Abington Senior High School Sports Aren’t Just Exciting. It’s Uniting.
In today’s America, sports are more important than ever. It doesn’t just unite us. It binds us.
Ten miles outside of Philadelphia — amid the array of colors of a Pennsylvania spring bloom — Abington Senior High School is doing just that.
One year after the Boys Varsity Track and Field placed first at the 2023 Penn Relays in the 400×4, this year’s Abington Boys Team also placed high in Penn Relays last weekend. This past fall, the Abington High School Boys Soccer Team advanced to the PIAA Quarterfinal Playoffs, where they fought right up to an Overtime Penalty Kick. Last spring the Abington Girls Flag Football Team won the Eagles Girls Flag Football League that was presented by Planet Fitness.
It couldn’t come at a better time.
It’s been a challenging year for Abington. Two weeks ago, police had to respond and place Abington Senior High School on lockdown after a large student fight. Last August, Police responded when a gun was uncovered in the stands of the 104th rivalry Abington and Cheltenham Football Game. Nearly a month later in September 2023, an altercation broke out inside Abington Senior High School between two rival groups. Abington Police were called in both altercations.
Last week, it was announced that this year’s Abington and Cheltenham Football Game — one of the oldest in the State of Pennsylvania since 1915 — has been suspended.
You can’t get more historic than Abington Village.
Much like Philadelphia, Abington was founded on a parcel of land negotiated by William Penn and the Lenni Lenape Indians. Abington’s Presbyterian Meeting — founded through the vision of Pastor Malachi Jones in 1714 — and whose congregation would build the first Church 310 years ago in the present-day Church Cemetery in 1719.
Abington has seen it all. It gave its sons to the American Revolution, the American Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. It nearly had to prepare a defense when Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia invaded Pennsylvania in 1863. And those same cemetery walls saw American soldiers fire down on British and Hessian forces marching up Old York Road in an attempt to encircle George Washington’s Continental Army and destroy it in 1777. When the Battle of Whitemarsh was over, it was the Americans who held the heights around Abington.
In 1946, Abington Township began a road widening project right outside of the cemetery at the corner of Susquehanna Street Road and Old York Road. Before the Public Works Project began, Abington Township was made aware that they may uncover several Lenni Lenape remains.
Over 350 years ago, before William Penn negotiated the transfer of the land to the colonials and long before Abington Senior High School’s Soccer teams played and practiced on the fields in and around Schwarzman Stadium, the Lenni Lenape Indians faced with the reality of European Colonials encroaching increasingly on their lands — both the men and women of the tribe played a sport called Pahsaheman.
The sport was a combination of modern football and soccer.
Abington Senior High School Athletics aren’t just providing distraction to a fear of hopelessness from the realities of modern American Society. They are creating hope for and excitement for the whole community.
A community that will wait patiently for another hope. The hope of a renewal of Abington and Cheltenham rivalry that has been played on Pennsylvania Football Fields for almost 110 years.
Oh and that 1946 Abington Public Works Project on the corner of Old York and Susquehanna Street Road that was expected to find the remains of a few brave Lenni Lenape athletes?
Remains of 92 total bodies were found.
Michael Thomas Leibrandt
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