City of Basketball Love

By Evan Hartenstein
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(Ed. Note: This story is part of CoBL’s “Prepping for Preps” series, which will take a look at many of the top high school programs in the region as part of our 2025-26 season preview coverage. The complete list of schools previewed thus far can be found here.)

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Losing in the state championship game is one of the toughest things a team could experience.

Last season, Hill School finished with a program best 25-8 record, but fell to Phelps in the PAISAA title game 66-56 to finish off their 2024-2025 campaign.

But Hill is ready to bounce back.

Hill’s most impactful returner, Marquette commit Ethan Johnston, wants the team to do away with the small mistakes in order to win the PAISAA this year.

“Last year was a heartbreaker,” Johnston said. “It means a lot to everyone, especially the returning players — We’re all stepping into a leadership role, especially trying to make practices more intense, trying to eliminate mental mistakes like we did in the championship game. We’re trying to cut out the little things.”

The 6-foot-7 wing committed to Marquette a few months after his junior season, and is now ready to persevere through this year’s challenges to push Hill back to the top.

“I am very motivated,” Johnston said. “[Building] perseverance is going to be good for the season when stuff doesn’t go right.”

Seth Eilberg, who is heading into his 25th season as head coach, already is noticing his team’s unselfishness and bond.

“The character and chemistry of this group is pretty evident early on,” Eilberg said. “They are a great group of guys and they are working very hard. We’re very versatile, interchangeable parts, which should allow us to switch defensively and play different lineups.” 

A great extent of that team chemistry is credit to the returners.

Along with Johnston, Hill is returning three more major pieces this season in Joseph Terreri Jr., Caleb Jameson, and Cole Trn. 

Terreri Jr., a 6-foot-7 Williams (Mass.) commit, plays well in pick and pop scenarios and is a high-level shooter. Eilberg highlighted his leadership as one of his best traits. Jameson also can shoot the ball at a high clip, as the knockdown 6-5 lefty sniper just recently committed to Carnegie Mellon. Jameson also takes advantage of his strength and force to roughhouse defenders. 

Trn, a rising junior guard, is coming into his second season with Hill and has received some Division I interest. He went down last season with an orbital fracture, but started most the season prior to that.

But the combination of the returners and the newcomers is what gives Hill a major competitive advantage.

Postgraduates Ben Natal and Zane Conlon are two major additions to the program that look to make an immediate impact.

Natal is the all-time leading scorer at Central York, scoring a whopping 1,803 points in his four years with the team, playing a huge role in a state championship squad as a junior. The pairing of his elite scoring ability and his new teammates versatility from all aspects of the game will allow for Natal to have many opportunities to rack up the score sheet.

Conlon is coming off four years at Devon Prep, where he was part of three state championship squads, including as both a junior and senior. He was named the Pennsylvania 4A Player of the Year last season, and also was named a First Team All-Philadelphia Catholic League selection

Eilberg summed up the two postgrads perfectly:

“They’re winners. They just know how to win.”

Natal and Conlon are huge pieces to play alongside the returners, but the insertion of Eyan Valadez cannot be understated. A rising sophomore, Valadez is an exciting guard who played at Friends Academy in Locust Valley (N.Y.) season. He won Conference Player of the Year in his league and was named to the All-County team

Accompanying the postgrads and Valadez, Steven Moore, who played a year up this summer with Trn for Sideline Cancer 17U, is a 6-9 lefty forward coming down from Scranton Prep. Moore will give Hill a nice boost inside as one of the bigger bodies on the team, but he can also stretch the floor to the 3-point arc.  

Hill graduated current Bucknell freshman Jacob Meachem last year, and while his 18 points, five assists, and three rebounds per game will be hard to be replicated, Eilberg believes his guards can fill his shoes defensively.

“Meech had the ball in his hands so much that there is a bit of a vacuum there that all the other guys need to help fill in,” Eilberg said. “He also set the tone for us defensively — he was so disruptive at the point of attack for other teams. He singlehandedly could take other teams out of their offense. So we’ll need our guards to get up and help pressure the basketball the way he could.”

From a talent and coaching perspective, Hill has everything it takes to complete its goal of winning a state championship this upcoming season.

Eilberg understands that if they want to accomplish that goal, Hill has to capitalize on every opportunity.

“There’s not a big margin of error,” Eilberg said. “We play a really, really strong, competitive schedule. Every game is going to come down to one or two possessions — You’ve got to have a sense of urgency in how you prepare and you’ve got to try and win every possession. We were on the other side of a lot of close games and won 25 games, more than any other team in school history.

“I think our guys understand and learned that from being in the program that it’s going to take that attention to detail, sense of urgency to find ways to win against such good competition.”