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Neshaminy’s Dwight Williams has played on the national stage with his elite PA Playaz AAU basketball squad.Council Rock South’s Billy Fleming is a star baseball player who is considering the college scholarship offers he already has on the table.
On Friday night, Williams and Fleming will be playing in the biggest game of their young lives, and it won’t be a basketball or baseball game.
Instead, they will be lining up with their respective football teams in what is arguably the regular season’s biggest game when Rock South and Neshaminy – both undefeated – take the gridiron at Heartbreak Ridge.
“It’s going to be hectic,” Williams said. “The stadium is going to be packed. I think this will be one of the biggest games I’ve ever played in. I have been part of teams that have been in bigger games, but I haven’t been in the game.
“This is going to be my first time – big game, big crowd, and I think it will be a lot of fun. A lot of people will be watching.”
“This is probably the biggest game I have ever been part of since I was here,” Fleming said. “The hype at our school has been huge.
“This is the first time we’ve been off to a 6-0 start, and everyone in our school is noticing. All of our students are getting on the bandwagon and coming to our games. It’s kind of cool – I’ve never been part of anything like this.”
Imagine – if you can – how different life would be for both athletes if they had opted to play just one sport.
That was never a consideration for either.
“I love them both,” Williams said. “I never thought I would have to choose.
“I was one of those kids who was naïve and thought, ‘Yeah, I’ll just play both in college,’ but it doesn’t work that way.”
For his part, Fleming actually played three sports until his sophomore year when he gave up basketball.
“It was getting too tough to play all three,” he said. “I wanted to get home and get a little bit of a break and get ready for baseball.
“I have great friends on both teams, and I love both sports. My coaches have been awesome about it. They’re good friends, so they both work with me with the lifting and the workouts I have to be at.”
In an era where many coaches demand specialization, Council Rock South coach Vince Bedesem and Neshaminy coach Mark Schmidt support their players’ decisions to play more than one sport.
“It’s one of the things you ultimately like your kids doing,” Bedesem said. “What’s greater for the atmosphere of the school than when you have your best of the best playing a lot of sports.
“It only makes you better as a community and a school.”
“Dwight has been to Las Vegas, he’s been all over the place playing in big-time basketb
all tournaments,” Schmidt said. “It’s great exposure for him, and it’s hardened his mettle a little bit.
all tournaments,” Schmidt said. “It’s great exposure for him, and it’s hardened his mettle a little bit.“He’s come back to us with a sense of been there, done that. It’s really ripening him up as a young man and making our team better. I have no complaints.”
Williams has been attending Schmidt’s football camps since he was a third grader, but he also made a commitment to basketball and ultimately wound up playing for the PA Playaz AAU squad that was one of the nation’s very best.
He believed basketball represented his future. Until he stopped growing at 6-3.
“I thought I’d be bigger than what I am,” he said.
Williams is being recruited for basketball by numerous Division II programs, but if given the opportunity, he would prefer to play Division One football. It’s an option he wouldn’t have if he had given up football to focus only on basketball.
“It’s a lot of hard work and time because I go right into one sport from another,” he said. “It seems like I have a lot of time off, but I don’t.
“It’s football right to basketball, and then I play travel basketball which goes right back into football season.”
A standout in the defensive backfield, Williams was given the opportunity to play wide receiver this season after the Redskins lost all of their varsity receivers from last year to graduation.
“We pick one or two guys a year that have to play both sides of the ball, and the rest of the guys specialize on one but make sure they’re ready for the other side,” Schmidt said. “Dwight was one of those guys, and it worked out real well. We hoped he would be as good as he was, and I think he’s even better.”
Williams has excelled at wide receiver, hauling in 17 passes for 273 yards and a touchdown.
“It’s a lot of hard work, but Charlie (Marterella) is getting me the ball, and it’s a lot of fun,” he said.
On the defensive side of the football, Williams has emerged as a leader.
“In the secondary, he has been marvelous, just absolutely terrific,” Schmidt said. “He has been getting us lined up, getting us out in the secondary. It’s been great. I’m just real happy to see him understand what we believe he can do.”
Williams, according to Schmidt, has taken some of the younger players under his wing.
“Dwight is really starting to come around – he’s getting it,” the Redskins’ coach said. “His leadership is great, his sense of responsibility – he’s stepping up and doing what he has to do.
“It’s been great to see him grow into a really super young man. He’s a terrific guy. He’s one of my son’s favorite players.”
Fleming, meanwhile, always knew his future was in baseball, but that didn’t prevent him from becoming a star quarterback for the Golden Hawks.
“I think playing both sports helps me,” he said. “I think the competitive nature of football helps with the baseball part of it, and the mental part of baseball helps me with the football part – not to get too high and not to get too low, just stay at an even keel.”
Fleming trains with his football team during the season, and immediately when the season ends, he begins lifting with the baseball team. “After the high school season, I’ll have an off-season program with my summer baseball team,” he said. “Once that ends, I get right into football lifting. I’ll keep doing it over and over. I’ve been doing it for three years.”
With absolutely remarkable results.
So far this season, Fleming has accumulated 253 yards in the air and 418 yards on the ground with nine rushing touchdowns, but Fleming’s true value is in his ability to run the triple option. His mastery of the fake has contributed to the success of his teammate in the backfield, Mark Damirgian, who has 494 rushing yards and 11 touchdowns.
Talk to Bedesem, and it’s clear that Fleming brings more than just his athletic skills to the field. He also brings a mental toughness.
“The pluses and minuses of being a quarterback – when you’re going real good, you get a lot of good recognition, but when things go wrong, you get a lot of bad recognition,” the Golden Hawks’ coach said. “It takes a special person to go out and compete in any sport, but in our sport especially, the quarterback position does take a lot.
“It takes a lot out of you not only physically but mentally.”
Both Fleming and Williams have the good fortune of playing for a pair of coaches who share a similar philosophy.
“Our baseball coach, Greg Young, is also a big believer in the weight room and offseason training,” Bedesem said. “It’s not like they go play baseball in the spring and then he says, ‘See you guys in late winter.’ He’s got a grasp of his guys too.
“He and I are really good friends and were teammates, so he has that same approach to the game.”
“(Basketball coach) Jerry Devine understands our weight room policy, and a lot of his guys are in there,” Schmidt said. “They’ve reaped the benefits from the weight room as well.
“We feed off each other. They’re in the stands cheering for us, and this winter, we’ll be in the stands cheering for them.”
As Friday night’s game approaches, the Golden Hawks are riding an emotional wave the likes of which they have never seen before. It’s an experience Fleming wouldn’t have wanted to miss.
“I’m a little bit better at baseball, but I love football,” he said. “And nothing can replace the Friday night lights.”
There will be plenty of emotion on the Neshaminy sidelines as well, but for the Redskins, that emotion will be colored by some of the adversity they have faced this season.
Not only is senior standout Nick DiDonato sidelined with a concussion, defensive coordinator Neil French is hoping to attend Friday’s game before undergoing surgery on his elbows, both of which were broken after Tuesday’s practice.
One day after his accident, French was still concentrating on the upcoming game.
“For him to be in the state of mind he is in 24 hours later tells you what kind of guy he is,” Schmidt said. “He’ll be a superintendent of schools if he wants to be. He’ll be a principal, and he could certainly be a head coach, but he has more to offer than just coaching one sport.
“He can touch a lot of people. He’s an amazing young man, and he’s going to have a great future. Every guy on my staff has great qualities. Neil is very bright - he puts sports together well, he’s organized, and he’s efficient, but the biggest thing is he has a big heart. The kids know it, the coaches know it, and that’s probably his biggest quality on top of all the other ones. He really cares about our guys.”
Another member of the Redskin family, Marco Dapkey, who is battling leukemia, was hospitalized after last week’s game.
“It makes us think about what life is without football,” Williams said. “It makes us work harder for the kids who can’t be there.
“Marco Dapkey is the hardest worker on our team, and he wants it more than all of us. It makes us focus on real life. We’re doing this for him because he wants it more than any of us.”
Whether they playing for their teammate, their coach or their school community, players from both sides know they’ll be part of something special when they play under the bright lights at Heartbreak Ridge on Friday night.
“Shoot,” Schmidt said. “Let’s just go out there, put our hands in the dirt and play a little football.”
Council Rock South at Neshaminy
Heartbreak Ridge, Friday, Oct. 15, 7 p.m.
Record: Neshaminy 3-0 SOL (6-0 overall), Council Rock South 3-0 SOL (6-0 overall)
Last week: Neshaminy defeated Council Rock North 35-8; Council Rock South downed Bensalem 35-7
Last year: Neshaminy 42, Council Rock South 17
Neshaminy coach Mark Schmidt’s keys to the game:
1) Take advantage of any opportunities we get. We can’t be out there for 35 seconds. We have to try and move the ball and tilt the field a little bit.
2) Winning the battle at the line of scrimmage. The game is going to come down to the line of scrimmage. They have a good group in there, and we like our group too.
Coach Mark Schmidt says: “The exciting thing on our end is we really haven’t played a really good game yet, and our guys understand that. We hope that can happen, and if it does, then maybe we can go out and have some success. We’re at that place now where we have to take that next step and get after it. What better time than against a league opponent that’s having another good year. They’re very well coached, they’re very prepared and they’re very talented. They have a lot of good things going on. Vince does a great job over there.”
Council Rock South Vince Bedesem’s keys to the game:
1) We have to play a team game.
2) We have to play ball control offense. Both teams are going to be saying that. They’re going to want to keep the football, and they’re going to want to set the pace of the game.
3) Play defense and get numbers to the ball. That’s always a big, big thing.
Coach Vince Bedesem says: “Neshaminy is big and strong. They have a powerful running game. (Quarterback) Charlie Marterella is having a (heck) of a year with Dwight Williams and being able to hook up with him, and he has a bunch of other weapons. They’re a true pro style offense where they’re going to keep you off balance with a good mixture of run-pass.”
Friday night’s Neshaminy/CR South game will be broadcast live on the web site
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