Parkland seniors finally get their shot at gold
Nate Kemmerer and Jack Harrison were freshmen in the Parkland football program in 2019 when the Trojans played Nazareth for the District 11 6A title.
They were watching on TV when Nazareth won one of the most memorable games in district finals history.
The Blue Eagles defeated Parkland 22-21 in overtime, scoring on a two-point conversion off a gadget play that was a variation of the Eagles’ “Philly Special” that won the Super Bowl in 2018.
This one was dubbed the “Nazareth Special.”
“I watched that final play on TV and remember thinking that I wanted to be on that stage and have that chance to win one for
Parkland,” Harrison said. “Now we’ve got that chance.”
It will finally come at 7:05 p.m. on Friday at Easton’s Cottingham Stadium against defending district champ Freedom.
Seniors such as Harrison and Kemmerer had to wait through a COVID-19-plagued 2020, when Parkland was knocked out of the tournament because of the pandemic, and then endured a 21-14 loss to Emmaus in last year’s semifinals just two weeks after they beat the Green Hornets 25-14 in the regular-season finale.
It looked like the chance at district gold was never going to come for the seniors when this year’s team was injury-plagued and got out to a 2-3 start.
But after regrouping for six wins in its last seven games, including 6A tournament victories over EPC South champ Nazareth and unbeaten EPC North champ Northampton, Parkland finds itself 48 minutes away from winning its first district gold since 2017. That’s when the program won the last of its remarkable six-in-a-row gold rush.
“We’ve been through a lot,” Harrison, a talented wide receiver, said. “My sophomore year we never had a chance. Last year we got knocked out.
“Finally, this is our chance. If we play a full 48 minutes, I think we can take home the gold.”
Kemmerer said it’s a great opportunity. “We want this championship for ourselves, of course, because that’s the end goal for everyone,” Kemmerer said. “But we also want to get it for the guys from the past who had those six straight titles. We want to get the name back.”
Parkland is one of the magical names in District 11 football. The Trojans have 10 previous district titles and have made three appearances in the state finals, winning it all in 2002.
But the Trojans no longer dominate as they once did. Freedom’s district championships in 2018 and ’21 are bookends to a pair of Nazareth crowns in 2019 and ’20.
Freedom has won nine straight games since a 21-13 loss to Parkland on Sept. 9 in Bethlehem.
“We know Freedom is going to be a battle and they want this one back, and we have to match their energy and come out and play,” Kemmerer said. “We have great respect. They’re going to play hard. We just have to match their intensity.”
In the previous game Parkland lost Trey Tremba to a shoulder injury in the first half but still found a way, with Marquez Wimberly running for 58 yards and Luke Spang battling through his own chest injury to pass for one touchdown and run for another.
Freedom scored first, but Parkland answered with 21 straight points and won 21-13.
“We’re going to try to improve on the things we did well in the first game,” Harrison said. “We stopped them on a couple key fourth downs and we converted on a key third down.
“We’re looking to do that again and more. We need to match our success.”
Parkland coach Tim Moncman said his team knows what kind of game to expect.
“We know they’re going to be physical,” he said. “They have their weapons ... the quarterback, their running back, some real good receivers, and they’re aggressive on defense. We are going to have to show and play better than we did in the first half against Northampton, when we turned the ball over.”
Moncman’s team has won six of seven since the last weekend of September, but ironically he believes the key moment for his team came in the one loss in that stretch — the second half of a 40-27 setback at Emmaus on Oct. 28.
“I don’t think we’d be sitting here right now if we didn’t play the second half the way we did against Emmaus,” he said. “We were down 30-7 at halftime and we had to see what we were all about. We came back in the second half and that triggered some things.
“We talked about putting a full game together and playing that way from the very beginning. From there, we played well against Nazareth, got the job done against Northampton, and now we’ll put it all out there against Freedom and see what happens.”
Moncman credits his seniors for holding it together when the season could have come apart. It’s a small group, but they’re tight-knit and determined.
“There’s only 11 of them, and usually you have 20 or 22 in a normal senior class,” Moncman said. “Guys like Kaleb Beers, Kemmerer, Harrison, Nakai Bullock, Victor Pagan, Manny Montalvo ... they’ve all done a heck of a job. They’ve gone through a lot. The week we played Freedom we had a bomb scare that kept us out of school and we had a practice at a midget football field.”
Moncman also noted the emotions involved with the death of former player Bryce Boyer, who graduated in 2020. Nolan Coen, a junior starter on defense, lost his father Andy, the former Lehigh football coach, last spring.
“I’m just proud of where this group came from,” Moncman said. “They had opportunities to pack in it, but they kept persevering and practicing hard.”