[ODJ]

AVELLA, Pa. — They have shared proud football moments at the high school here in the copper-leaved, coal-mined hills of southwestern Pennsylvania. The tales of old-timers and the championship trophies in the school hallway can attest to those days, even if teenagers in the area were not alive for any of them.

This season looked to be the lowest point for the Avella High Eagles, a team that has been dying of malaise and lack of interest.

At practice earlier this week, only 10 boys and a girl were willing and able to put on pads. Against the powerhouse Clairton last week, Avella dressed 11 players, leaving not a single substitute on the sideline. One player was hurt in the second quarter, and the Eagles played the rest of the game with 10. They lost, 56-0. It was Avella’s 26th defeat in a row and the 50th in 51 games dating to 2003.

People around town are rather embarrassed by how far the program has fallen. They bemoan a teenage culture in which playing for the high school team has lost its allure in western Pennsylvania, of all places, where football and coal long represented toughness and resilience, where names like Joe Namath and Joe Montana were forged. But slowly this season, the remaining Eagles have come to represent something completely different from losing. They are being appreciated simply for showing up.

“We will never quit. Never,” said Head Coach Gray, “We’re going to play football, because that is what we do. And because to not play football, we would be losers.”
“I have never seen such courage in young kids. Ever,” he said.
“Well, I should have 12 on Friday,” He smiled. “I’m loaded.”

Avella has received attention this fall from news-media outlets in Pittsburgh, about 30 miles of curvy roads away, and accolades from opponents. Before a game against Bentworth on Oct. 10, opposing players visited the Avella locker room and presented the Eagles with T-shirts featuring the logos of both schools and “determination” written across the back. Captains from one of the top big-school teams in western Pennsylvania, Canon-McMillan, traveled here to invite the Eagles to a weekly dinner with the team and into the locker room before its first game in the coming playoffs.

“Some of the other students think it’s ridiculous that we’re getting attention,” the junior quarterback Jesse Noble said. “But the adults think that we’re the best thing ever.”

Avella graduates about 55 students each spring. The football team plays in Pennsylvania’s Class A, for the smallest schools. The program has spiraled down for most of the 25 years that Gray has taught language arts. No one quite remembers the last winning season, or the names of all the coaches who have come and gone.

When another opening came last spring, Gray went after it.

“He was tired of seeing the boys let down,” said Tim Beck, the school’s principal.

The first team meeting attracted 35 players. Almost immediately, some parents complained that Gray worked their children too hard or was too strict. The school backed the coach.

Gray required conditioning sessions three times a week. Several players never showed up. Others gradually fell away during the summer workouts. Preseason camp in August began with 24 players. Three likely starters were soon lost to injuries. A couple of other players quit. Gray had 19 players for the first game. Three others left the team. By midseason, Gray’s roster held 14 names. There were increasing fears that Avella would not complete its schedule, leaving opponents empty-handed, affecting their gate receipts or homecoming games.

School administrators called the Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League, which oversees high school sports in the area, including 124 football teams. A rule states that a team unable or unwilling to honor its schedule can be forced to sit out the next season.

Tim O’Malley, the organization’s executive director, said Tuesday that Avella’s was the first case he had heard in which a school was unsure it could field a football team. But the rule probably would not have been invoked against Avella, he said, because of its good-faith attempts to field a team and rebuild the program.

Still, it was enough to stir Anastasia Barr into action. She is the captain of the cheerleading squad, a junior worried about a senior year without football. What would happen to homecoming? Who would the cheerleaders cheer? When would the band perform?

“We’d lose so much if we lost our football team,” Barr said. So she joined. She has played safety in a few games but has yet to make a tackle.

Avella sees its bare-minimum roster as a one-year problem. A junior high football program was resurrected this season to bridge the broken gap between youth football and high school. It attracted 24 players. With only two seniors on the varsity team (they will be honored Friday at Senior Night), Avella said he expected at least 20 players next year.

On Tuesday, the Eagles were on the field that sits on the hill behind the school. The 11 able-bodied players in blue uniforms wore full pads, because that is what Gray demands. They ran sprints up a hill, then laps around the field. They practiced offensive plays against an invisible defense. When it was time to practice defense, the junior high team served as a miniature version of Friday’s opponent.

The sun was sinking, the wind blowing. Avella was preparing for a game it would surely lose, in a town that has come to expect nothing else. The 11 players did not complain. If there were places that they would rather be, none of them said so out loud.

“These are the people that are going to be winners all their lives,” Gray said. “Because all the quitters are gone.”

New York Times today. Edited for space.