Berwick hires Carm De Fransesco as the new Bulldogs head coach

Tagged under: Coaches Corner, District 2, News, pfn

Billy Splain | April 23, 2019

When Frank Sheptok left Berwick for a college coaching job at Kings it left not one but two voids in the Berwick athletic department.  Frank was not only the head coach, he was also the AD.  Two weeks ago they filled one of those spots with a Berwick legend, Bo Orlando.  Bo spent his high school years at quarterback, leading the Dawgs to a 13-0 season and mythical USA Today national title in 1983 before heading off to play for West Virginia. There he helped lead the Mountaineers to an undefeated season in 1988, which is ironically the year Berwick won their first state championship against powerhouse Aliquippa.  He’s considered one of the greatest players ever to wear a Mountaineer uniform.

Bo Orlando, photo studio-d-photo.com

Following his college career, Orlando was drafted by the Houston Oilers where he spent 5 seasons. He also spent time with the Chargers, Bengals and Steelers before retiring after the 1998 season. From there Bo moved to the Bethlehem area and coached high school ball.

The next step for Berwick was hiring a new head coach. For a storied program like Berwick, you can imagine the pool of candidates was deep. It was also loaded with local, home town favorites. But when news came out tonight that the school board had gone “outside” the program, many were surprised. “Nobody was expecting him” said Berwick Superintendent Wayne Burkhart. We many applicants, we interviewed nine. Five had head coaching experience, we narrowed it down to three and Carm is the guy that when you laid out all the resumes and talk to the guy, he’s the one that stood out. He’s won 10 coach of the year awards, 5 district titles, 5 league titles so it’s really hard to ignore that. He won the Reading league, Heartland, Twin Valley and old Central Susquehanna league CotY titles.” Carmen won 2 District IV titles with Danville and Shamokin and one with Mt. Carmel.

“I’m excited to get started” said the former Tornado head coach. “You know, I’m retired for the past couple years but when they hired Bo as AD that got my interest. I’ve known him for years so when I saw he got the job I reached out and we had a few discussions and that led me to decide to come out of retirement. ” Berwick’s school board voted 8-1. Being retired was one of the key points for him.  “Because I’m retired it will allow me to spend more time concentrating on the program. And the great thing they have right now, they have a lot of young, former players on staff.  A lot of them may aspire to become a head coach some day and I can mentor them, that way when I step away it could be a nice, easy transition.”

With a career record of 154-97, De Fransesco is not a stranger to winning. His coaching resume includes stints with Cardinal Brennan, Upper Dauphin, Danville, Shamokin and most recently Mt. Carmel.   He’s been named Coach of the year 10 different times in his career, and holds a very distinct statistic: He has beaten Southern Columbia with 3 different teams, most recently with Mt. Carmel in 2011 which is also the last time the Tigers lost a regular season game. That year the Red Tornado’s lost to state champ Lancaster Catholic.  He’ll have a chance to make it 4 times with 4 teams as the Dawgs open with SCA for the 2020 season at Berwick. “I didn’t know that we were opening with Southern next year. Jim Roth and I are good friends, we’ve coached against each other for years. So that will be fun, but right now I’m not worried at that.   I gotta worry about this year. I met some of the kids at the meeting tonight, and I’ll meet with the team today. I’m excited about that. I want to get to know each of them, give them a chance to ask me questions.”

“I think you’re going to see a great working relationship between Bo and Carm” said Burkhart. “We’re going have two great mentors for our kids and our young coaches. You can’t beat Bo’s experience and credentials. We’re thrilled to get him as an AD and Carm as our head coach.

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