Palisades loses football coach; gains sportsmanship award

FROM KEITH GROLLER

I was at the Eastern Pennsylvania Football Officials Association banquet tonight in Coplay. Good bunch of guys, even if they all can't see so well. That was obvious during the annual post-dinner raffle when one of the guys needed help reading the ticket numbers.

The highlight of this banquet is the presentation of the sportsmanship award and this year it went to Palisades. I was wondering where coach Jim Brady was because principal Rich Heffernan and interim athletic director Don Harakal accepted the award and usually the coach accepts the trophy.
It turns out Brady resigned earlier this week after two seasons. The Pirates went 3-17 over the past two years, including 1-9 this season.

Heffernan, a former coach at Liberty, said that the opening had yet to be posted at the school.

He preferred to talk about the sportmanship award.

"This reward is very gratifying because we believe in teaching our student-athletes good citizenship, respect your opponent, respect the officials," Heffernan (pictured at the right) said. "It's great for our kids, great for our community, great for our school and we can't thank the officials enough for this honor."

I don't know if there's a bit of a curse attached to winning this award. For three years in a row, I believe, the coach who won this award was not back the following year although when Bob Mitchell won it two years ago he had already announced his retirement.

Cedric Lloyd and the Allen coaching staff won it last year and he resigned two weeks before practice for the 2011 season was set to start.

http://blogs.mcall.com/groller/