Friday football returns to Pottstown

Trojans home under the lights for first time since 2013

Owen Morton used to dream of playing under the lights at Pottstown High School’s Grigg Memorial Field. Same too for Jamal Adams, Tom Doyle and Anthony Wiggins.

Each as a young kid up through middle school would make the trip to their hometown field and dream about being on the field in their high school days playing in front of their hometown, their family and friends. When the lights went out, so did their dreams.

Now, the lights are back and so are the Trojans’ dreams, which will be realized Friday night when Pottstown hosts Bishop Shanahan under the lights for the first time since the 2013 season.

“It’s going to be a great moment for us to be able to finally step out onto our home field on a Friday night,” Morton, now a senior quarterback, said. “We’ve waited a long time for this to happen. It’s a dream come true.”

“Having this for our senior year is huge,” added Adams. “We’ve been raising money for a long time and to finally have it the year before we leave high school, it’s going to bring some excitement to our program.”

With the help of a $250,000 grant bestowed by State Sen. Robert Mensch, Pottstown has stadium lights again, installed during the summer and tested regularly in the past week in anticipation of Friday night’s re-debut.

Four years have passed since Pottstown played their last night game at Grigg Memorial Stadium, a 40-0 loss to Spring-Ford. The lights were removed later that school year in May of 2014 due to safety concerns of the old wooden beams that supported the light structure.

The construction crews removed more than dilapidated wooden beams when they hauled the lights away.

Attendance sunk dramatically. Saturday games often were sights of a quarter-filled stadium, most coming and going throughout the game. Even a winning record didn’t matter too much. The stands stood a little more crowded as Brandon Tinson and the Trojans sprung to a 6-1 start in 2015 that ended with a berth into the District 1 Class 3A playoffs. Attendance returned to normal last season as Morton and the Trojans struggled to a 2-9 finish.

“When we were young and growing up into middle school, we used to watch the games on Friday night and we imagined playing there just like that when we got into high school,” Morton said. “Once we got into high school and found out that we didn’t have the lights, it was a gut punch.”

Prospects didn’t appear promising entering Morton’s senior season, either. The Pottstown School District didn’t have the money to take on the $300,000 cost for the new lighting system and the community’s Save the Lights campaign struggled to gain traction among a community that questioned the importance of the lights on nearly all articles posted on The Pottstown Mercury’s Facebook page.

All changed when Mensch appeared at a school board meeting in the spring with a grant in hand.

“There’s nothing like a home Friday night game,” running back Anthony Wiggins said. “You get butterflies going to an away Friday night game. When you’re home, you have your own people here in your own backyard doing what you love to do. I feel as if the whole vibe is completely different now that we have lights.”