GNA CAMPUS – On October 8, 2021, Braden Zaremba was featured in the Citizen’s Voice for his successes in football. The article features an interview with Zaremba which highlights his career as a student-athlete at GNA and represents the goals Zaremba has set for himself in the future.

From the Citizens’ Voice:

NANTICOKE – Much of the world went into an immediate panic Monday when social media platforms Facebook and Instagram went offline.

Nanticoke Area’s Braden Zaremba became intrigued.

It had nothing to do with not being able to make contact with friends, or that he was afraid he was missing something.

Instead, Zaremba had a pretty solid understanding of what was happening. It is something that will serve him well in the future as he plans to attend Penn State University to study cyber security.

“The easiest way to put it, is that with cyber security you see all the hackings that happen,” Zaremba said. “When Instagram and Facebook went down, billions of dollars were lost. You are trained to understand what happened and how to resolve those issues.”

Zaremba became interested in the field when his brother, Tyler, studied cyber security. Zaremba said he always had an interest in computers and how they operate.

“I was always fascinated with computers,” Zaremba said. “It just sounds fascinating. It is math-heavy course work, so I am going to be doing a lot of math. You always have a lot of hands-on encoding. I’m not the best in math so I am going to have to make do.”

If his introduction to college math is anything like his welcome to high school football, it will take a little bit of adjusting for the senior offensive lineman. Once he gets used to his surroundings, however, he will take care of business. Just like he did as a freshman when he was the only one in his class to make the varsity squad.

“He started at tackle for us since he was a freshman,” Nanticoke Area coach Ron Bruza said. “Even back then he had nice size and good feet. It was easy to identify he had a football mind. It was definitely an attribute of his right from the beginning.”

It was clear Bruza did not have doubts Zaremba belonged with the big boys. But even if Zaremba did, the wide-eyed youngster was thrown into the fire from the start of preseason camp.

“It was a very humbling and maturing experience,” Zaremba recalls. That entire summer I was 13 years old. I have an August birthday. I turned 14 three days before we played our first game. I was nervous, but I had to mature really quickly. I knew what I had to do. I couldn’t complain about it because there was nobody that wanted to hear it. So I just went out and did it.”

Figuring he would be buried on the depth chart, Zaremba had no initial expectations. He was more worried about fitting in, not just from a football perspective, but from a maturity aspect.

About 45 minutes into the first practice on the first day of camp, Zaremba moved into a starting spot and held on to it. It was a product of hard work, but more importantly showed that he listened. He took in everything the coaches were telling him as well as the older players on the team. It is something he not only appreciated, but it made him better.

“It was a combination of knowing I wasn’t the fastest, biggest or strongest,” Zaremba said. “I’m still young and I’m playing with kids that are 18 years old. I was nervous.”

Zaremba said he was helped tremendously by Kyle Bobeck that first season. Bobeck took Zaremba under his wing. He would talk with him before and after practice. On the field, he offered words of encouragement and gave him ways to improve. More importantly, Zaremba could sense he was starting to mature.

“Being around the older kids that whole summer and once the season started, I really wasn’t around kids in my grade,” Zaremba said. “You get that sense of urgency and a sense of maturity. You know you can’t be around all the kids in your grade.

“It is just an intense feeling that you have to step up and have to mature.”

Zaremba can look back and laugh at his introduction to high school football. It was nothing a coach nor player could prepare him for, and it was something he just needed to experience on his own.

“The first real memory I have is not the most pleasant one,” Zaremba said. “We were running a play and I had to pull to get to the other side. We were playing Pittston Area and the defensive end just laid me out. I just remember thinking that this has never happened to me before.

“I just had to get back up and keep going.”

While that specific incident might be considered a low point of his freshman season, he certainly got to experience a high.

That season, the Trojans went 6-5 and defeated Hamburg to win the Eastern Conference championship in a game played at Nanticoke Area in a driving rain.

“We were all covered in mud and it was pouring down rain,” Zaremba said. “I vividly remember shaking hands with the other team and standing for our Alma Mater. The field was just such a mess and we all slid across the field like it was a slip and slide.”

That was the most successful season Zaremba experienced with the Trojans. Despite being 1-5 up this year, he likes the prospects of the Trojans turning the season around. Considering they opened with games against Scranton Prep, Lake-Lehman and Wyoming Area, the remaining teams on the schedule have a combined record of 4-19.

It all starts tonight with a home game against Montrose.

“We have a very talented team, we are just making a lot of mental errors,” Zaremba said. “For us it has been tough especially with the first three teams we came out of the gate with. We are looking at the second half of the season as a new season. Everyone is buying in.

“Right now we are 0-1. We know we have a job to do. We just have to bounce back this week.” (The Citizens’ Voice)

To see the full article, click here.