40 teams in 40 days – Day 8: Downingtown East (1)

Written by: David Mika on Sunday, July 29th, 2012. Follow David Mika on Twitter.

History

Downingtown East High School was established in 2003 after Downingtown High School split. It is now known as Downingtown West.

Since 2003 the Cougars have a record of 73 – 32.

They won a state title in 1996 against Woodland Hills, 49-14. Note: When Downingtown was one school.

Battle of the Brandywine

Is a series between Downingtown East and Downingtown West. West leads the series 4-3. They didn’t play in 2007.

East won last season 42-28

2011 season

The Cougars finished the 2011 season with a 9-3 record. They had big wins against Allentown Central Catholic, 62-41 and West Chester Henderson in the playoffs.

They eventually lost to Council Rock South in the District one playoffs.

We sat down with Head Coach Michael Matta and talked to him about his team for the 2012 season?

Q & A with Downingtown East head football coach Michael Matta

How is your off-season going this summer?

We are having a great off-season. We have good numbers and the off-season workouts have been good.

Who do you have coming back on offense?

We have one offensive lineman back, Harrison Burch. The rest of the guys are going to be new starters, but have played. Alec Petrillo is another one.

Our center is Kyle Ducharme. Kyle is a great leader and he is like the quarterback of the offensive line.

At quarterback is returning starter Kyle Lauletta. Kyle throws and runs the ball really well.

Ryley Angeline is our main running back. Ryley started the last five games for us when Drew Harris went down with an injury. He rushed for over 600 yards. He is 6-foot-3, 215-pounds and he is going to be a handful for teams this year.

We return one of the top receivers in the state in Jay Harris. Harris is our go to guy.

We have a kid that grew four inches since last year, Dayne Foley. He is a track guy and will play some receiver for us.

We have a couple of mobile tight ends. Both are juniors. One is Mike Reichwein. Mike is a 6-foot-4, 230-pound tight end. He is more of a blocker. But he has real soft hands.

The other tight end is Alec Coyle-Nicolas. He is a 6-foot-5, 225-pound tight end. He is new to football; last year was his first year. He is very athletic.

We feel our line is one of our strong points. We are going to run a two tight end set, a fullback and receiver.

We have Chris Beals back at fullback and he probably has the best hands I have ever been around. He is like a division five body, but has division one hands. If he drops a ball, it would be in the news.

We have a lot of weapons that we can get the ball to.

Who do you have coming back on defense?

Defensively we possibly have some of our best players back from last year. We are going to start with our defensive end, Elijah Griffin. He had a great year for us last season.

Another guy we have back is Nelson Lucas-Murphy. He is a big physical kid that makes plays.

Our defensive tackle is back, Josh Ganzelli.

We also have Mike Munnelly. He is big and physical and I don’t think he knows how good he can be. He is a beast.

At linebacker we have a new guy, Sage Stephenson-Panchisin.

We moved our starting fullback the last two years, Wade Mastrog to middle linebacker. We moved Nelson Lucas-Murphy out to the edge to protect the edge.

We have our guy Eddie Kozlowski that has played meaningful minutes for us in the secondary.

In the secondary we are going to have new guys. We have a lot of bodies back there but it depends on how fast they grow up. That will determine how well our defense is.

We feel real good about our front seven.

Who do you have coming back on special teams?

We have our kicker back from last season, Chris White. Our punters are Kyle Lauletta and Eddie Kozlowski.

To have a successful season you have to?

We have to win the conference. We didn’t win it last year, losing to Henderson at the end of the year hurt us. We need to win our conference so we can get some home games in the playoffs.

If we win our non-conference games and conference I think we can be a top four team in the playoffs.

Outside of the league you have to beat North Penn.

Home Opener

Downingtown East opens home against Monsignor Bonner on September 1^st.

40 teams in 40 days

Day 1 – Mount Carmel Area (4)

Day 2 – Manheim Central (3)

Day 3 – Delaware Valley (2)

Day 4 – Southern Columbia (4)

Day 5 – Berwick Area (2)

Day 6 – Easton Area (11)

Day 7 – LaSalle (12)