the Scouts’ run to a Lancaster-Lebanon League Section 3 championship and perfect regulation season.
The senior didn’t miss a kick – not a field goal, not a point-after attempt – and ended up sharing the Berks County Specialist of the Year award with Wyomissing’s Keegan Maher.
Malone was 44-for-44 on PATs and 4-for-4 on field goals; Maher was 33-of-36 on PATs, 5-of-8 on field goals, and had an impressive 46.1-yard average on punts.
The annual award is sponsored by Kick-It founder John Zima, Berks’ long-time kicking guru and the kicking coach at Wyomissing.
His formula takes into account accuracy and distance on placements and distance on kickoffs and punts.
| Recent | winners | |
| 2023 | William Maurek | Fleetwood |
| 2022 | Adam Noll | Conrad Weiser |
| 2021 | Nate Millard | Daniel Boone |
Wilson’s Christo Hunsicker finished in second place; Fleetwood’s Gryffin Cappellano took third place.
Each of the top four finishers have a youth soccer background. Cappellano, a junior at Oley Valley, continues to play soccer. The other three choose to concentrate full-time on football and their dedication was evident.
Malone played both sports as a junior and hated to give up soccer. He watched his former teammates have one of the greatest seasons in Weiser history, winning a District 3 championship and advancing to the PIAA semifinals before taking their first loss.
Malone has no regrets about his decision because things turned out pretty well with his new love, football.
“It was a hard decision, because I’ve played soccer my entire life, and that’s what I grew up liking,” he said. “The more I played football the more I liked it; I kind of fell in love with that game. It was a lot more fun to me.”
Malone’s friends on the football team told them they needed a kicker for the 2023 season so he began practicing. Nate Fehr, who set a Weiser field goal record and later kicked at Lebanon Valley, helped him develop his form last year. His coach this year was Jake Roth, also a record-setting kicker at Weiser who played at Delaware.
“He helped me kind of perfect everything I was doing,” Malone said of Roth. “He tweaked things and I was able to be very accurate with my kicks.”
His longest field goal of the season came in the Scouts’ biggest game, the Section 3 championship against Cocalico. He opened the scoring with a 38-yard field goal; the Scouts won 24-21.
The next week he nailed four PATs in a 28-27 win over Unionville to clinch the perfect season. His last kick, with 5:47 remaining, gave the Scouts a nine-point lead.
“I had confidence this year that I knew I could hit whatever kick was placed in front of me,” Malone said. “The (full-time) practice (and concentrating on one sport) helped. I got a lot of confidence. Last year I was alright; this year I took a big jump and it was a lot of fun.”
Maher, a junior, made a similar switch after playing soccer as a freshman at Wyomissing. He started training with Zima after that season and was a quick study; he was the Spartans’ No. 1 placekicker as a sophomore and added punting duties this season.
He attended Zima’s Kick-It camps and gives his mentor all the credit for his success.
“He always says ‘BTB,’ be the best,” Maher said, “and I want to be the best. He pushes me.”
Maher was successful on more field goals than anyone in Berks this season; most were in the low 30-yard range.
His most impressive kick came in one of the biggest games, a 49-yard attempt at Twin Valley that hit the crossbar and bounced back. That showed his potential. He was successful on two other kicks in that game, the last a 31-yarder with 3:17 left that essentially clinched the 34-24 win over the Raiders, who were unbeaten and ranked No. 1 in the state in Class 4A at the time.
Maher put 14.8 percent of his kickoffs into the end zone for touchbacks, the highest percentage in Berks.
He credits his football teammates for pulling him toward that sport.
“I went to their last (few) games of my freshman season, and that showed me I wanted to play,” he said. “All the emotion they showed when they lost (their state playoff game) . . . I never felt that playing soccer.”
Hunsicker, a senior, showed his kicking promise as a second-grader when he won the Berks County Punt, Pass & Kick competition. He gravitated toward other sports – he played on Wilson’s county championship basketball and baseball teams as a junior – and was a starting linebacker on the football team as a junior.
He pinch-hit as the kicker for one game last season when Ben Rada was injured; he nailed 5-of-6 PATs. When the Bulldogs didn’t have anyone stepping up to kick this season he took the job – well, actually all of the kicking jobs.
He handled kickoffs (with six touchbacks), punts (a 36.4 average), field goals (4-of-6) and PATs (44-of-48). He also played H-back and was named Berks Linebacker of the Year.
Cappellano, like Hunsicker, is an all-around athlete; he stepped in as Fleetwood’s kicker when friends on the team told him they needed someone with a strong leg.
His best sport is baseball: He pitches, plays shortstop and was an all-division pick for the Lynx as a sophomore; he was the catcher on the Berks/LL Carpenter Cup team in June.
He plays basketball and soccer for the Lynx and picked up football pretty quickly this season, his first with the Tigers. (Oley Valley has a joint sponsorship agreement with Fleetwood because it does not have its own football team.)
Cappellano said he regularly hits from 50 yards in practice; he put that into action late in the season. He kicked a 40-yard field goal against Solanco and set the program record with a 45-yarder in the season finale against Cocalico. He’s the only Fleetwood kicker to hit twice from 40 yards or longer.
| Longest FG | Touchback percentage | Punting | |||
| Gryffin Gappellano, Fleetwood | 45 | Keegah Maher, Wyo. | 14.8 | Nicholas Plaggenborg, Wyo. | 52.5 |
| Gryffin Gappellano, Fleetwood | 40 | Alex Reali, Sch. Valley | 12.0 | Keegan Maher, Wyo. | 46.1 |
| Alex Malone, Conrad Weiser | 38 | Nate Shaffer, Twin Valley | 11.9 | Donovan Gingrich, Weiser | 42.7 |
