Brett Myers’ ‘recruits’ have bolstered Twin Valley’s championship aspirations
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Justin Pinciotti admits he was on the fence early in the summer about whether to return to football for his senior season at Twin Valley.
He’s one of the top lacrosse players in Berks county and thought his time might be put to better use training for a sport he may play in college. Then he contracted mononucleosis, lost 20 pounds in a couple weeks, and thought he wouldn’t be strong enough to play football.
Brett Myers convinced him otherwise.
The Twin Valley football coach told him that training for and playing with his team would better prepare him for his final year of high school lacrosse.
“He’s definitely persuasive,” Pinciotti said with a smile.
There’s plenty to smile about around Twin Valley football these days. The Raiders are 7-0 for the first time in their 28-year history, they’re ranked among the top Class 5A teams in the state and they’re coming off a pair of thrilling last-minute victories that could propel them toward their first Lancaster-Lebanon League Section 3 championship.
They’ll take another step toward that Friday when they play at Ephrata, which has lost just once and remains in position for a share of the section title.
Without Pinciotti or Owen Rhoads or Markos Karros or Matt Knight or one of the other players Myers “recruited” for the team the Raiders wouldn’t be in this unique position.
They’ve got plenty of talented front-line players – H-back Ean Winchester, linemen Paul McClune and Aris Drake, running backs Evan Johnson and Drew Engle – but without the depth Myers has accumulated the Raiders’ best guys might be required to play more minutes and not be able to maintain playing at such a high level.
“Those extra bodies add up,” Myers said.
Senior Jonathan LaBruto spells Winchester, a two-way starter, occasionally. He’s a strapping 6-5, 255 pounds and all-around athlete. Before August he had never put on shoulder pads. He spent his time shooting baskets, swinging a driver, and tossing javelins and shot puts.
He wasn’t happy when his throws kept falling short of the mark; Myers convinced him to get in the weight room last winter and LaBruto saw the difference come spring.
“I thought maybe I should listen to his advice and come out for football (too),” LaBruto said. “He helped push me into this sport.”
Senior Owen Rhoads is one of the top pitchers in the Berks Baseball League. He’ll play at Elizabethtown after graduation. He never played football, not at any level. Myers approached him in the offseason and told him he could find a meaningful spot for him on the football team.
Rhoads is now the Raiders’ long-snapper and part of a wide receiver rotation, along with Pinciotti, Karros and Knight.
“We don’t have to have both Drew and E.J. (Evan Johnson) in on (all our) passing situations because we’ve got these other guys,” said Myers.
Myers is in just his second season as the Raiders’ head coach but he has transformed the program at the speed of light. He wasn’t officially hired until July 2022, less than two months before the season kicked off.
Still, he was able to take the Raiders to a 7-5 record, matching the program record for wins. They earned a home playoff game for the first time in program history and won their first district playoff game.
Now they’re on the cusp of some really special things. A month before the District 3 Tournament kicks off the Raiders are No. 2 in the Class 4A power rankings and positioned to earn a first-round bye in the playoffs – yet more new ground for the rising program.
None of this should come as a surprise. Myers has an incredible track record. At his last stop, Middletown, his teams dominated the District 3 Class 3A field for several years, winning three straight championships and reaching the PIAA title game three years in a row; they went 41-4 from 2016-18.
He left Middletown following the 2020 season and is assistant principal at Twin Valley; he and his family have lived in the district for years.
His familiarity with the area and the athletes growing up in the area have been a key to his rapid success on the field and in the recruiting game. Oldest son Evan is a junior and three-year starting quarterback; younger son Lucas is a freshman starting linebacker and the team’s leading tackler.
Myers knows their friends and classmates, some of whom drifted away from football over the years: Maybe they wanted to concentrate on their best sport, maybe they were burned out, maybe they didn’t see a spot in the program for themselves.
Myers has convinced several of them to return.
They may consider football a second or third sport; Myers is fine with that. Having them fill a small role on special teams or sharing time at receiver or defensive back builds the team’s depth. Even those who don’t have a football background, Myers believes, can use their athleticism and familiarity with competition – being in tight spots, facing challenges – and be a plus on a Friday night.
“They allow us to get (front-line) people off the field (for a break) and still (allows us to) play mature players,” he said.
Myers said other coaches at Twin Valley support the idea of multiple-sport athletes; they believe the football experience will bear fruit in other seasons. He keeps an eye out for athletes who can make it work.
“He’s always recruiting,” Pinciotti said. “In the hallways at school, he’s looking for the big guys, telling them to come out and play football. It’s hard to say no to him.”
LaBruto was always the biggest kid in his class. His buddies had been asking him to play football for years. Finally, looking for a new experience before he leaves high school, he came on board.
“It’s way different than other sports,” LaBruto said of football. “There’s five (offensive linemen) on the field whose sole purpose is to protect one guy. A lot of this is about family, and that’s what I feel here.”
Danny Murphy grew up playing football with many of the guys on the team but got away from it when he entered high school. He worked on his lacrosse skills instead. He scored 34 goals in the spring as the Raiders enjoyed a breakout season; he earned all-division honors.
He says he missed the bond he had developed with some of his senior classmates and returned to football this season. He earned a spot at middle linebacker.
Friday, in the biggest game of the season, Murphy noticed that Garden Spot’s snapper on PATs wasn’t paying much attention to him as he lined up across the line of scrimmage. With Twin Valley trailing 34-28 with less than six minutes and the Spartans lined up for a PAT he told himself: “I gotta go now.”
He snuck through the line and threw his 6-1, 205-pound frame fully into a point-after bid.
He didn’t realize until later, after Engle’s TD with 1:22 left and Sam Frey’s PAT, how large that blocked kick loomed in the 35-34 victory.
“You try to do your best on every play,” Murphy said, downplaying what may be the biggest play of the season for the Raiders.
Pinciotti, like the others, is happy he decided to play football this season.
“You only have it for four years, why not just do everything?” he said.
“It’s been fun,” Murphy said. “I definitely love being out here every day. It’s a grind but what else would I rather be doing?”
