Will Brinson is Easton-bound (but not down) for the Gatorade Replay of America's most important high school rivalry.
There's something surreal about recapping a game that originally took place in 1993. I mean, even though the game started 15 years ago, it finished on Sunday. I know, because I watched those same football players racing up and down the field. And ultimately the game counted. But for what? Well ... if you asked anyone on either Easton or Phillipsburg, they would tell you "everything."
As offensive MVP Joe Luke -- eight catches, 208(!) yards and two touchdowns -- said when asked what the biggest difference between Saturday and 1993 was: "We're winners."
For Luke, and the rest of the 1993 P-burg football team, it was their first victory in the long-standing high school rivalry, because the senior class "lost" (they count the 1993 tie as a loss, according to Luke) all four games to Easton while in high school.
"I don't care if we're 30 years old or 60 years old -- the opportunity to get a victory against Easton, man," Lucas said afterwards, "That's the tops, that's what it's all about, that's what living in this community is all about."
And yes, it sounds absurd. But it's true -- that's precisely why 13,350 people (the final count, although there seemed like more) turned out to watch the two high schools play Sunday afternoon. The game itself was an interesting, and ironic, contrast of styles: Peyton Manning "coached" the team that ran the ball 32 times for 156 yards on the ground, led by Blaze Clymer's 99 yards on 15 carries.
Meanwhile, Eli Manning, whose NFL teams typically pound the rock more frequently than Peyton's, saw his team air the ball out all day, racking up 329 yards via its passing attack.
Of course, Eli and Peyton, while not technically the stars, they still garnered the most attention. The security team would clear fans off the gate every 15 minutes or so, but in that time, crowds of kids holding football, cameras and pens would fill the spaces, screaming "PEY-TON! HEY, PEY-TON!" so loudly -- and nearly in chorus -- that it would almost seem to drown out half of the play-calling.
And none of that enthusiasm was stunted by the extreme (at least by April in Pennsylvania standards) heat: the official record shows 85 degrees throughout the course of the game, but I would venture a guess that the players -- 30-somethings, mind you -- and the fans (I saw one woman pouring water on herself before being taken away by a medical crew for heat exhaustion) felt it was probably a touch warmer.
Which is where Gatorade really stepped up: they provided the two schools with literally thousands of gallons of Gatorade for the game, their practices, their workouts, etc., helped find adequate fitness centers and trainers in order to make sure the players would be prepared, and distributed countless bottles of the electrolyte-filled goodness to the fans and citizens of the greater Easton area.
And when the game ended, and P-burg players had somehow managed to redeem themselves from a winless high-school career, it did matter who won and how they'd gotten there and who cheered for them and how they celebrated. But at the same time, there was an odd sense of community between the two schools: every player involved understood exactly how lucky they were to get a second chance in this game, every fan knew that this replay provided their respective school with a chance to be recognized, and that -- as strange as seeing these 30-something high-schoolers play football was -- they'd gotten a chance to witness something special.
