Belmont Charter looks to make history as the only Public League team left in the PIAA playoffs

All 20 players on the Belmont Charter football team were back on a school bus Tuesday, this time for practice at the South Philadelphia Super Site. It was a sweet upgrade from its usual practice field, best described as an open space in Fairmount Park.

With a male enrollment of 127, Belmont Charter is the smallest Public League school with a football team. Belmont Charter, now located in the former John W. Hallahan Catholic Girls High School near Logan Square, has no home stadium and has had varsity football only since 2021.

“With limited resources, we do make the best out of it,” said Cintella Spotwood, the school’s athletic director.

Belmont Charter still can do something that no other Public League can match this season: win a PIAA state football championship. The Tigers (9-1) play Lackawanna Trail (12-1), from near Scranton, in the Class 1A quarterfinal Friday night at Northern Lehigh High School, about a half-hour’s drive north of Allentown.

Since the PIAA playoffs began in 1988, no team from Philadelphia or the suburbs has won a state title in Class 1A, the smallest of six enrollment classifications. Imhotep Charter, with a Class 3A title in 2015 and a Class 5A title in 2023, is the only Public League school with a state title.

Plus, Belmont Charter is one of only 10 teams from the city or suburbs among 48 teams still alive for six state championships. The others: La Salle College (10-1), Pennridge (12-1), and North Penn (11-2) in 6A; Roman Catholic (9-3), Springfield (Delco) (13-0), and Chester (13-0) in 5A; Cardinal O’Hara (9-4) in 4A; Neumann Goretti (8-4) in 3A, and Lansdale Catholic (11-2) in 2A. Pennridge and North Penn play each other Friday, as do Springfield and Chester.

This will be only the third state playoff game in Belmont Charter history, compared with the 24th for Lackawanna Trail, which lost in the state championship game in 2019. And yet a lack of players, facilities, and postseason experience does not appear to bother the Tigers.

“They’re just like us,” Kabir Knight, a junior wide receiver and defensive back, said of Lackawanna Trail. “They’re just in our way.”

Belmont Charter, a four-year college-preparatory and career-readiness high school and part of the Belmont Charter Network, was founded in 2017 with a class of 75 freshmen. Before moving into the Hallahan facilities this year, the school was located on Belmont Avenue in West Philadelphia.

» READ MORE: High school football: It’s a showdown for the District 1 crown in the PIAA quarterfinals

Belmont Charter is coming off its first victory in the state playoffs — a 36-20 triumph last Saturday over host York Catholic, where the Tigers rolled to a 24-7 lead in the first nine minutes. Freshman quarterback Nafis Watkins passed for 253 yards and three touchdowns.

“That’s how we should have been playing all season,” said Mason Billingsley-Walker, a 6-foot-4 and 310-pound senior tackle on both offense and defense.

The victory softened a tough 28-22 loss last year to Delone Catholic that had motivated the 14 returning players to launch training in January for the 2025 season. The team’s only loss this season was by six points last month to Central, which has a student body six times larger.

“Gotta go through the downs, but there have been more ups than downs lately,” said Terrell Brent, the Tigers’ effervescent third-year head coach.

He said of the long bus ride home from York: “Instead of going home crying, there were happy tears — and smiling.”

Brent, 26, is a health and physical-education teacher at the school. He joined head coach Ed McCabe’s staff at Belmont when Brent was still a student at East Stroudsburg University, during COVID-19, which delayed and shortened the Tigers’ junior varsity schedule.

The Tigers have made progress each season. They lost a 2023 play-in playoff game to Steelton-Highspire, the eventual state champion, but they finished 5-6 last year, beating District 1 champ Morrisville in a play-in game before losing to Delone Catholic. The Tigers beat Morrisville again this year to earn the playoff game against York Catholic.

» READ MORE: Redemption, tradition, and history: Area football teams compete for much more in PIAA playoffs

“Our coaches motivate us, but we keep each other accountable,” said Shyneem Newsuan, a sophomore linebacker and running back. “We don’t overlook anyone. We just play hard-working football.”

Billingsley-Walker said the lack of a practice field near the school — they take a bus to the athletic fields across the Avenue of the Republic from the Please Touch Museum, not far from Belmont’s former location — can take away valuable practice time.

But still: “I like us in the long run,” Billingsley-Walker said.

Because Belmont Charter faces schools its size in the playoffs, the Tigers won’t be overwhelmed by teams with substantially larger rosters. York Catholic had 28 players on its roster, according to MaxPreps, and Lackawanna Trail has only 30.

(Roxborough High, another Public League team, played a regular-season game last month against Olney with only 17 players in uniform.)

Still, the four-weekend grind through the state football playoffs is much more punishing and treacherous for Class 1A teams than larger schools.

At a school like Belmont Charter, ranked 202nd in the state (Lackawanna Trail is 97th), there is no such thing as a depth chart, because everyone is needed to play both ways. Injuries can’t be avoided, but Brent has kept his team healthy by paying attention to training details.

“We always try to take care of the kids,” he said. “For the most part, they’re trying to get their bodies right. I believe in the staff and the abilities of the coaches to put kids in the best position possible.”

» READ MORE: Joey McLeish embraces being a quarterback at Imhotep, an African-centered STEM school

The Tigers find a way to manage. Their game against Morrisville was supposed to be held in Philly, but Spotwood said she could not find an available field in the city, so the game was played at Morrisville. The Tigers won, 19-0.

They will practice at the South Philadelphia Super Site for as long as they are playing in the playoffs. It has lights, and the open space they normally use for practice is ringed by trees. Their bus to South Philly was late, and when they got to the field, a soccer goal was on it.

The goal, fortunately for Belmont Charter, was on wheels, so two players were able to easily push it aside. But Brent already had a Plan B: If they could not move the goal, they would just use half the field — it is not as if the team is overflowing with players.

“To the outside world, we would be underdogs,” Brent said. “But we’re confident in the coaching staff and the kids to go 1-0 every week.”