Rivalry game between Salisbury, Southern Lehigh coming to an end
Northwestern, Catasauqua also pausing annual match
Bob Clark started the Southern Lehigh football program in 1968. He had 31 players in grades 9 and 10, one assistant coach (Tim East) and no home field. The Spartans played five scrimmages that year, all in Quakertown.
Southern Lehigh played a JV schedule the following season before making its varsity debut in 1970.
Later that season, neighboring Salisbury’s booster club came up with an old leather helmet trophy to present to the winner of the first meeting with Southern Lehigh.
It has been battled for every year since. “This rivalry was just as intense as some of the EPC games,” Clark said, “Allen/Dieruff, Liberty/Freedom, Northampton/ Catty.”
Friday night’s game in Center Valley will mark the final one between the two programs — for now.
Southern Lehigh, a Class 5A school with solid participation numbers, had 13 consecutive winning seasons entering 2021.
Salisbury, a Class 3A program that dresses fewer than 30 players every game, will have a losing record for the 13th time in the last 15 years.
The Falcons have lost 10 of the last 11 in this series by a composite 501-145 score. The only game they won in that stretch (2015) came via a controversial non-call by officials that led to a last-minute score in a 24-20 victory.
“Things have changed with the two schools,” Clark said, “but I’m still sorry to see it end.”
Northwestern’s series with Catasauqua, which has been contested every year since 1994, also will end after Friday’s game in New Tripoli for similar reasons.
The Tigers are a 4A program and the Rough Riders are a small 2A school. Catasauqua is in the midst of its first winning season since 2013, but Northwestern is on the verge of its first 10-0 start since its program began in 1965 and won the last three meetings by a combined 145-33 score.
Salisbury and Catasauqua will play each other instead starting next season. Northwestern adds Pen Argyl to its 2022 schedule, but finishes its regular season with Southern Lehigh because Pen Argyl and Bangor will continue the league’s longest-running rivalry game in Week 10. This year’s Slate Belt meeting is the 102nd edition.
Clark was a Whitehall graduate who started as a biology teacher at Southern Lehigh in 1960. He was part of the football program from its inception in 1968 until 1994. He returned a few years later as an assistant to Frank Scagliotta. The 86-yearold, who still serves as a substitute teacher in the district, is proud of the tradition built in the rivalry game with Salisbury.
“Cheerleaders would decorate the players’ and coaches’ homes the night before the game when it was played on Saturday afternoons,” he said. “I enjoyed every game of every year.”
Salisbury won the first three games in the series, including 7-6 in 1972 when a failed two-point conversion ended Southern Lehigh’s bid for an undefeated season.
The Spartans finished unbeaten seasons in 1973-74 with victories over the Falcons, including in the debut of Southern Lehigh’s stadium at the end of 1973. Until then, Southern Lehigh played its home games in Quakertown.
A fight broke out after Salisbury’s 21-5 victory in 1985.
“It was a nasty situation,” Clark recalled, “but it reflected the intensity people had for the rivalry.”
Clark said he was thrilled to be able to coach his two sons: Bobby, a 1986 grad who played quarterback; and Mike, a 1992 graduate who played fullback.
Southern Lehigh players paid tribute to Clark in his final season as head coach in 1994 by having the school’s maintenance staff dig a hole at the 3-yard line. After the Spartans’ 28-12 win, every player and cheerleader put something of theirs in the hole.
“It’s all still [buried] there,” said Clark who was 129-102-3 in his career. “I put in my game shoes.”
Neither team won more than three games in a row in the series until Southern Lehigh won six consecutive from 1993-98. Salisbury then won the next five, capped by a 41-40 overtime thriller in 2003.
John Toman’s five years as a Salisbury assistant were during the Falcons’ fivegame
winning streak. Two years later, he started Southern Lehigh’s rebuild. He had 12 consecutive winning seasons and finished his 14-year run in 2019 with the Spartans’ first District 11 championship and first PIAA victory.
Toman was a Salisbury resident while he coached at Southern Lehigh. His two children attended Salisbury. He knew the rivalry from both sides. He was part of it when the balance of power shifted.
“I had my house vandalized once,” the current Northampton coach said. “I was stuck between two schools. I coached at one and my kids went to the other. There was more significance.
“But over the years the series kind of lost its luster because Southern Lehigh was 5A, one of the bigger schools playing in bigger games. It became detrimental to play a smaller school with a worse record.
“The move to the Schuylkill League [this season] was a good thing for Southern Lehigh. You want to put your [Colonial League] teams in the best position possible for the district calculations.”
Salisbury won three of the first four meetings with Southern Lehigh under Toman. The Spartans won nine of the next 10, losing only in the controversial 2015 game.
“The size of the schools tipped,” said Toman, who was 108-54 as Southern Lehigh. “I know from Salisbury’s standpoint, that game makes or breaks a season. For Southern Lehigh early on, that was the case. It then was expected.”
Current Salisbury assistant coach and 2007 graduate Chris Kretzman attended the rivalry game since he was in elementary school. He played in it four years, winning it three times.
“You play NCAA football video games and you’d always play the rivalry games,” he said. “It was fun to see all the cool trophies. You see the [leather helmet] trophy in our trophy case, it’s pretty cool.
“But winning it my senior year, when you get presented the trophy, when you were the ones leading your team to getting that tiny helmet that doesn’t fit on most people’s heads, that’s special.”
Salisbury middle school coach Jack Repyneck was a sophomore on the last Falcons team to win the rivalry game, when quarterback Tevon Weber’s knee may have been down on a fourth-down completion that led to a touchdown in the final minute of a 24-20 victory.
But the 2018 graduate remembers something from that night that didn’t take place on the field.
“I remember our old assistant coach [Andy] Doran up in the stands,” Repyneck said. “They have a small set of bleachers at Southern Lehigh on the away side. I remember every time we scored coach Dorn jumping up and down, being really loud cheering our team on.”
Doran passed away a month after that game.
Salisbury’s season, like many previously, likely ends after Friday’s rivalry game. There almost certainly won’t be any playoff games in Week 11.
Coach Andy Cerco’s undersized, undermanned Salisbury team scrapped and clawed its way through its schedule. It practiced hard each week, as if a championship was on the line.
This week, the leather helmet provides the ultimate motivation.
“It tends to be the last hurrah,” Kretzman said. “It’s not very often we’re looking at football beyond this week. A lot of times, this game tends to be your playoff game. It becomes the prize. Regardless of your record, you can come home with hardware.
“My sophomore year we were 0-10, but this game still gives you something to look for.”
In what may be this series’ swan song, Salisbury is looking to take home that leather helmet its booster club created more than 50 years ago.