While no specific publication has been seen which speaks solely on football legends of the Lykens Valley, a book has been located entitled Football Legends of Pennsylvania, by Evan Burian, which by careful reading, four specific instances are revealed where some men from or around the Lykens Valley may have made their way into professional football.
The book, with a foreword by a past chairman of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, was published in 2001, so it may well be that additional men or teams can be added through research conducted since that time.
The four areas or men which which are worth exploring further are:
- “Anthracite Hard” was a term sportswriters used to describe football players who came out of the town of northeastern Pennsylvania who played in the Anthracite Football League. Because much of the information about the teams they played for must be reconstructed from newspaper and other contemporary accounts, not all the men who played for teams are known.
- Gary Collins, who played for Williamstown High School, Williamstown, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, was a 1961 All-American at Maryland who was drafted by the Cleveland Browns and played with them for ten years, including in two National Football League title games in 1964 and 1965, winning the former and losing the latter.
- Coaldale Big Green was a 1921-1923 championship team in the Anthracite Football League. Teams in this league drew from communities throughout the coal region. More is known about the Coaldale Big Green Team, because their championship records are enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, but since the Coaldale team was in existence from 1913, all of the early players are not known.
- Glenn Ressler was from Dornsife, Northumberland County, just outside the Lykens Valley. He played for Mahanoy Jointure High School in the early 1960s and then for Penn State where he was a 1964 All-American. He then went on to play for the Baltimore Colts, lost in Super Bowl III in 1969, but won in Super Bowl V in 1971.
The above four areas will be the subject of future blog posts.
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Corrections and additional information should be added as comments to this post.