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Admittedly , it’s pretty hard to get much more historic than Abington, Pennsylvania.
But during the same week as the premiere of Ken Burns’ The American Revolution on PBS and nearly 248 years since the town was the site of a Revolutionary War skirmish that ended with patriot forces holding the heights against the British , history has been made once again.
Nearly 41 years since Abington Senior High School’s last Boys Soccer Championship — the team ended a dominant 22–2–3 season with a PIAA Class 4A State Championship over West Chester Henderson by a final score of 3–1.
Abington School District’s Recreational Fields themselves haven’t just seen history — beneath their perfectly-manicured blades of grass, freshly mowed in the April sun , is the story of America. The land was originally utilized for thousands of years by native American hunters and gatherers, and whose colonial farms were pillaged by the British Army for supplies.
Those fields even witnessed a Revolutionary War engagement — as Continental Forces retreated down Susquehanna Street Road past the present-day athletic fields — in a headlong retreat desperately attempting to regroup atop the high ground of Edge Hill as British forces occupied Abington and forced the Americans back during the Battle of Edge Hill.
In modern times — thankfully — Abington’s recreation fields have been relegated to a different kind of engagement. One that is athletic and not military. Each year , people come from hundreds of miles away to see family members and friends in some of the best athletic competitions around — a combination of school-district sponsored, regional competition, as well as community recreational league events.
Those blades of grass have also played host to incredible athletic euphoria. Abington Girls Soccer won the Suburban One League in 2023. It was a Liberty Conference Champion in 2020, and Abington Senior High School Boys Soccer advanced to the District One 4A Championship Game in 2023. The evergreen painted baseball backstops basking in the Philadelphia suburban sun even saw the Abington Senior High School Baseball Team advance to the PIAA State Playoffs (the 2023 PIAA Class 6A Baseball Championships).
Sixty years ago — years after the last remnants of the farmland that had occupied the current location of Abington’s recreation fields had been claimed by the School District — a brand new Junior High School was constructed on the grounds. During the construction of that three-story building , workers listened to the news reports of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. The building they would help create would educate students in the Township for more than 6 decades.
This past spring — a vote was cast that supports a $285 million new middle school for Abington — which will provide both a new home for innovative learning and a makeover of recreational facilities.
Oh and when the sun rose on another cold December Day around Abington in 1777 in the aftermath of the Battle of Whitemarsh?
It was the Americans who held the field. As a victorious celebration paraded through the streets of nearly Glenside , a sense of sadness filled the air.
The championship will be the last for longtime coach Randy Garber.
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Michael Thomas Leibrandt
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