Collingswood seeks return to rich past

When Jordan Wallace and Will Pope and Pat Miles and the rest of the players on the Collingswood football team think back to the program's past, they probably recall that 14-12 loss to Sterling on the night before Thanksgiving 2013.

Or maybe they remember that 6-0 win over Overbrook in September 2012.

Or maybe - if they have an older relative who was around in those distant days and likes to reminisce - they might think all the way back to the 2005 season, when Collingswood went 8-3 and registered the program's last playoff victory and faced Camden in a second-round South Jersey Group 2 clash that was a brief revival of the old Haddon Avenue rivalry.

Coach Jack McConnell and many of his assistants tend to take a longer view.

When McConnell gathers his team for Monday's practice to begin earnest preparation for the season opener Friday night at Gateway, the coach will ask his team captains to come forward.

He will hand them a football.

He will tell one of them to keep the football through the long course of the season.

It won't be just any football.

It will be a football from 1939 - a well-worn symbol both of the incredibly rich history of the program and of the possibilities present for the current players.

Nobody expects Collingswood in 2014 or anytime in the future to return to the glory days of Skeets Irvine and Jack Earle and Bob Schuenemann and Willard Bisbing and George Pims and all those guys on those famous undefeated teams of 1948 and 1958.

Nobody expects Collingswood's current players - or any team's current players, for that matter - to spend too much time pondering the past or to gauge their own success against some ghostly greats.

But it's still important for Collingswood's players and Haddonfield's players and Sterling's players and every program's players to have an understanding and an appreciation of the history of their team, their school, their town.

And to realize that history stretches pretty far into the past.

That's especially true at Collingswood, which might have the richest tradition in South Jersey - a heritage that includes a legendary former coach in Irvine, who not only won 223 games but also died at 51 on Thanksgiving night in 1948, just hours after his last team completed an undefeated season.

Yes, that really happened.

McConnell has a photo of the 1939 team running a power sweep - an Irvine special - above his desk in the coach's room on the lower level of the school.

The coach tells his players that the massive concrete stadium that serves as their home field was constructed in the 1930s by the Works Projects Administration, a New Deal agency that put millions to work building roads, bridges, schools, and stadiums during the Great Depression.

But the coach also wants his players to understand that the more recent past - such as the fact that Collingswood has played just seven tournament games and won just two since the formation of the state playoff system in 1974 - can serve as motivation, as well.

"Coach keeps saying, 'We want to get a home playoff game,' " said Wallace, a slick and speedy dual threat as a quarterback as well as a top defensive back.

Collingswood was 7-3 last season, losing to Colonial Liberty heavyweights West Deptford, Haddonfield, and Sterling in increasingly competitive games.

Those three teams loom large again in both the conference and South Jersey Group 2. But with several returning standouts and confidence from a strong summer that included an impressive showing in a scrimmage against Bishop Eustace, this could be the season when Collingswood pushes into Colonial Liberty and South Jersey Group 2 prominence.

"We've taken our bumps and bruises," Wallace said after making big plays with his arm and legs and on defense in the scrimmage against Bishop Eustace. "Now, we're looking to go all the way. We think we can run with the top dogs."

McConnell and some of his assistants and other supporters of the program have been driving forces in building a youth football program in town. They have worked the hallways to get more students to join the high school team. They have ramped up the offseason work.

And they have reminded their players of the past.

They don't live there, and they don't expect any teenager in 2014 to spend much time there, either.

But there's a lot of history on that old field, and a lot of echoes bouncing around that old stadium. That's why the coach will bring out that 1939 football again on Monday, and make the handoff to the 2014 team captains.

However, the truth is, the current players don't need to spend much time looking back. They can best honor the past by moving forward.