Fleetwood Tigers weren’t fooling around when they sent William Maurek out to kick
2023 Berks football coverage presented by
Utilities Employees Credit Union
William Maurek was just fooling around with some friends at a track meet a couple springs ago, kicking a football with his bare right foot.
Fleetwood specials teams coach Daquan Brown happened by; he was intrigued and invited Maurek to try out as a kicker for the football team.
It didn’t take long for the other Fleetwood football coaches to see what Brown had noticed.
“I saw him warming up (at a spring tryout),” said Tigers head coach Steve Pangburn. “He kept dropping back and dropping back. It was evident he had a big leg.”
Big enough to earn Berks County Specialist of the Year honors, awarded each year by Kick-It founder John Zima, Berks’ long-time kicking guru.
Maurek, a senior, hit a Berks-leading five field goals this season and had the longest kick of the season, a 42-yarder.
The long-time soccer player never saw any of this happening. He never would’ve thought about trying out for football. The first time he put on the pads and kicked under the Friday night lights last year as a junior, he said, was nerve-wracking.
“My heart was racing,” he said.
Maurek calmed down enough to dominate the Berks kicking scene this year. Before the season he won the Berks vs. L.L. Specialist competition at Hamburg. He followed that up by hitting 5-of-7 field goals during the season and driving 17 kickoffs into the end zone, second-most among Berks kickers.
“He made such an impact for us,” said Pangburn. “He was really big at (Conrad) Weiser (a 30-21 win) in the field position game, pinning them (with his punts). I ran him out for a 57-yarder at Boone, that’s how much confidence I have in him. I’ve seen him hit that at practice.
The Specialist of the Year standings are based on rankings of extra-point and field goal accuracy, field goal length, touchbacks, and punting average.
Maurek won with a score of 74.0. Wilson’s Ben Rada was second at 62.1. Twin Valley’s Sam Frey was third at 51.0.
Rada, a senior, was second in Berks with two field goals. He finished with 37 PATs and 43 points.
Frey, a senior, led Berks in PATs, making 49-of-51, and had the second-longest field goal of the season, 38 yards. He set the Raiders’ single-season kicker points record with 61. That topped the record of 53 which he set last season.
Conrad Weiser’s Adam Noll won last year’s award.
Maurek is an all-around athlete. He won the Berks championship in the high jump in May at the Firing Meet.
He was an all-division striker for the Berks and District 3 Class 2A champion Tigers this season, scoring 16 goals, second-most on the team. He’s so versatile he moved in to play goalie late in his sophomore season, helping Fleetwood win a county title.
Maurek found kicking footballs to be a challenge, especially punting.
“That’s very hard,” he said.
Maurek said Brown was instrumental in helping him learn the techniques to be successful.
“Kicking a football is 100 percent different (than kicking a soccer ball),” Maurek said. “Coach Brown taught me a lot, about turning my hips, about my plant foot. He helped me adapt very quickly.”
Maurek kicked four PATs in Fleetwood’s final game, a pulsating 42-41 win at Shamokin in the Eastern Conference Class 4A championship game. The last of them tied it with 11 seconds left in regulation.
After Shamokin opened overtime with a touchdown and PAT, Pangburn opted to go for two after the Tigers’ scored a touchdown. Their kicker had no problem with that decision.
“I’m happy (quarterback) Jack (Riffle), (wide receiver) Mason (Musitano), (running back) Czion (Brickle), all of them played their best game ever to come back,” he said. “And when we went into overtime I’m happy they went for two and won. I did not want to kick another one.”
Specialist of the Year stats
| Longest FG | Touchbacks | Punting | |||
| William Maurek, Fleetwood | 42 | Jake Hafer, Twin Valley | 28 | Jack Hafer, Twin Valley | 38.1 |
| Sam Frey, Twin Valley | 38 | William Maurek, Fleetwood | 17 | Donovan Gingrich, Conrad Weiser | 29.3 |
| Alex Malone, Conrad Weiser | 24 | Reese Wamsher, Schuylkill Valley | 14 | Cooper Hohenadel, Schuykill Valley | 28.0 |
