Parkland, Saucon Valley seniors getting 1 final game
Chris Mann sat in full uniform on a bench inside Saucon Valley’s locker room at Montford E. Illick Stadium, preparing mentally to take the field for warmups.
Mann, a senior captain, thought about all the hard work he and his teammates put in throughout the years, contemplated the adversity his team had overcome this abbreviated season and visualized how his Senior Night would be extra special.
He felt focused and sharp, confident his Panthers could challenge rival Palisades, then pull it out in the end.
About that time, coach Brad Trembler came bursting into the roomful of players to deliver some news. Mann sensed immediately it wouldn’t be welcomed.
It wasn’t.
“Coach said, ‘This isn’t what you want to hear, but we’ve got to pack up and go home,’ ” he recalled this week. “That’s it. We all knew why, of course.”
Even now, Mann can’t recall his coach using the words COVID-19 or pandemic at that particular moment.
Saucon Valley’s football players had been disappointed before. ThePanthers missed a scrimmage and their season
opener because of the virus. The team would be disappointed again the following week when its District 11 playoff hopes were thwarted as COVID-19 active cases shut down the school.
“Gosh darn coronavirus,” is one phrase David Osman, also a senior captain for the Panthers, has repeated more times this fall than he cares to, or can, remember.
Parkland is another area school where the football team has been affected multiple times this year.
The Trojans were the last Lehigh Valley program to play an official game, starting their season on Oct. 9, and they too had to pull out of the district postseason for COVID-19 reasons.
As disappointing, frustrating and unfair as this football season has been for players especially seniors around the district, state and nation, Saucon Valley and Parkland both will get one final game.
Hopefully, that is.
Trembler’s Panthers host Colonial League rival Salisbury for a special Senior Night at 7p.m. Thursday. The Trojans tackle Eastern Pennsylvania Conference foe Liberty at 7 p.m. Friday in Orefield.
“It means everything,” are the exact words repeated by Mann and Osman, as well as Parkland’s JT Siggins and Garrett Fitzgerald.
“I’ve been playing football since I was really young and I want to go out with my friends and end it with a win,” said Fitzgerald, who added he is unlikely to play in college. “I would’ve hated to end my football career with a loss, especially to our rival Emmaus.”
A roller-coaster ride
Parkland coach Tim Moncman is maybe a little more empathetic to his football seniors than most coaches. Why? Well, Moncman lived through the helplessness of watching an athlete miss a senior season.
Moncman’s daughter, Taylor, was one of District 11 s elite lacrosse players this past spring. Taylor left as the top scorer in Southern Lehigh history and she earned a scholarship to Temple University.
Aproud father, Tim Moncman saw his daughter depressed because she couldn’t play her favorite sport.
“That was difficult to take,” the longtime coach, who won a state title in 2008 at Liberty, admitted.
“I think it would be such a roller-coaster emotionally for these kids and the frustration would be hard to handle. That’s why I give the kids on our team credit; they’ve only played four games but have shown such a great deal of resiliency.”
Parkland, a program that won six district titles during the 2010s, is 3-1 this season.
The Trojans lost their EPC finale to Emmaus, 13-6, but secured the No. 5 seed for the Class 6A playoffs. They were all set to travel to No. 4 Stroudsburg to take on the Mountaineers on Nov. 6 a game in which they would’ve been huge favorites. Then, things got corona-crazy. The morning of the game, Stroudsburg pulled out. The Mounties re-entered the tournament later in the day but Parkland was forced to withdraw because it was faced with coronavirus-related issues.
The following Wednesday, Parkland wrote a formal letter to District 11 seeking re-entry into the Class 6A bracket but that appeal was deemed too late by district officials. (Stroudsburg ultimately pulled out a second time.)
This isn’t Parkland’s most talented team, but the Trojans figured to be a factor in 6A.
“[Stroudsburg] got to re-enter but we couldn’t re-enter,” said Fitzgerald, unaware of timelines and deadlines. “We thought we had a really good chance. It stinks.”
District 11 chairman Bob Hartman said the request for re-entry came too late and it would’ve affected teams other than Parkland and Stroudsburg.
Friday night’s 6A championship showdown features No. 1 Nazareth and third-seeded Freedom.
Saucon Valley takes a 2-2 record into its game against Salisbury.
The Panthers earned their signature victory, 34-33, over Southern Lehigh on Oct. 9 after dropping a 34-25 decision to Bangor in their opener after only two days of practice and the first COVID-19 related shutdown.
Trembler’s team was a No. 5 seed for the district’s 4A tournament and set to play No. 4 Bethlehem Catholic in the quarterfinal round. The Panthers will have had three practices prior to Thursday’s game since the school’s last COVID-19 shutdown.
That’s OK with them, though. “This season has been full of highs and lows, adversity and resilience,” said Trembler, in his second season at Saucon Valley. “The biggest difficulty has been the sense of uncertainty hanging over us since Day 1 of the preseason. We pretty much practiced a full year to play four games.”
Learning life lessons
“You can’t take anything for granted.”
That’s what the pandemic struggles of 2020 have taught Saucon Valley’s Mann and Parkland’s Fitzgerald more than anything else. They learned that lesson through football but they also understand it applies to their everyday life, as well.
“You’ve got to be grateful for everything you’ve got,” Mann, a tight end and defensive end, said. “Because it can be gone in a second.”
“Have as much fun and get as much out of life as possible,” said Fitzgerald, a two-way lineman. “You never know howmanydays you have left. In football.”
Like a lot of his teammates, Mann took the news hard when he learned Saucon Valley’s Senior Night game on Oct. 30 against Palisades was canceled. He ripped off his shoulder pads, slammed them down on the bench and walked out of the locker room. He cried. Then he cried some more.
“I was super frustrated,” Mann said. “I shed some tears, for sure.”
“That Friday was so difficult,” Saucon Valley athletic director Bob Frey said. “By the time I told everyone we couldn’t play our game that night, some of the players were walking out of the stadium obviously disappointed and deflated. But in the end they all understood why we could not play. That’s the really remarkable thing — our athletes and coaches across all sports have been so flexible and understanding.”
At Parkland, Siggins relied on his coaches and teammates to get him through the discouraging times.
“I definitely experienced some very sad days,” Siggins said. “I didn’t know how to deal with it.”
Sometimes life is unfair and other times it’s sweet.
It’ll be sweet on Thursday and Friday for the football teams at Saucon Valley and Parkland if or when they get to play another game. (Parkland hopes to play another game next week, according to Moncman.) And it’ll be even sweeter if they’re able to pull out a win.
“The last time I’ll be on the football field with my boys,” Osman said. “We’re all going to go harder than 110%, I can promise you that. Because this is it.”