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Sciolla stepping down at Conwell-Egan

03/29/2016, 3:15pm EDT
By Rich Flanagan

Rich Flanagan (@richflangan33) &
Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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A year after overseeing the most successful run in school history, Conwell-Egan head coach Frank Sciolla has decided to step down.

The third-year head coach is departing down to focus on his family. His oldest daughter, Ava, is a talented basketball player, and he currently coaches her 6th grade AAU team.

"Anything I do coaching from now on will be linked to my daughter in the near future," he told CoBL, clarifying that he didn't necessarily mean "now" but "in relation to her future."

In 2014-15, Sciolla led the Eagles to a 21-8 record and its first-ever PIAA Class AA state championship.

This past season, C-E finished 17-10, falling to Bonner-Prendgerast in the PCL playoff first round. Despite that, they won the District 12 Class AA title over Mastery North and advanced to the PIAA Class AA Tournament before falling to Camp Hill in the quarterfinals.

Sciolla has amassed a 363-181 record (.667) in 20 seasons as a high school coach, and grew the Egan program into a continual contender not only in the PCL, but the entire state. Before taking the job at the Fairless Hills school, he coached at Bristol and Pennsbury, where he had a 280-136 record and won seven Suburban One League crowns.

Despite his success at three different programs, Sciolla pointed to the fact that being a coach in a league like the Catholic League wears on a coach and becomes depleting, both mentally and physically.

“I think sometimes the three places that I went to were all situations where there was a great deal of building or there was an enormous amount of energy to get the ball rolling,” Sciolla said. “I don’t doubt that that may have tired me out a little bit.”

Sciolla also pointed to the fact that the landscape of college basketball is rapidly changing and it’s trickling down to the high school level as well.

No longer is being a high school basketball coach a part-time job, especially in as competitive a region at this one.

“I really respect the guys in the Catholic League who have coached a long time, particularly today’s Catholic League. Its demands are rigorous and it has nothing to do with on the court,” Sciolla said. “It’s a tremendous challenge.”

Sciolla’s successor will be without First Team All-Catholic guard LaPri McCray-Pace, the school’s all-time leading scorer in the modern era, and Second Team All-Catholic forward Vinny Dalessandro. Both were instrumental to the 2015 state title run, 1,000-point scorers, and had been starters since their freshmen year under Sciolla.

Delassandro will play at D-II Pace (N.Y.) and McCray-Pace has yet to make a decision on where he will attend next season.

Whoever does succeed Sciolla will have juniors Kar'ron Johnson and James Leible plus sophomore Eric Esposito to help ease the transition from Class AA to AAAA under the PIAA’s new classification guidelines. The 4A classification encompasses schools with an enrollment of 81 male students (Samuel Fels) to 320 (Benjamin Franklin High School). C-E has an enrollment of 238 boys.

Sciolla is walking away from coaching now, but he’s not completely ruling out another return to the hardwood sideline.

“I’ll be looking for some other windmill to ride my horse into,” he said.


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