Avella High Football Embodies "Winners Never Quit and Quitters Never Win"

My junior high P.E. teacher had a gym full of posters with sports clichés designed to inspire the kids and teach us life lessons.

They became the students' punch line of our garage band slacker generation. "Winners never quit, and quitters never win" was one of them that we would sarcastically chant at a Friday night party if a member of the football team couldn't finish his six-pack.

I once mockingly repeated another to a friend who just crashed his motorcycle, "If it doesn't kill you, it only makes you stronger."

My favorite was, "Pain goes away—injury goes to the hospital." The ridiculousness of this statement to my adolescent view of the world was deeply offensive. Pain, this spoiled suburban child believed, is to be avoided at all costs.

Take as an example a story I recently found in the Christian Science Monitor of the Avella High School Eagles from the rural farming community of the same name in Western Pennsylvania. This same region of the country produced legends such as Johnny Unitas, Mike Ditka, Joe Namath, and Joe Montana only generations ago.

These hardened people from the steel mills, farms, and coal mines have historically been naturally endowed with football grit—but something terrible has happened in recent years.

It seems the inevitable pain of losing football games has convinced players and their parents that quitting was the best option.

The tiny school of two hundred kids has barely been able to field a football team for the last few seasons and has become the butt of football jokes in its conference.

Parents petitioned the coach to forfeit a recent game against cross-county rivals because they feared for their children's safety against such a formidable foe.

Football coaches have come and gone, all frustrated by perennially losing every game.

The Eagles have lost 26 games in a row and 50 of the last 51 games they have played.

The bleachers are thin with fans, and most of them are parents of players who have not turned their backs on the current coach—a core of players who would not give up, no matter the circumstances.

Coach Gray, a history teacher at Avella High for the last 25 years and former social worker who couldn't ignore his students' pleas not to let the program die, turned out to be exactly what these students needed.

His infamously difficult conditioning sessions were too painful for many and have resulted in just a 14-player team after nearly 40 signed up for spring tryouts. After some injuries, they had to fight just to field a team.

Some of the players quickly shed their shoulder pads at halftime to pick up instruments and march with the band. That's why they play—if there is no football team, there is no band.

A couple more injuries would have forced a forfeiture and a sanction the following season, risking suspension of the entire program if not for the head cheerleader volunteering to suit up.

Being a junior, Anastasia Barr needs a football team to cheer for next year.

When she actually got into a game as defensive back, the tiny crowd erupted into a frenzy and then almost completely lost it a few minutes later when Anastasia made a tackle. The Eagles were defeated that game 40 to 0, the lowest scoring opponent all season.

"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."

No doubt some of the students who mock the never say die attitude of the remaining players are former team members, children of parents from my generation, simply avoiding pain.

By doing so, they have successfully avoided being part of one of the most inspirational sports stories of the year.

Soar mighty Eagles!