Continuing today and through the start of the high school football season on Friday, the Mercury is taking an individual, team-by-team look at the state of all 12 Pioneer Athletic Conference football programs ahead of the 2026 campaign. Up next is Upper Merion, which is starting fresh under new head coach Mike Choi, who has the program eyeing its first postseason berth since 2018. To read the rest of the Mercury’s high school football team previews, click here.

UPPER MERION

2025 record: 2-8 overall, 1-4 PAC Frontier (fifth place); did not qualify for playoffs

Head coach: Mike Choi, first season

Schedule: 8/28 vs. Lower Merion; 9/3 at Wissahickon; 9/10 vs. Great Valley; 9/18 at West Chester Henderson; 9/26 at Norristown; 10/2 at Pottsgrove; 10/9 at Phoenixville; 10/16 vs. Upper Perkiomen; 10/23 vs. Pottstown; 10/30 vs. TBA (PAC crossover game)

Returning players: Rudy Wilhelm, Sr. QB; Nasir Harper, Jr. RB; Alonzo Bell, Sr. RB; Liam Derry, Sr. TE; Justin Aquilani, Sr. C; Anthony Perkins, Sr. OG/DT; Elliott Schlechtweg, Jr. OT; Makhi Byrd, Sr. OL; Archer Haye, Jr. S; Jackson Scheier, Sr. DE

Newcomers to watch: Sterling Furches, Sr. OL/DE; Isaiah Williams, Jr. RB/WR/DB; Semaj Smith, Jr. WR/CB; Joe Saboe, Soph. RB/LB; Sivad Reese, Sr. RB/LB; Colin Giorgio, Sr. TE/LB; Dionte Greene, Sr. RB/DE; Louis Daleandro Jr., Jr. OL/DT; Kolby Williams, Soph. WR/CB

Key losses: Kylee Hill, WR/CB; Clay Loeffler, OT/DT; Isaiah Robinson, WR/DB; Hal Eaton, TE/LB; Teddy Walmsley, RB/LB

2026 outlook: Mike Choi wasn’t necessarily looking for a new head coaching position heading into the offseason.

Choi was happy where he was at Pequea Valley High School in Lancaster County, having coached the Braves across two-different stints that spanned nine total years. In the most recent one, Choi helped lead Pequea Valley to its first postseason berth in program history two years ago. When he first arrived at the school, the Braves had 16 consecutive losing campaigns, so the progress he and the school made together was very real.

So why make the jump to a school like Upper Merion now? Well, to Choi, there are parallels between his new posting and his previous one, and his hope is to lead a similar turnaround in King of Prussia, where the Vikings have not had a winning season since 2018 and can claim only three total in the past 22 years.

When considering the opportunity, Choi watched UM’s returning players on tape and arrived at a very quick diagnosis.

“I did a deep dive into the program, and what I quickly realized was that our players, the kids in the school and the school itself were all special,” said Choi, who has also served as the head coach at Great Valley and won two district titles as an assistant at Bishop Shanahan. “It’s what made me make the change in the first place – it had to be a special place.

“There was overwhelming evidence of how special things could be at Upper Merion. And as I watched them on film, I realized it wasn’t a talent issue why they weren’t winning games; it was more a lack of fundamentals, techniques and executions that kept them from being successful.”

Choi is taking over for Marquis Weeks, who went 3-17 in two seasons as head coach. The new head man in charge inherits an experienced signal caller in senior Rudy Wilhelm, who enters his second season as a starter for the Vikings. Wilhelm’s top two receivers from a season ago in Kylee Hill and Isaiah Robinson graduated, but running backs Alonzo Bell and Nasir Harper are back, as is tight end Liam Derry and four of the five offensive linemen (Justin Aquilani, Anthony Perkins, Elliott Schlechtweg and Makhi Byrd).

And as bad as last season was at times – besides a pair of one-point losses, UM lost the other six games by an average margin of 25.5 points – Wilhelm emerged from the beatings encouraged for the simple reason that the team never quit or turned on one another.

“No matter what happened, I was able to keep everybody together,” Wilhelm said. “Some of them didn’t go our way, but I kept us going for the whole game.”

Harper, who also will see time at linebacker and safety in 2026, backed up his quarterback’s assessment.

“Even though we lost a lot, I still feel like the entire team grew,” Harper said. “We learned a lot, as people and players. The one thing I can take from last year for myself is even throughout the bad stuff, you can always pick one thing you did well and continue to grow upon that.”

Defensively, UM only has three starters back in seniors Perkins and Jackson Scheier on the line and junior Archer Haye at safety. There will be plentiful opportunities for rising newcomers on the roster, such as Sterling Furches, Dionte Greene and Louis Daleandro Jr. on the DL; Joe Saboe, Sivad Reese and Colin Giorgio at LB; and Isaiah Williams, Semaj Smith and Kolby Williams in the secondary.

And with Norristown entering the PAC Frontier in place of Pope John Paul II, that puts both teams UM beat last season in the division (also Pottstown), plus a one-point loss to Phoenixville as well, so the Vikings know they can compete. They’ve seen it, so now the question becomes how to turn competitiveness within the PAC into victories?

“The ability, the play style, the playbook we have – it will be able to utilize our strengths and bring it together and make it look good on the field,” said Furches, who also could see reps at middle linebacker, offensive guard and long snapper. “We want to get more wins this season, and (the coaches) have been taking each individual athlete and figuring out where to move guys around the field that would make it most beneficial to the team as a whole.”

It’s a group that still enjoys each other quite a bit in spite of all the losses the past two seasons; in fact, their bond is stronger because they stuck it out together. Now, they would like to see some victories follow, beginning with Lower Merion at home on Friday night, who beat UM in overtime by one point to open the 2025 season.

“We all bring a winning mindset and are always competitive with each other,” said Perkins. “We’re always sticking up for each other and pushing one another through practices.”

So, is the first winning campaign and playoff berth since 2018 in the cards for Upper Merion? Time will tell, but everyone involved is saying all of the right things as this new era continues to flesh itself out.

“I believe in every single one of the guys we have on the team,” Derry said. “I think we’re bound to achieve great things. As a team goal, playoffs are the minimum, and then obviously from there just keep moving forward.”

Derry and company’s confidence has trickled right on down from Choi, who has not been shy in pushing his new squad to think big in year one.

“We don’t use the word ‘reset,’ – we use ‘re-establish,’” Choi said. “We need to re-establish the culture and be fundamentally and technically-sound. We are going to be able to execute our plays. When Liam says our goal is to make the playoffs, that’s exactly what we want to do. I didn’t come in with a three- or five-year plan; I came with a one-year plan, and we’ll take it from there.”