In his 44th year, one of Pa.’s longest tenured football coaches hopes to teach players more than X’s and O’s

A Strath Haven High School home football game still delivers a big bang for a sports fan’s entertainment buck. Adult admission is $5. A slice of pizza at “The Panther Pit” is $3, and a soda is $2. Cheerleaders sell $1 programs to raise funds. Parking is free, but get there early.

The home bleachers at the 3,500-seat George L. King Field, within walking distance of the high school in Wallingford, Delaware County, are usually packed with Strath Haven fans, in large part because the Panthers don’t lose very often — eight games in the last six years, in fact.

Kevin Clancy, the head coach, is largely responsible, though he’d much rather deflect the attention. He is 71, a new grandfather, a substitute rather than a full-time health and physical education teacher, but he has rolled into his 35th season at Strath Haven with great joy.

So there he was on a glorious night under the Friday night lights for the season opener last month, in a black cap, black Polo shirt, and tan slacks, patrolling the sideline kind of like a linebacker, occasionally cupping his hands to his mouth to shout tips to his players. Strath Haven won, 44-7.

Fans love winners. The student section, “The Panther Pack,” was filled with enthusiastic students, many of them wearing leis. More than 40 cheerleaders waved silver and black pom-poms. Music was provided by the school’s small-college-size band, with 325 members.

With the stadium framed by trees, the scene was pure Americana — the Panthers hoisted the Stars and Stripes as they raced onto the field — but far from jingoistic. Go elsewhere for divisiveness, intolerance, and indifference. A high school football game is our gathering place.

I last played high school football 49 years ago — gasp — and last covered high school football on a regular basis more than 30 years ago, but I love going to games, especially around here, because the competition is ferocious, and yet decades-old traditions are still followed to the T.

Nether Providence Township police officers were on hand in case of an emergency, but motorists leaving the overcrowded parking lots after the game were polite to each other. It was a pleasant evening (although not so much for Interboro High, the Panthers’ opponents).

Clancy will insist he was only responsible for the football part, but he has helped build the scene. He wants his football players to play other sports — “Makes better athletes,” he says — and he has encouraged one of his sophomore players to join the band at halftime.

“I still think high school football is relevant in high school life,” he said.

He and his colleagues are battling time. There are still more than 500 high schools in Pennsylvania that field varsity football teams, and turnout for teams has actually rebounded in recent years: 27,700 students played 11-man football statewide in 2024, compared with 25,515 in 2018.

I still think high school football is relevant in high school life.

But it has become harder to keep good football coaches around. Schools don’t have problems finding new coaches, but coaches older than 60, like Clancy, are all but relics.

“The longevity just is not there anymore,” said Garry Cathell, a former coach who is the executive director of the Pennsylvania Scholastic Football Coaches Association.

High school coaching is not very lucrative — and never really has been, he said. Elite players in public school districts often transfer to private schools that have an even higher emphasis on developing and showcasing talent. Parents are nosier.

“In a lot of cases,” Cathell said, “parents feel as if they have ownership.”

With bigger and faster players and a wide-open strategy, high school football has changed radically even in the 25 years that have passed since Clancy led his team to its second straight state championship. But he has kept up. Hours before kickoff are filled with “good nervousness.”

“It’s not like we haven’t had challenges,” he said.

Only one other active high school football coach in Pennsylvania — Jim Roth, at Southern Columbia — has won more games than Clancy, who has 378 victories, the first 67 of which came in nine years as the head coach at nearby Archbishop Carroll, his alma mater.

Clancy, who has nine grown children (eight sons) and has been married for 41 years to his wife, Alexia, makes it clear he is not coaching to pad his record. Strath Haven lost a lot of starters from a 10-2 team in 2024, but he still enjoys rebuilding a football team.

He is something of a throwback. Many high schools now use wide-open NFL-type spread, shotgun offenses, but Clancy sticks with a Delaware Wing-T offense, whose roots can be traced to 1950, that relies on a rushing attack made effective because of precise blocking.

As far as defense, he said, “We have had to adapt to what everyone else is doing on offense.”

But Clancy and his staff, which includes two assistants who have been with him for more than 30 years, have adapted. “He really puts in the effort for us,” said Ryan Mudrick, a senior fullback and defensive end. “He knows his stuff. He knows his stuff.”

Luke Mulhern, a senior quarterback and linebacker, can’t quite believe Clancy is as old as he is, saying: “He’s very easy to talk to. He’s always happy. He’s never in a bad mood.”

Mulhern smiled when he added, “Except at practice sometimes.”

With fewer than 500 male students in grades 10-12, Strath Haven participates in the second-largest enrollment classification in Pennsylvania. Strath Haven was the most recent team from the Philadelphia suburbs to win a state title in this class — and that was in 2000.

With St. Joseph’s Prep winning nine state championships in the last 12 years, the teams of the Philadelphia Catholic League — which, unlike their public school counterparts, aren’t restricted to using players who live within the boundaries of a particular school district — now make up the premier high school football league in the state. Top suburban squads are off the pace.

Clancy coaches the players who show up. Strath Haven plays in the Central League, which includes 12 public schools of similar size in the western Philadelphia suburbs. The Panthers beat Penncrest, a rival school in Media, five miles away, before facing Upper Darby nearby.

Clancy said: “My focus is on playing the other school districts. We try to do the best we can within this level of competition.”

Strath Haven has done fine when the playoffs begin, winning 11 titles, including two in the last four years, among schools of its size in the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association District 1, covering Delaware, Montgomery, and Bucks Counties. Strath Haven has also lost two state title games.

So he will keep coaching as long as he is welcome. He said, “I really enjoy it more than I used to.”

He then said, “We’ve had some success, and I want to be around the kids.”

Then he paused and added, “I think the kids give us more respect than we deserve.”

Dave Caldwell covered sports for The Inquirer from 1986 to 1995. He lives in Manayunk.

Editor’s Note: The headline on an earlier version of this op-ed misstated the length of Kevin Clancy’s tenure as a head football coach in Pennsylvania. He has coached for 44 years.