Abington Making History Once Again
PIAA History Has Just Been Made.
It’s No Surprise That Abington Is at the Forefront.
It’s much easier to enjoy being a historian when you live in a town that has plenty of it. I have the opportunity to walk around my suburban town.
You’re used to some history if you live ten miles north of Philadelphia in Abington like I do. We don’t like to brag — but when it comes to America’s small-town origins — we’re right up there with some of the oldest in America.
That’s why last week, when the PIAA sanctioned Girl’s Flag Football for the 2025–2026 season — thanks partly to the Abington High School Girls Flag Football League — it couldn’t be a more fitting accomplishment that Abington was a big part.
PHOTO: Pittsburgh Steelers
Bartered by William Penn himself in a land deal in 1682 — the fields and forests around Abington was once inhabited by the Lenni Lenape Indians. It has one of the oldest Presbyterian Churches in Pennsylvania, which turns 310 this year; its church cemetery walls were the scene of a Revolutionary War Battle, it was the scene of two Presidential visits in 1889 and 2008; its boundaries include one of the oldest remaining structures in Montgomery County, and Abington was even captured by a foreign enemy during the Battle of Whitemarsh in 1777 (if you consider the British to have been a foreign enemy).
William Penn himself even named some of its surviving streets.
Two years ago — the Abington High School Girls Flag Football League won the yearly Philadelphia Eagles-sponsored league, where they went undefeated at 9–0. In the fall of 2023, Abington High Girls defeated North Penn 24–19 after defeating Cheltenham in the semi-finals to bring home the 2024 Suburban One League Championship.
Abington’s vibrant connection to sports history in America is evident, too. It was the hometown of Wade Ambler, who played two seasons for Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics. Reggie Jackson, “Mr. October,” a five-time MLB Champion and fourteen-time MLB All-Star — was born in Abington.
A stone’s throw away from those historic cemetery walls and Abington’s original schoolhouse, which still stands from 1888, is Memorial Field. Until 1999 — Memorial Field was the site of Abington Football’s home rivalry game against nearby Cheltenham for nearly a century.
That iconic field — nestled in the shadow of a serene setting of the gorgeous Huntingdon Junior High School Art Deco WWII style concrete facade bore witness to the beginnings of ascension to the NFL of Shawn Wooden, Eddie George, and even Ed Weber — who won a Championship with the Eagles in 1960 at Franklin Field. In more recent times, current NFL players Craig Reynolds and Kyle Pitts played for Abington.
Nearly two miles away, Abington Friends School — founded by William Penn’s Quakers — is the oldest school in Pennsylvania to operate on the same piece of land and is one of the most historic in the nation, dating from 1697. The scenic setting of a meadow and a creek around the original Quaker Meetinghouse, which still stands today.
Although Abington’s Girls Flag Football League wasn’t the only team in Pennsylvania to significantly contribute to this groundbreaking achievement, it is part of the long overdue continued need for formal recognition of PIAA Girls Athletics.
A historic achievement in the annals of Pennsylvania sports is right at home in a Philadelphia suburb dating back to the very beginning of European colonialism and used by the Lenni Lenape tribe thousands of years before that for sports like Pahsaheman, which was a combination of soccer and football.
In December 1777, when British and Hessian forces withdrew back into Philadelphia at the end of the Battle of Whitemarsh, the Americans held the field around Abington.
Two hundred and forty-seven years later — they still do.
PHOTO: Pittsburgh Steelers
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