Last weekend was a special one for the Salisbury High School boys basketball program. The Falcons picked up their second straight Colonial League victory of the season last Friday night against Catasauqua High School 49-26, and in doing so, gave head coach Jason Weaver his 200th as head coach of Salisbury. What was even better was that it happened on their home court.

“It was a great feeling to get the win, the celebration from my team and the school was awesome,” said Weaver. “I’m hoping there are many more wins to come.”

In his 14 seasons at the helm, Weaver has coached a lot of great teams and great individual players, some of which are currently on his coaching staff, others still stay in contact and help out the program in any way they can. Those alumni and the current 2021-22 Falcons are why Weaver coaches and why he is able to boast 200 career victories.

“The credit for the wins goes to all of the tremendous athletes and young men I have coached at Salisbury the past 14 years,” Weaver said. “I’ve been very lucky to have had hardworking, coachable kids. This year’s team fits that mold as well, we are balanced and play extremely hard. I always love when we have our alumni game and get a chance to see all of the players I have coached in the past and it is very meaningful to me to have three former players coaching with me this year Dylan Belletiere, Brad Vangeli and Tommy Sylvester.

“I love being at Salisbury, we have great kids who work hard and want to get better. The school and the administration, especially, Monica Deeb, the athletic director, have been very supportive to me all of these years.”

Last Friday, Salisbury used some early offense and stout defense to jump out in front of the Roughies and take control of the game by halftime. The Falcons outscored Catty 19-8 in the first quarter and only allowed one point in the second, holding a 36-9 lead at halftime.

“We had a great week defensively,” Weaver said. “The guys are buying in to play aggressive man-to-man defense and we played great weak side help and rebounded well. We held both Moravian and Catty under 30 points. We need to keep that effort up this week against Bangor and Southern Lehigh.”

Five players scored at least six points and a total of eight players recorded points in the win over Catty, led by a team-high 11 from Chase Fenstermaker. Jackson Lopez and Hunter Bleam each finished with nine points, while Tyson Utesch had eight and Kyle Artis contributed six.

“We have five seniors who have been playing together for a number of years,” said Weaver. “Any one of them could be the leading scorer any given night. That makes us a difficult team to defend. We need to continue to share the ball and play the game with patience and good court vision.”

Salisbury has a difficult week in its schedule this week, hosting Bangor before hitting the road to take on Southern Lehigh in the final games of the calendar year.