Back in January, Fox Chapel football coach Dave Leasure was told by a few of his players that “a really good kicker” had just transferred to the school.
Admittedly, Leasure was a bit skeptical.
“No one transfers to Fox Chapel and is a great football player. It just doesn’t happen, especially coming off of an 0-10 season,” Leasure said. “I didn’t think anything of it. And then two weeks later, I get a message from a major college program asking to come by and talk about my kicker. So I thought, ‘Oh my, I better look this kid up.’”
So, he did, and, let’s just say Leasure came away impressed with what he read about him. But not as impressed as he was when he got to see him kick in person.
“I finally got to meet him,” Leasure said. “He’s a great kid. And he is a talent. I’ve never seen anything like it and I probably never will again.”
That kid is Harran Zureikat, a junior who transferred from Shady Side Academy midway through his sophomore year. Zureikat has quite the interesting background in that his family is from the Middle East. Both of his parents were born in Jordan. And Zureikat is sort of like the “Jordan of high school football kickers.” Kohl’s Kicking ranks Zureikat as the No. 1 kicker in the country in the junior class.
“Honestly, for the first few weeks or months, I was definitely in shock since I’m still pretty new to the sport,” Zureikat said of the ranking. “But right now I don’t think much of it. I use it more as a motivation and a drive.”
Zureikat, who began kicking in eighth grade, was last month selected to the Preseason MaxPreps Junior All-America Team. And then, two weeks ago, he picked up his first college offer when Syracuse offered him a full scholarship — colleges typically don’t offer those to high school kickers — while on a gameday visit.
“I mean, I was honestly stunned,” he said of the offer. “Me and my dad went to the game, and we weren’t expecting that.”
Just like Zureikat wasn’t expecting to have a future in football, but that all changed one day the summer before his eighth grade year. A soccer player since the age of 6, Zureikat and his dad would often play pickup soccer at Carnegie Mellon. While there with some friends one day, he decided to see if he could make a field goal. Well, he did … from 40 yards.
“I didn’t think much of it, but my friends told me it was pretty good,” the personable teen said with a laugh.
Zureikat decided to stop playing soccer following his freshman season at Shady Side Academy in order to focus on kicking the pigskin. He connected on 5 of 6 field goals as a sophomore. In just two games this season at Fox Chapel, he is 4 of 4 with a long of 35 yards (he said he’s hit from as long as 62 yards in practice) and all 10 of his kickoffs have resulted in touchbacks. One of those kickoffs clanked off the crossbar.
“When you’re kicking off and you’re hitting the crossbar at the other end, you’ve got some range,” Leasure said.
The kid with the booming leg might even be a good luck charm for Fox Chapel, which had lost 22 games in a row before a 38-7 win at Baldwin in Week 1.
Leasure said that his new kicker has changed the way he approaches certain situations in games, starting from the very beginning of them.
“As far as the coin toss goes, we prefer to defer now,” Leasure said. “We’ll give them the ball at the 20, try for a three-and-out and try to get the ball at midfield. That changes our strategy.”
Zureikat had a busy summer as he attended a national scholarship camp in Tennessee in addition to going to college camps at Ohio State, Pitt, Georgia, Duke and Penn State. He plans on making several more gameday visits this season, as well. He said his dream school is Michigan.
It’s the second class in a row in which the WPIAL boasts a highly regarded kicker. North Allegheny’s Peter Notaro is ranked by Kohl’s as the No. 4 kicker in the senior class. The Alabama recruit has already made three field goals of 50 or more yards this season.
Norwin duo to Clarion
Seniors Kendall Berger and Averi Brozeski will try to help the Norwin girls basketball team repeat as WPIAL Class 6A champion this upcoming season. The pair won’t be going their separate ways when they graduate, though. No, they’ve decided to keep being teammates.
Berger and Brozeski will continue their careers at Clarion, this after announcing their commitments on X last Tuesday. Brozeski lightheartedly replied to Berger’s commitment post with “stuck with me for another 4.”
Both players played big roles on a Norwin team that won the program its third WPIAL title. Berger, a 5-10 guard, averaged 11.3 points per game on her way to all-section honors, while Brozeski, a 5-11 guard-forward, was one of the top players off the bench. Brozeski’s father, Brian, is Norwin’s coach and also coached the two in AAU with SLAAM.
First offers
Two WPIAL basketball players picked up their first Division I offers over the weekend, and those offers came from the same school. Pepperdine, which is located in Malibu, Calif., offered Kieshaun Demus, a 6-1 sophomore guard from Imani Christian, and Grant Spacciapolli, a 6-1 junior guard from Pine-Richland. Demus spent his freshman season at North Hills.
Baseball commitments
Bethel Park’s Dylan Schumacher (IUP); North Allegheny’s Nate Persinger (California); Pine-Richland’s Jake Waddell (IUP); South Side’s Carter Wilson (Slippery Rock).
Basketball commitment
Our Lady of the Sacred Heart’s Claudia Ierullo (Slippery Rock).
Soccer commitment
Peters Township’s Molly Kubistek (Cincinnati).
Brad is a sports writer at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike. Email him at beverett@unionprogress.com.