Foot. Ok. Never quite got the Joe Gal love. Great high school player , great guy. But 2 championships in 27 years and roughly .500 in the Central league over the years. But they do have a nice squad this year. Last year Springfield won a close one 24-17. See if they can get up again on back to back weeks.
Speed - happy to chime in on the reasoning for the Coach Gal love. Yes he has been the coach for over 25 years and has 2 CLCs and about a 500 record. He had good teams in the mid-90s when he first started, then had some rough years in the late 90s/early 2000s. That was a tough time for most Central League schools to compete with Strath Haven during their run and Ridley being Ridley.
Things were especially tough for Haverford during that time with over 50% of boys in the township heading to catholic of private high schools. Not even getting into the recruiting or private/public debate, but Havertown was one of the most densely populated Irish-Catholic towns in America at that time. While we certainly lost a lot of the top football talent due to private school recruitment, the bigger issue was the depth we lost out on from the masses opting for catholic school over Haverford.
Additionally, the only youth football programs in Havertown at the time were the CYO teams. The good CYO players in Havertown would end up at Prep/Malvern/Episcopal, and the rest of the players basically fed into the Bonner/O'Hara/Carroll systems. Coach Gal tried to get CYO kids to come to Haverford, but the Catholic League / Inter Ac was seen as the place to go if you wanted to play competitive football. Quite frankly, the perception was you can't go to Haverford unless you're ok with 2-8 seasons being the norm. Haverford got the leftovers or the kids who didn't grow up playing football (meaning their freshman year was their first year playing organized football). These were the kids Gal had trying to compete with the Strath Havens/Ridleys of the world for about 10 years, and you cannot blame his coaching for the losses during that time.
Gal realized this issue and was heavily involved with the creation of the Haverford youth football program in the mid 2000s. This gave the CYO kids another option and got the non-catholic kids playing football at an earlier age. It took a few years for these kids to finally filter into the high school system, but now the team is full of kids who grew up in this system. Additionally, the decline of enrollment in the Catholic schools has really benefited Haverford. Kids who in the past would have gone to Bonner/O'Hara are now at Haverford, and that's given them a level of depth they've never had before.
You really have to credit the 2007 team for turning the culture around at Haverford. That team went 7-3 and made the playoffs for the first time in Coach Gal's tenure. But more importantly, it set the tone that you can win at Haverford. The lineage of QBs Gal has gotten since that season is really quote impressive, and they've all come from CYO programs. Eddie Durkin (Sacred Heart CYO) was the QB from 2010-2012, Jack Donaghy (Annunciation) from 2013-2015, and now Jake Ruane (Annunciation) from 2016-present. These kids all might have gone to Catholic schools in years past, but they all felt like they would win at Haverford and they all did.
Now that Coach Gal finally has the guys to compete, Haverford has become a perennial playoff team (5 of the past 6 seasons) and a contender in the Central League. 7/8 win seasons have become the new norm, and in a good year they have the potential to win 9 or 10. The next step in the process is to make some noise in the playoffs, but they way they've progressed the past 10 years, I think that will happen in the near future.
Plus they've flown under the radar all season, but could get Gal his 2nd Central League title in 3 years with a win Friday. Springfield is a tough, complete team and will be the favorite, but Gal has a way of getting his guys ready. Expect a good one Friday night.
