Crash victim remembered fondly
COAL TOWNSHIP - Geoffrey Michalesko, the motorcyclist killed in a crash on Route 54 Saturday night, was an honor student at Southern Columbia High School and a starting lineman on Southern's 2004 PIAA Class A state championship football team.
Michalesko is the fourth player from that 2004 team to have died. He was killed almost six years to the day after two of his teammates, Eric Barnes and Tarik Leghlid, drowned while swimming in Fishing Creek near Bloomsburg just weeks prior to the start of the 2004 season. That season, and the Tigers' run to the state title in the wake of their teammates' deaths, was the subject of an ESPN documentary. The swimming accident occurred on July 28, 2004.
Derek Crowl was killed in an apartment fire in Boston in March, 2007, while visting some friends who attended Boston University. Crowl was a student at Bloomsburg University at the time.
Barnes, Crowl and Michalesko were seniors on that team. Leghlid was a sophomore.
Southern head football coach Jim Roth reflected on those players and that team Monday.
"That's quite a few young lives (lost) in a relatively short period of time," Roth said. "Then you look at the situation with Selinsgrove and Danville this year (players from both teams were recently involved in serious automobile accidents), and you wonder. I hope kids are getting the message that they're not invincible.
"It's just one of those things, I guess. I kind of knew (Geoff) was on that (2004) team but it just kind of hit me today when I spent about two hours going through old articles and things saved from that season."
Michalesko, 23, started at tackle for the 2004 Tigers. He had been a member of the Tigers' program until the year before, when he moved to the Hazleton area with his mother after his
parents separated. He spent the 2003 season as a member of Hazleton's team but moved back to the Southern school district with his father for his senior year.
"The family was split up and it was a tough situation for him," Roth said. "I give him a lot of credit; he did a lot of things on his own. He really didn't have anybody around pushing him or encouraging too much to play ball.
"He played for us in junior high. I don't remember if he played his sophomore year, and then he spent his junior year at Hazleton. Then he came back and really did a nice job for us. One of the things that stands out about him was his personality. He was a really likeable, easygoing kind of kid. That helped him fit in when he came back. We were coming off consecutive state titles and it wasn't an easy thing for him to just come in and earn a starting job."
Michalesko also was a member of the Tigers' track and field team and was on the school's honor roll. He later played college football at Wilkes University, although he hadn't graduated, according to Roth, because he opted to go into the service.
"Eric Spotts, who was a member of that team, has been up at his (Michalesko's) moms the past couple of days and Eric told me there are going to be multiple viewing times because there are a couple hundred servicemen coming," Roth said.
Michalesko's current address is listed as 165 Page Ave., Apt. A, Kingston, although some reports list his hometown as Freeland.
He was riding his 2007 Kawasaki west on Route 54 when he crossed the center line for an unknown reason and was struck by a 2003 Honda Accord being driven by Dustin Tolbert, 32, of Greencastle, who was on his way home with his family after an outing to Knoebels Amusement Resort. Michalesko was flung from his motorcycle into a rock wall and was later pronounced dead at the scene by James Gotlob, chief deputy coroner of Northumberland County.
Tolbert, his wife Teri, 26, and their two children were unharmed.
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