Thread by @shayne_schafer, The 2007 District XI playoff game between Minersville and Pius X ranks [...]

The 2007 District XI playoff game between Minersville and Pius X ranks in my top 5 games that I've been involved in.

You can follow the link below and follow my thread for background on the game.

(1/23)

To be clear, this is not an objective story. I was a player on that '07 Battlin' Miner squad, this is about our emotions and perceptions leading up to the game. It's about what that game meant to us.
(2/23)

Heading into the second week of district playoffs, Minersville had just pummeled Williams Valley 47-9, a team they squeaked by 31-28 in the regular season. At 9-2, they had the chance to become the 10th team in school history with double-digit wins.
(3/23)

Up next was Pius X coming off a 42-13 drubbing of fellow Anthracite League team Shenandoah. While located not far away in Northampton County, they might as well have been from across the country.
(4/23)

Pius was not unknown to Minersville but not a regular opponent. They played each other 5 times but the last time was in 1998. The oldest players on Minersville's squad were in 3rd grade for that game. For that reason, Pius was virtually unknown to the Miners squad.
(5/23)

What we did know was that Pius was a private school. We were familiar with that Marian, Nativity, Cardinal Brennan. We didn't like that, private schools picked their players and then competed with public schools who worked with what they had. At least that's how we saw it.
(6/23)

2007 was in the golden age for PennLive's high school football forums. A lot of good conversation and debate went on there, but there was a lot of trash-talking too. Unfortunately, I can't find copies of those logs. But I remember the trash-talking well.
(7/23)

While the insults could have come from anyone, it appeared to be from Pius fans towards Minersville. One comment I remember very well from that forum was someone telling Minersville fans to brush the few teeth they had before coming to the game Saturday night.
(8/23)

That comment was par for the course. Minersville and the Coal Region, in general, were denigrated for being backward hicks. We were stuck in the past, our smashmouth style of football was evidence of that.
(9/23)

Many comments generally came down to the belief that Minersville would not be able to understand or stop whatever schemes Pius threw at us.
(10/23)

This trash talk did an excellent job motivating us, a lot of those board posts were printed out and hung up in our locker room. But they were just anonymous comments from people on the internet. They may not have even been from Pius, only people looking to stir the pot.
(11/23)

What really bothered us was comments coming from the Pius coaching staff. Leading up to the game, interviews from Pius' head coach got back to us.
(12/23)

In an interview with the Morning Call, he called us a typical smashmouth team and said the hostile environment they would receive from a blue-collar town. He may have meant nothing by those remarks, but what he said seemed like politer versions of what we saw online.
(13/23)

In an interview with the Pocono Record, he upped the ante by saying flat out his kids would take away our run game. He then said he would keep us guessing by switching up defensive front. "Keeping us guessing" sounded a lot like us not being smart enough to stop them.
(14/23)

The overconfidence bothered us too, saying almost cockily that playing in a hostile environment like ours would only electrify his players and that claim that they would take our run game away. We were the home team, we were seeded higher, that's how you talk about us?
(15/23)

Heading into the game, it almost felt like a conflict of cultures. When Minersville plays Nativity, sometimes the game is called "Catholics vs. the Convicts". We felt denigrated but embraced the connotations that we were different than the prim and proper catholic school.
(16/23)

We felt the same way about Pius. That perception of Pius having this cocky "greater than thou" attitude was confirmed in our eyes when they pulled up in their big chartered bus. We watched them get off the bus and head out to the middle of the field to stand on our logo.
(17/23)

If anyone didn't already feel disrespected and looked down on, that was the tipping point. I don't remember what he said, but I remember Senior Captian Mark Graver whispering something under his breath. At the coin toss, you see him reach down and touch our logo.
(18/23)

This perception that they thought they were better than us only persisted when their fans showed up and tailgated in the parking lot and held their own 50/50 in the stands. It was felt that this game was more than that for us, it was for the pride of the Coal Region.
(19/23)

Being the freshman placekicker, I had a lot of time to make these observations. Looking around the stadium, I noticed it was by far the largest crowd I had played for. What really struck me was all teams I saw. I remember seeing Haven, Mahanoy, and Shenandoah players.
(20/23)

So many players from the area were behind us, supporting us. It really made us feel like we were playing for county pride.
(21/23)

I won't retell the game here; you can watch the film. The rest is history. By the 4th quarter, they were sucking wind, and we were only getting stronger. We came from behind and erased a 2 td lead to beat them by a point.
(22/23)

What I remember the most was the absolute shock on Pius' players and fans. None of them thought they'd lose to someone they saw as so much lesser to them.
(23/23)

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