Pittston Area will have its third head football coach in three seasons.
Paul Russick, a 2007 Pittston Area graduate who has led improvements of the football team at Honesdale High School where he teaches, has been hired to take over as coach of the Patriots.
Russick was appointed by a 7-1 vote of the school board Tuesday. He replaces Joe DeLucca, who was not retained after the team went 2-9 in his only season, and becomes the program’s seventh head coach in 17 years.
“This truly is the dream job I had growing up,” said Russick, an eighth-grade science teacher in the Wayne Highlands (Honesdale) School District. “I was a Duryea Wildcat growing up, then I was a Pittston Area Patriot as a seventh-grader.
“Coming home has been something I always dreamt about.”
Russick was an all-star lineman at Pittston Area in his last two seasons. He then played in the offensive line at Susquehanna University where he made 31 straight starts before launching his coaching career.
After his playing days, Russick began the first of two stints at Dickinson College where he coached offensive linemen and was the staff’s video coordinator. Russick served as an assistant coach at two different North Carolina high schools before returning to Dickinson to coach running backs while working as the Director of Football Operations.
“I spent six years coaching small college football and one of my regular recruiting stops was my alma mater,” Russick said. “I developed a relationship with coach (Nick) Barbieri and we’ve scrimmaged them.”
Honesdale reached the District 2 playoffs in three of the five seasons under Russick and last fall completed its first winning season in more than a decade. His teams were 22-38.
“I’m just going to keep preaching to the kids that we’re going to do things the right way,” Russick said. “We’re all in this together is my message with kids; the Patriot pride that the school always talked about, being proud of where you come from.”
Russick has to put together his coaching staff, but said he will start trying to build relationships immediately.
“Taking the community, the alumni, the kids and the parents, trying to get everyone to come together in that support,” Russick said of his goals. “Obviously, it starts in the weight room. We’re a little behind right now in terms of the high school football world, getting hired in mid-February.
“So, we’ll kind of try to hit the ground running.”
After suffering heavy graduation losses between the 2023 and 2024 seasons, the Patriots do have returning talent, but they also face the task of playing on the Wyoming Valley Conference Division 1 level after finding more success when they played in Division 2 in 2022 and 2023.
“Building a program is really hard,” Russick said. “It takes a lot of tough people and it takes people who are aligned.”
