ATHENS, P.A. (WENY) - It was a special day at Athens High School. Two student-athletes signed their Letters of Intent to compete at the collegiate level.

Josh Nittinger is set to play football for Union College while Emma Pernaselli will compete for Lock Haven University track and field.

Nittinger played a major role for Athens this season, making the NTL First-Team on the offensive line and Second-Team at Defensive Tackle. Josh helped lead the Wildcats to a trip to the District IV Class AAA playoffs where they eventually fell to Danville in the Quarterfinals.

He will join a strong Union College football program that went 10-2 overall and fell to Johns Hopkins in the second round of the NCAA Championships.

Nittinger will study Engineering at Union, and he says once he visited campus he knew it was the right fit.

"I really like the coaches, the Engineering program is unbelievable and then the facilities there for football are really nice," Nittinger said.

It's definitely going to be a little different. I'm going to have to get a little bit faster, a little bit bigger, but that's what you always have to do, and going from a 30-40 person team to a 90 person team is definitely a big jump as well and the weight lifting program definitely. I've already started on it and it's just so much more elaborate than what you would think it would be but it's definitely working," he added.

Emma will be throwing javelin, shotput, and discus at Lock Haven where she will also study Accounting.

Pernaselli is having a strong senior season with the Wildcats. She was recently a triple-winner in a quad meet in mid-April as well as a triple-winner at the end of the month.

Pernaselli says she fell in love with the sport as a freshman and she's excited to give it a shot at the next step after choosing Lock Haven.

"The campus is nice and it seems like from all of the invites I went to it seems like a nice area to compete and grow as an athlete," Pernaselli said.

"I would like to thank Mr. Bronson, he came in sophomore year and he was a great coach. Roger Soper and Mike Wager, they became our thrower coaches and they've done so much and they've helped every athlete on the thrower side and it's perfect."