City of Basketball Love

Austin Petolillo (@AustinPSports)
--

Frank Wolf truly started from the bottom inside the Academy Park basketball program.

Back in 2004, Wolf began his coaching career as an assistant freshman basketball coach at the Sharon Hill (Pa.) high school. Fast-forward 14 years, and Wolf is in the middle of his second season as the varsity head coach.

“I just kind of worked my way up,” he said. “Can’t get anymore lower than the assistant freshman boys basketball coach.”

After starting as assistant freshman coach, Wolf became head freshman coach, then head JV coach, then assistant varsity coach, then finally head varsity coach in 2016-17 after serving as an assistant for four seasons under Allen Brydges.

In Brydges’ final season as head coach at Academy Park, the Knights reached the PIAA AAAA state tournament, where they fell to the defending (and eventual repeat) champion Roman Catholic in the first round.

As the head coach, Wolf is trying to sustain the success of his previous predecessors such as Brydges and former head coach Rick Pergolini.

In his first season as head coach, Wolf inherited a roster that featured six seniors, and took the Knights to the District 1 5A playoffs where they lost in the first round to Bishop Shanahan.

Now in his second season, Wolf only returns five players from last season’s team including starting point guard, junior Naseim Harley. Other than those five, the roster is filled out with former JV players.

“It’s pretty much a new team, we’re very young even though we start four seniors,” Wolf said. “I think that’s the reason why we haven’t won a lot of games so far, it’s a growing experience.”

After earning his history degree at York College, Wolf became a history teacher at Academy Park, specializing in world history and as a teacher, he uses his teaching skills to make his players better human beings.

“Me being a teacher, I try to do more than just coach them,” Wolf said. “I want them to succeed in life, I want them to be good people in life and that’s my main goal.”

Born and raised in Carteret, New Jersey, Wolf played under legendary New Jersey basketball coach Dave Turco.

Before Turco would go on to win 10 conference titles, three state titles and the 2014 New Jersey tournament of champions at St. Joseph (Metuchen) and coach current NBA players such as Karl Anthony-Towns and Wade Baldwin, Turco was the head coach at Carteret High School where Wolf played his high school ball.

“It was tough, we played tough basketball,” Wolf said. “We were a 2A school when I played, we were little but we won counties my junior year and states my freshman year, I’m just used to winning, I had a really good coach.”

Heading into Saturday, Academy Park was just 1-6, but that didn’t stop the Knights from pulling out a 61-58 win over a host Neshaminy side which entered with a 7-1 mark. It was a much-needed step in the right direction for the struggling Knights, who had lost their previous three games.

“I think we can take today as something we could build on,” Wolf said. “This is what we needed, we needed this win more than anything else and sometimes winning builds chemistry and the players needed this.”

“Our season has been up and down so far this year but after this, it should go up,” senior forward Billy Martin said. “We should start a streak and hopefully we win out the Del-Val and just do what we’ve been doing.”

In a wide open Del-Val conference, a conference in which there is no conference tournament, Academy Park has just as good of a chance as anyone to win the league.

The winner of the conference is determined via conference record, a clean slate for teams that have struggled this season. Last season, the Del-Val title was captured by Penn Wood.

Academy Park will have to rely on guys such as Harley, who dropped 15 points in their win against Neshaminy, Martin, who had 20 points against Neshaminy and sophomore forward Kamrohn Roundtree, who had 11 points.

Other key players include senior forward Jaison Jeffrey, senior guards Derik Harrison, and Alex Telewoda, junior forward Shermek Lofton, and freshman guard Tahriq Marrero.

Only Harrison, Jeffrey, Harley, Lofton and Roundtree were on the team last season.

In addition to having an inexperienced team, part of the reason why Academy Park had its struggles was due to a tough schedule where they faced teams such as Penncrest (8-0), Lower Merion (8-2), and the Haverford School (9-3).

“I’ll play anybody,” Wolf said. “It’s for the kids, someone is sitting in those stands that can maybe take one of these kids, I care about these kids more than I care about wins and losses.”

Wolf thinks the win against Neshaminy as something that can get his team going and get back that winning feeling that Wolf is so used to.

“I know we’re 2-6 but in all honesty, I think we’re going to make a lot of noise,” he said. “It’s only a matter of time.”