A Vote for the Future in Abington
It’s a Vote for the Future of Education and Recreation for the Next Generation On Land that Is More Than Just History.
It’s the History of Us.
PHOTO: WikiCommons
Abington School District’s Recreational Fields haven’t just seen history — beneath their perfectly manicured blades of grass, freshly mowed in the April sun, is the story of America. The land was originally utilized for thousands of years by Native American hunters and gatherers, whose colonial farms were pillaged by the British Army for supplies.
Those fields even witnessed a Revolutionary War engagement — as Continental Forces retreated down Susquehanna Street Road past the present-day athletic fields — in a headlong retreat desperately attempting to regroup atop the high ground of Edge Hill as British forces occupied Abington and forced the Americans back during the Battle of Edge Hill.
In modern times, thankfully, Abington’s recreation fields have been relegated to a different kind of engagement.
One that is athletic and not military.
Each year, people come from hundreds of miles away to see family members and friends in some of the best athletic competitions around — a combination of school-district-sponsored, regional competitions, as well as community recreational league events.
Those blades of grass have also played host to incredible athletic euphoria. Abington Girls Soccer won the Suburban One League in 2023 and was a Liberty Conference Champion in 2020. Additionally, Abington Senior High School Boys Soccer advanced to the District One 4A Championship Game in 2023. The evergreen painted baseball backstops basking in the Philadelphia suburban sun even saw the Abington Senior High School Baseball Team advance to the PIAA State Playoffs (the 2023 PIAA Class 6A Baseball Championships).
Sixty years ago, years after the last remnants of the farmland that had occupied the current location of Abington’s recreation fields had been claimed by the School District, a brand new Junior High School was constructed on the grounds. During the construction of that three-story building, workers listened to the news reports of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. The building that they would help to create would educate students in the Township for more than six decades.
On May 20th, Abington residents will cast their votes.
The outcome will either support a $285 million new middle school for Abington, which would provide both a new home for innovative learning and a makeover of recreational facilities, or veto it. In either eventuality, we’ll find out precisely what the future of Abington Middle School’s educational and recreational facilities will look like.
Oh, and when the sun rose on another cold December Day around Abington in 1777 in the aftermath of the Battle of Whitemarsh?
It was the Americans who held the fields.
PHOTO: WikiCommons
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