High school sports has been a part of Jeff Puksyzn’s life from the moment he was born.
His grandfather Pete Krah was a legendary Allentown Central Catholic athlete, coach and equipment manager who was a member of the 1947-48 PCIAA state championship basketball team, the MVP in the 1948 Lehigh Valley Invitational Tournament and the chief adviser to Central’s 1973 PIAA girls basketball state championship, the first in state history.
Tina Krah, Puksyzn’s aunt, was a member of that first ACCHS girls state title team and went on to become a graduate assistant coach at Michigan State, a head coach at San Jose State, an assistant AD at Vanderbilt and later was the director of the NCAA Division I women’s basketball championships.
Puksyzn’s first cousin, Tim McGorry, was the quarterback on Central’s 1998 state championship football team, and later became the offensive coordinator on the 2010 Vikings state champs and had a successful stint as Central’s head coach.
“I think the coaching and administrative parts of sports certainly are in our bloodline,” Pukszyn said.
Pukszyn spent 29 years involved with the Moravian University football program, first as an all-league player after transferring from Kutztown University, and then 26 seasons with the program from 1997-2022 as a coach with the last 12 years as the Greyhounds’ head coach.
Over the last two years, he has been a member of the Whitehall football staff as Andy Marino’s defensive coordinator.
On Monday, he officially took on a new leadership role as he was approved by the school board as the Zephyrs new athletic director. He will replace Bob Hartman who is retiring in August after 23 years.
Pukszyn, a 1993 ACCHS graduate who will turn 50 in July, is excited about the opportunity but knows he has big shoes to fill.
“Being at a Division III school you always have to chip in and at Moravian we hosted things like Landmark Conference baseball and softball championships and you have to help out with some of the extra administrative duties,” he said. “So, I got to experience some of that at Moravian where I was always surrounded by some really good people and I always thought I’d like to get into administration.”
After leaving Moravian, Pukszyn came to Whitehall where he has been the defensive coordinator on Marino’s staff for two seasons and became an assistant athletic director in the current school year starting with winter sports.
“I’ve been very fortunate to be around a guy in Bob Hartman who has done an amazing job at Whitehall and in leading District 11 and also at the PIAA level,” Pukszyn said. “I have been with Bob since November and the learning curve has been great because I’m around a guy who has done it for so long and done it in the right way and for the right reasons. It has been a great experience and I am glad he’s going to be around here for a few more months.”
Puksyzn has connections throughout the local football community. He considers Emmaus coach Harold Fairclough a close friend and remembers picking him up and taking him to school for a few years when they both played at Central in the early ’90s.
He said Jason Roeder, the Freedom coach, was his college roommate and the two of them became such good friends that Roeder was the best man in Pukszyn’s wedding.
Pukszyn obviously has close ties at Liberty where his daughter Emma was a standout basketball player and is now at Moravian. His son, Jake, was an a first-team all-league selection in both football and basketball for the Hurricanes and is now a budding track star.
His youngest child, Cole, is a 13-year-old seventh grader at Nitschmann Middle School in Bethlehem.
Pukszyn said his children may have gotten all of their athletic ability from his wife, Erin, who was a Division I softball player at the University of Delaware.
With all of his connections, Pukszyn has a good feel for what’s going on in high school sports across the Lehigh Valley and particularly in the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference.
While Whitehall has completed numerous projects in recent years to upgrade its facilities to the point that it has hosted league, district and state championship events, there’s still an old-school, blue-collar mentality in the school.
Pukszyn has embraced the “Zephyr Tough” culture that Whitehall has emphasized in recent years as being one of the smaller schools in the EPC, but still never backing down from a challenge.
“One of my players at Moravian was Jackson Buskirk and when I got here in 2023 we had a really good year and Jackson said ‘that’s what Whitehall is’ and he described this school perfectly,” Pukszyn said. “He said we might not be the biggest school with the biggest guys or the fastest guys but here you’re going to get guys who love playing football and love playing sports and guys who want to be coached hard. Jackson said there’s no quit in a Whitehall kid and that’s what has made Whitehall a unique place over the years.”
Pukszyn said that going back to when legendary John Bendekovits instituted the weight training program in the 1970s, Whitehall has had athletes who played with a chip on their shoulder and that has continued through the decades with the “Zephyr Tough” mantra part of the school’s fabric.
As for the current landscape of high school sports, particularly in the EPC, Pukszyn said “in talking with Bob, things are going pretty well right now.”
“That’s not to say there’s not going to be challenges in the league, district and across the state,” he said. “Our league, the EPC, is ultra competitive and especially having had an opportunity to coach in it the last two years here at Whitehall, I see a lot of mutual respect for each other. That’s awesome to see.
“Everyone works extremely hard at their schools and what we want to do at Whitehall is give our guys and girls the best possible experience they can have in their four years here,” he added. “Bob emphasized that. We want them to compete in as many sports as they can. There’s a great community feel here and I am excited about being a part of it.”
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