Fleetwood alum set to be named Tigers’ next boys basketball coach
2024 Berks basketball coverage presented by
Utilities Employees Credit Union
Jason Bieber will have his work cut out for him when he begins coaching the boys basketball team at his alma mater.
He’s set to take over a Fleetwood team that is graduating its entire starting five, including 1,000-point scorer Aiden Soumas, from a team that won it’s third straight Berks Conference Division III title this season.
Bieber, in line to be named Tigers coach Tuesday at the Fleetwood school board meeting, knows how to build a winning team. He took Boyertown to the 2017 PIAA Class 6A championship, becoming the only Berks girls basketball team to win a state title.
More recently he has coached the Brandywine Heights girls the past two seasons.
Bieber brings a wealth of basketball coaching experience to Fleetwood. He coached at Boyertown for 13 seasons, was the head girls coach at Tulpehocken from 2003-2007, and was an assistant coach at Boyertown, Schuylkill Valley, and with the Fleetwood boys.
He replaces Terry Sitler, who won 138 games in 12 years with the Tigers, including 58 over the past three seasons. The Tigers went 22-5 in 2022-23 – the third-highest win total in program history – and 20-6 this season, when they went unbeaten in league play for the first time in at least 50 years.
Bieber will become the third boys coach hired in Berks since the end of the season. Gov. Mifflin hired Garrett Etzel and Conrad Weiser hired Joey Negron. There are currently openings at Twin Valley, after Matt Herbener left to take the job at Ephrata, and at Wyomissing, where Etzel was head coach.
For the second straight season there will be five new coaches in the 18-team Berks Conference.
Fleetwood hadn’t won three straight division titles since the 1950’s. Now, without Soumas and Liam Hilburt, each four-starters, and without Hunter Svoboda — like Soumas and Hilburt an all-division pick — the Tigers will be starting from scratch. Their leading return scorer is Mason Senna, who averaged 3.4 points per game off the bench.
Bieber’s Brandywine Heights teams went 29-17 over the past two seasons, finishing second in Berks IV each season. The Bullets reached the playoffs in his first season, losing in the Berks League quarterfinals to Reading High and in the District 3 Class 3A quarterfinals to Pequea Valley. They did not reach the postseason this year.
Beiber had much more success at Boyertown where he won 220 games and had four 20-win seasons. (His 264 victories are seventh-most among Berks girls coaches.)
His best Boyertown team went 28-5 and beat North Allegheny for the state championship. That team was led by All-State pick Abby Kapp, who went on to play at Bucknell. Bieber’s second team at Boyertown also won 28 games and reached the PIAA semifinals.
Bieber, a Kutztown University grad, teaches junior high math in the Boyertown School District.
