Dalton's Gang
Veteran coach has Panthers right on track in first season at River Valley
Ed Dalton has been around.
He knows high school football in western Pennsylvania, and he knows a good team when he sees one.
Dalton has a good one.
He knows he’ll see another good one Friday night when he takes his once-beaten River Valley Panthers to face unbeaten Marion Center for a game that will likely determine the Heritage Conference champion, or champions, and provide valuable points in the District 6 Class 2A rankings.
“We have all the parts,” Dalton said, “but so does Marion Center, so that’s what makes Friday so much fun.”
Dalton, 66, in his first season at River Valley in southern Indiana County, has come full circle in his career. He took his first job as a head coach in 1987 at Purchase Line in the northern part of the county and built a powerhouse during his short stay. Thirty-eight years later, after spending most of that time in the WPIAL, he wants to do the same at River Valley in what he admits is the final stop of a career that has spanned parts of five decades.
“This is my last gig, yeah — as long as they’ll have me, for now,” he said. “I agreed to a multiple-year contract, and that’s important. I made a commitment and moved here. We’ll just see how it goes. Right now, I feel like the kids have responded really well.”
They have, and they smile when they talk about their coach.
“He’s a very impressive guy and truly knows what he’s talking about,” Brody Stuller, a senior split end/defensive back, said. “I’m definitely excited that he’s here, and he’s definitely improved the team as a whole.”
“He’s great. We’ve talked a lot,” junior quarterback Max Persichetti said. “It’s definitely new with a whole different scheme, a whole new offense and whole new defense, and we’ve responded well.”
River Valley, which was formed for the 2021-22 school year through the consolidation of schools in the Blairsville-Saltsburg district, has a bright future at a glittering new athletic complex that puts many small-college facilities to shame.
The Thomas L. Shoemaker Field House and Panther Stadium are adjacent to the school complex. The stadium features a turf field and a synthetic track that are decked out in the school’s color scheme of electric blue and black. The field house includes locker rooms, offices for coaches and trainers, a fitness center, a wrestling room, a golf simulator and a concession stand. The project cost $15 million.
“Coach likes to say if you’d bring an IUP guy down here, he’d go home jealous,” Michael Wano, a senior fullback/linebacker, said. “To have this facility is amazing. It makes you want to play sports here and get better as an athlete.”
“It just gives our kids no excuse,” Dalton said. “We have what South Fayette has, and we have what Pine-Richland has. We have what everybody in the state of Pennsylvania has. This school district is visionary. We have a strength coach. We have a nutritionist. So, we have everything we need to really be successful.”
The Panthers are 7-1, the lone loss coming in Week 2 at Cambria Heights. They have reeled off six straight wins since, and more importantly, they have improved on both sides of the ball. But the coach sees plenty of room to grow on a team that scores five touchdowns per game and allows only two.
“If these guys could just believe how good they can be, we could take a whole other step,” Dalton said. “If they just play to their level, and they’re doing it on the D-line and doing it at linebacker and getting better in the secondary and holding their own there, so it’s just confidence. And I tell them all the time: Our defense matches theirs. Our O-line has been inconsistent, and when they play at their level, they’re dominant. We’re huge, and Zeke (Doak) is a great high school guard. Our backs are getting better and better. Jake (Woodring) is really good, and Max (Persichetti) is really good, and Brody (Hutter) is what we thought he would be once we saw him the first day here.”
River Valley runs a flex-bone option offense and averages 240 rushing yards per game. Woodring, a surprising sophomore, leads the attack with 630 yards on 74 attempts (8.5 average) with nine touchdowns. He’s also the top receiver with nine catches for 132 yards and two touchdowns. Hutter, a senior transfer from Mount Pleasant, has 470 yards on 80 carries (5.9) with seven touchdowns.
Persichetti, a junior quarterback, runs the show. He’s been effective as a run-first, pass-second quarterback with 330 rushing yards to go with 441 on 26-for-55 passing. He has tossed seven touchdowns and three interceptions.
“The thing we do that not many people do is we’re a pretty good option team,” Dalton said. “We can throw the ball, we think, on any down, and we can run the ball. So, pick your poison.”
A pair of huge linemen, senior tackle Dakoda Sprague at 6-foot-3, 300 pounds, and junior guard Ben Witmer, at 6-3, 325, anchor the right side of the offensive line. They are joined on the left by sophomore tackle Luke Foust and Doak, a junior guard. Jake Twinchek, a senior, is the center. Junior guard Brady Koffman and sophomore guard Lincoln Hebenthal provide depth.
Elsewhere on the depth chart, the receivers are Stuller, sophomore Anthony Basile, junior Brendan Brezinski and senior Lucas Kishlock.
Hunter Adair, a senior, starts at fullback, and Wano and junior Dakota Haupt provide depth in the backfield.
Cole Heckathorn, a senior placekicker, is 31-for-35 on extra-point attempts and has booted four field goals, including one that stood as the winning points in a 10-7 win over United Valley.
Defensively, Doak, Witmer, Sprague, Basile, Twinchek, Wano, Koffman, Hutter, Haupt, Adair, Stuller, Kishlock and Woodring see action along with seniors AK Kriamakabar, Brodie Forsha and Troy Milliron, juniors Tanner Flickinger, Evan Strouse, Hayden Haight, Brody Houser and Keagan Laidacker and sophomores Luke Foust and Patrick Hillaire.
“I don’t think we’ve really played to our complete level yet this year and taken that next step that we can get to,” Persichetti said. “It just takes one game to unlock it and just to get that confidence and know we can beat good teams.”
“It’s a great bunch of kids,” Stuller said. “My past four years I don’t think the team has come together as well as this team. This is definitely the closest bunch, and we have talent everywhere. It’s an impressive group for sure.”
“There are going to be talented players out there, and our team is ready for any challenge they throw at us. We’re ready to go up to Marion Center and play a really good team. We’re ready to get rolling.”
— Michael Wano, River Valley senior
THE GAME: Friday’s game has major implications across the board. Marion Center can stay on track to claim the conference title. River Valley can forge a three-way tie with once-beaten Cambria Heights in the mix, creating the scenario for a shared title. The winner shores up its spot in the upper tier of the District 6 Class 2A rankings — Marion Center is second and River Valley is tied for fifth — with eight teams making the field and the higher seeds getting home games in the quarterfinals and semifinals.
Dalton took his team to the football field in Saltsburg on Wednesday to prepare for only its second game this season on natural grass. He expects a slippery surface against a quality opponent.
“This is another great test,” Dalton said, “but every game is the playoffs now with the point system, but I love that because there’s no arbitrary guy sitting in a room that never saw us play telling us we’re a fifth seed. That’s subjective. I don’t know if this system is perfect, but at least it’s fair.”
Marion Center is 8-0 for the first time in school history. The Stingers have been explosive offensively behind senior quarterback Cam Rising and Troy Slovinsky, another of the conference’s standout sophomores.
Rising has completed 68 percent of his passes for nearly 1,700 yards with 19 touchdowns and two interceptions and is the team’s leading rusher with 475 yards and eight touchdowns. Slovinsky (45 receptions), Alex Brudnock (29) and Tyler Phillips (27) have combined for 101 receptions for nearly 1,600 yards.
“We’ve got to obviously limit the explosive plays,” Dalton said. “A lot of times they throw the ball and 7 (Slovinsky), 2 (Brudnock) or 6 (Phillips) will it take it 55 yards. So, they’re going to catch the football; we’ve got to tackle them. We’ve got to do some things with down-and-distance that matter. We’ve got to keep the ball, but that’s always been our M.O. And I would say our quarterback is pretty explosive himself. As people get close to the line of scrimmage, he can make bigger and bigger plays, and he’s fast and he can run.”
“We’ve got to be physical,” Wano said. “He’s preached it since Day One. We have to be more physical than them. We have to be focused. There are going to be talented players out there, and our team is ready for any challenge they throw at us. We’re ready to go up to Marion Center and play a really good team. We’re ready to get rolling.”
For the sake of comparison, the teams experienced different results against Cambria Heights, the two-time defending district champion. Marion Center held off Cambria Heights, 26-25, at home in Week 5. The Highlanders pummeled River Valley, 35-7, at home in Week 2.
“We know they’re good, obviously,” Persichetti said. “They beat Cambria Heights and we didn’t. We sucked that game. But we bounced back. You can stub your toe, but you’ve got to bounce back.”
While Marion Center drew a large boost of confidence from the victory, River Valley got an unexpected wake-up call.
“It humbled us,” Persichetti said. “We were very confident coming into that game and we thought we were going to beat them. That game showed that you have to compete every single week. We knew they would be a good team, but we weren’t as focused on the details as we are now, and details help win games against good teams. The details have gotten a lot better and should show this week.”
River Valley has 50 players on the roster. Only 12 are seniors. Dalton thinks his team can compete for a district title this season and certainly beyond.
“I think we can,” he said. “But we’ve got to believe it. But it’s not easy. When they come in Monday and say they’re beat up, that’s what it’s supposed to be like. In our couple opportunities against physical teams, one we didn’t play well against United, and hats off to them, but we were able to make adjustments and stop what they were doing and do enough to win. Conemaugh Township (a 39-21 win), we played really well because they’re very physical, and we dominated that game. And then going back to Week 2, we did nothing. We just stood there like we were playing the ’73 Steelers and didn’t account for ourselves.”
“He always tells us that we need to follow our level of training and work really hard and he has high expectations for us,” Stuller said. “I feel like we haven’t fully played to our level, but we’re getting there. He really gets us to play hard, and the more we play harder and harder and harder we can reach the level we’re supposed to be playing at.”
“Originally, I said, ‘Why would I want to go there?’ And as I explored it, it was pretty much a good fit.”
— Ed Dalton
THE JOURNEY: Dalton left Purchase Line for Altoona, where he led teams to district championships in 1996 and ’97. Altoona went undefeated in the regular season in 1997 and beat nationally ranked Cincinnati Moeller.
Then it was on to the WPIAL at Mount Pleasant in Westmoreland County followed by Trinity and McGuffey in Washington County, where he also served as director of athletics. At Trinity, he led his team to the WPIAL playoffs seven straight seasons after the program had just four wins in 40 games prior to his arrival, and at McGuffey he inherited a team with a 16-game losing streak and took it to the playoffs nine times and won two section titles while going 77-48.
He resigned after the 2024 season. He has a career record of 231-145-1, which ranks 10th among active coaches in the state, according to the Pennsylvania Football News.
But River Valley wasn’t part of the plan.
Family was.
Dalton has four grandchildren ranging in ages from 1 to 6. His two daughters live near Pittsburgh.
“The long story short was I was going to move to Florida,” he said. “In the year of not coaching and still being AD, I spent a lot more time with my grandchildren and pretty much realized there was no way that was just going to be a vacation spot for them. It’s fun being around them all the time. I wouldn’t have taken just any job. There were opportunities at good schools in Florida and probably two in the WPIAL I had the opportunity to take. This one kind of fit everything.
“And then the facilities and the commitment. It’s very aligned despite what the outside world tells you. The board is aligned with the superintendent, and he’s aligned with the administration and athletics and the coaches so that’s kind of cool. … Everywhere I’ve been, the upper administration loves extra stuff, not just sports but arts and clubs and now e-games and that kind of stuff. And they have that all here.”
The pool of athletes rose after the consolidation, too, with Saltsburg’s smaller classes joining the larger groups from Blairsville to form a Class 2A program.
“I knew enough about Blairsville and Saltsburg that Blairsville usually always is C-plus or better with players,” Dalton said, “and when Saltsburg had kids, they had kids. You look at basketball, and Saltsburg always had athletes. They just might not have had nine of them, but they might have had two or three, and you see them and say, ‘Wow, they’re great athletes.’
“Blairsville a lot of the time had everything and added to what they were doing and the commitment they were making. I didn’t know enough about what was going on, which is a good thing because I just went in blind as a football coach and really didn’t know anybody. The person that gave me the information was just someone from a church that heard this job was open. Originally, I said, ‘Why would I want to go there?’ And as I explored it, it was pretty much a good fit.”
“Everyplace is cool, but that Purchase Line team was really good.”
— Ed Dalton
THE PAST AT PL: When Dalton arrived at Purchase Line from Erie, “culture” wasn’t a catchword in athletics. But that’s what he started building by painting the locker room, establishing offseason workouts in a new weight room and creating excitement in the small, rural community.
“I just remember that it was stone soup, but nobody got in your way,” he said. “If you wanted to paint the locker room, paint the locker room and nobody said anything. If you wanted to spend your entire $1,200 budget on weights, spend your entire budget on weights, and nobody said a bad word. People would give to you, help you. The boosters president and four parents made our bleachers. The school district bought the bleachers, and they literally welded and them and put in a whole section of bleachers. I’m not talking 30 seats; I’m talking a thousand seats for the ’88, ’89 and ’90 kind of run.”
The 1990 team was stacked and certainly ranks as one of the best produced by a school in Indiana County and the Heritage Conference and its predecessor. The Red Dragons could run and pass and play defense. And they had a nasty streak that reflected their fiery young coach.
The unbeaten Dragons rolled into the District 6 Class 2A playoffs and topped Bald Eagle Nittany, 18-14, in the semifinals. They beat United, 27-7, to win the district championship. Both games were played at Mansion Park in Altoona.
That sent them to the PIAA playoffs, which were in their third year of existence, and a matchup against Bishop Canevin in the state semifinals at Mansion Park. Bishop Canevin won, 28-12, and played for the state title but lost to Hanover, 20-19 in double overtime.
“At that level, I look back on that game and Canevin was really good,” Dalton said. “They beat us on the guard-tackle counter. And I blame me for that now as I’m older. I didn’t know what to do. Today, I would have taken that away in a second. We could have done a lot of things, but I didn’t have the counter to that. I always say if it were a best-of-seven it would have been 4-3. In their game against Hanover, they went for two to try to win. That team could have been state champions.”
There were other good teams during Dalton’s journey.
“I had a team at Mount Pleasant that was a No. 1 seed going into the WPIAL playoffs that was really good,” he said. “I had a team at Altoona that beat Cincinnati Moeller. At McGuffey, we competed the last five years to always win the section. Trinity, if it wasn’t for Thomas Jefferson, we could have won four or five section titles.
“Everyplace is cool, but that Purchase Line team was really good.”
Dalton returned to Purchase Line last week to coach a game for the first time in more than 30 years. His team gave him a successful homecoming with a 35-0 victory.
“Everyplace is special,” he said. “Going back there was pretty cool. I told people that former players came from South Carolina and Virginia just to watch the game and say hi, and a lot of Pittsburgh kids, a lot of kids from around here — kids, 50-year-old men — so that was pretty cool.”
“It’s one thing if you score because a kid hit a dive and went 50 yards, but to run the flip play to get two is just really stupid.”
— Ed Dalton
THE REGRET: The other prominent piece during Dalton’s Purchase Line tenure came in a home game in 1990.
Purchase Line infamously scored 70 points against Blacklick Valley. Seventy points is a rarity at any level of football, and the last two came on what at the time would have been considered a trick play — the shuttle or shuffle pass — on a two-point conversion.
There was no 35-point mercy rule at the time, so the Red Dragons relentlessly pounded their visitors for a full 48 minutes.
Before the subject was breached, the coach stared at the floor, the regret on his face and in his voice evident when he said, “I’m not scoring 70 again. I’m not doing that ever again. There are guys here from Blacklick Valley that are teachers, and it scarred them. Especially the way I did it, that was uncalled for, running the flip play. It’s one thing if you score because a kid hit a dive and went 50 yards, but to run the flip play to get two is just really stupid.”
“I knew he was going to be a good coach, and I knew I’d have to be ready because he’s going to yell at you, but you have to take it. So, he’s not as crazy, but he’s still got an edge to him.”
— Max Persichetti, River Valley quarterback
STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS? It didn’t take long for Dalton, in his late-20s, to establish a reputation as a wild man on the sideline.
One of the things he became known for was calling two of his three available timeouts on the first series of the game and stalking onto the field to straighten out his team while profanity and spit flew in players’ faces.
“I heard from his PL days that he was crazy,” Persichetti said. “That’s just what my grandfather said because he knew who he was. I knew he was going to be a good coach, and I knew I’d have to be ready because he’s going to yell at you, but you have to take it. So, he’s not as crazy, but he’s still got an edge to him.”
“I have my moments,” Dalton said. “Back then, I was definitely crazy. I don’t know that players I coached would say that because they saw me every day. You only hear sometimes the criticism and don’t hear the praise. I always tell people four out of five things I say are pretty good. It’s just the one when I say I don’t have time to wait for you to hold onto the ball.”
He’s still sharp with his criticism, but he has mellowed. There’s evidence on the practice field and the sideline in actions and words.
“Much less if not totally no profanity,” he said. “I learned that with my own kids. It just takes a little bit of self-control. But I’m not perfect. I really value coaching the kids and the role I have, and I probably told them 500 times this year thanks for letting us coach them because they’re great kids. They listen to whatever you tell them if you’re honest with them and coach them fairly and give them an honest evaluation and play who should play based on talent level.”
“He’s definitely the most energetic coach I’ve ever had. It’s a good thing.
I could tell when we first met he was energetic; he talks with his hands a lot.”
Brock Hutter, River Valley senior
BACK TO THE PRESENT: Earlier this week, a gloomy day turned to sunshine when the Panthers walked from the school to the field house to get ready for practice. The coach stood on what he calls “his porch” — the area with tables and chairs along the field house walkway — and watched junior high and varsity players arrive. He stepped out to greet all and joke with some because it was time to have fun — same as every stop along the way.
“Coach obviously leads that,” Persichetti said. “He loves his job and loves to have fun, and we have fun with him, too. We know when it’s time to get serious we have to get serious. If you’re not having fun — you’re playing high school football in a great part of the state in a great conference and you play good opponents, how can you not be having fun?”
“He’s definitely the most energetic coach I’ve ever had,” Hutter said. “It’s a good thing. I could tell when we first met he was energetic; he talks with his hands a lot.”
Dalton’s varsity staff consists of R.K. Shoemaker, Jim Meighan, Erik Foust, Mike Shaffer, Vince Skillings, Andrew Frassenei, Jake Just and Steve Woodrow. Jess Houser, Montez Miller and Rylan Wilkins are the middle school coaches.
“Coach is a character,” Wano said. “We all love him — all of them. Coach Dalton really brings energy to the team. When we’re down he brings us up. He’s a really big light to this team, and I love having him here. He’s very special to this team and really brings us all together. Together we all just fit in as a big family.”
Great article Tony, excellent questions and good down to earth answers. Impressed by the mature answers from the athletes!
Great article Tony. Really enjoyed it.