Logan Klitsch cooking up something special for Conrad Weiser
Logan Klitsch spent his Fridays last fall throwing touchdown passes and his Saturdays baking cupcakes.
Following every Conrad Weiser win he and Natalie Skovera, the daughter of Scouts offensive coordinator Brett Skovera, got together to make treats for Klitsch’s offensive linemen.
“After a game, I ask them what they want,” said the Scouts quarterback. “Sometimes it’s cupcakes, sometimes it’s cookies, sometime its cake, brownies, whatever they want.”
Logan and Natalie, then 11, were busy bakers. The Scouts went unbeaten during the regular season and reached the District 3 Class 4A semifinals before being outlasted by eventual champ Lampeter-Strasburg.
Klitsch is the guy who turned up the heat.
He was named Offensive Back of the Year in Section 2 of the Berks Football League and the All-Berks quarterback after a spectacular season that saw him pass for 1,330 yards and 15 TDs in seven games.
He was the Scouts’ leading rusher and scored a team-high 10 TDs.
“The term dual threat is overused (for quarterbacks),” Brett Skovera said, “but he’s a true definition of a dual-threat quarterback.”
In the season-opener against Fleetwood he threw for 263 yards and ran for two scores.
In a win over Hamburg he completed 18 passes, to 10 different receivers, and scored on a 65-yard run.
Against Daniel Boone he threw for 277 yards and two TDs and ran for two other scores.
He saved the best for last, rallying the Scouts from a 35-0 first-half hole by throwing for 233 yards and three scores against Lampeter-Strasburg. He started the comeback with a 51-yard run and cut the Pioneers’ lead to 35-28 with a 63-yard scoring run.
No wonder Weiser coach Al Moyer comparrd Klitsch to Noah Palm, the dual-threat All-State pick who led Cocalico to the 2019 District 3 Class 5A championship and now plays at New Hampshire.
“He can hurt you with his legs and he’s certainly very accurate (with his arm),” Moyer said. “We love that he doesn’t pick out receivers ahead of time; he looks for the open guy and doesn’t care who he throws to.”
Klitsch was aided last season, and will be again this year, by the presence of wide receiver Aanjay Feliciano, one of the league’s best receivers. They hooked up 28 times last season, seven of them for touchdowns.
Klitsch took over at quarterback two games into his sophomore season, after an 0-2 start by the Scouts. They won six of his 10 starts, including a district opener against Fleetwood that saw him throw for 230 yards and three TDs.
The 6-2 senior enters the season with 2,705 passing yards, 27 TDs and just nine interceptions in 17 games. He’s within range of becoming just the ninth passer in Berks history with 4,000 career yards.
He already owns the Weiser record for most 200-yard passing games (five) and is close to a bunch of others. A third straight 1,000-yard season will make him the Scouts’ all-time passing leader (only Tom Wenrich has recorded three 1,000-yard passing seasons at Weiser). He needs just two TD passes to top Tyler Hoss’ program record of 29.
He’s just as dangerous running out of the pocket, when a passing play breaks down or his number gets called, as he is throwing the ball.
“He is the total package,” Moyer said. “We’ve had kids that could run, we’ve had kids that throw. This kid can do it all. He really can. He’s smart. And he’s probably one of the hardest-working kids we’ve had in our system. He does not take a day off.”
He doesn’t take any seasons off, either. He was an all-division pick in both basketball and lacrosse. He was considering not playing lacrosse last spring, in order to train for his final high school football season, but couldn’t bring himself to do it. Didn’t want to let his teammates down.
Berks career passing leaders
| Chad Henne | Wilson | 7,071 | 2000-03 |
| Chris Bokosky | Daniel Boone | 5,300 | 2003-05 |
| Jon Monteiro | Daniel Boone | 5,070 | 2006-09 |
| Nate Daniels | Muhlenberg | 4,724 | 2006-08 |
| Terrance Derr | Berks Catholic | 4,319 | 2015-19 |
| Corey Unger | Fleetwood/Wyo. | 4,281 | 2009-12 |
| Steve Huber | Wilson | 4,192 | 2006-08 |
| Zach Koenig | Fleetwood | 4,029 | 2012-14 |
“We only had 18 guys, which isn’t much,” he said. “They needed that leader on the team, and we ended up doing pretty well.”
Klitsch still found time to get his football work in. He always has. During the COVID shutdown in the spring and early summer of 2020 he took it upon himself to put together unofficial workouts, even bringing back former teammates. That certainly helped build the framework for a season that saw Weiser share the Berks 2 title with Wyomissing (they didn’t meet; the game was a COVID scheduling casualty).
This past offseason he went about getting stronger and faster. He tacked on 15 pounds, and is now 190. He shaved a tenth off his 40 time, and recorded a 4.71.
That got the attention of St. Francis, which has offered him a scholarship. Dartmouth is interested, too.
Klitsch, as you figured out by that last sentence, is a good student. He carries a 3.7 GPA. With the possibility of an Ivy League offer out there he wants to raise that grade-point average. He recently got together with a school counselor to add honor courses for this fall.
“The kid is just a dream,” Moyer said.
Klitsch strives to set the same tone for his teammates in the classroom as he does on the field.
“At Weiser, we don’t have the numbers some schools have for sports,” Klitsch reasons, “and if some of those guys, our key guys, aren’t eligible, that hurts us. Setting an example and maintaining that throughout the season is a big thing in my mind.”
The mental part carries over to the field.
“He has a very high football IQ,” Skovera said. “We’ve been blessed with a lot of smart quarterbacks here over the years; he’s probably at the top of the list, as far as installing new offenses, and reading defenses, and making decisions at the line of scrimmage, he picks that up very easily.”
So, how much time will Klitsch spend in the kitchen this fall?
“A decent amount,” he predicted. “The goal is always to go undefeated. We have a very strong core group of guys. We have a lot of new guys; they’re coming along. We should be up there . .. at least seven, eight, nine batches of cupcakes.”
