GAMEFACE: How Pottsville’s seniors turned the Tide this fall

POTTSVILLE — Like the development of a student-athlete, success in high school football is rarely linear.

This fall, the Pottsville Crimson Tide, led by a group of 19 seniors, found that out firsthand.

Early in the season, the Crimson Tide faced what was considered at the time a brutal schedule: Shamokin, Mount Carmel, and Blue Mountain all in the first four weeks. In retrospect, that slate was not only brutal, it was the definition of a gauntlet. Those three opponents enter the final week of the regular season with a combined 25-2 record.

The Pottsville coaching staff, including head coach Mike Brennan, knew the early season was going to test the Crimson Tide and the results might not be what they desired, but that the difficult schedule would pay dividends down the road.

For many teams, it would be easy to begin tuning coaches out after you have three losses of 20 or more points in your first four games.

But that wasn’t the case for Pottsville.

“They had faith,” Mike Brennan said about his team. “When you’re moving forward and you’re not having a level of success right from the beginning like you expected or wanted, it’s sometimes hard to believe that what we’re preaching or what we’re coaching… it’s sometimes difficult for young kids to grasp that.”

For teams that are able to grasp it and understand the payoff will eventually come, it often comes down to having strong veteran leadership. That’s been the case for the Crimson Tide as the program’s 19-member senior class has set the standard since the end of their 2025 season.

“This senior class is powerful enough where they collectively stayed together,” Brennan said. “They continued to show the way. And it wasn’t lip service. They performed it on the practice field, and they performed it on Friday nights. Having that blind faith when we were sitting at 0-2 and 1-3 certainly was difficult.”

“Going into the season, we knew we had a lot on our plate going with those teams,” senior running back and linebacker Max Clews said. “We took all the positives from those games. Playing that competition was definitely going to help us get better going down the road.”

Better every day

After two losses to start the season against Shamokin and Mount Carmel, the Crimson Tide took the bus ride to Pleasant Valley and earned a pivotal Week 3 win over the Bears, 20-19.

Clews saw it as a turning point for the Crimson Tide’s season.

“We had to battle through adversity,” Clews recalled. “It was kind of like, ‘Here comes what’s been going on.’ But our entire team played their role. The offensive line played lights out, the defense stepped up, secondary was batting down balls. It was a great team win.”

Senior offensive lineman Ryan Beltz, a pivotal piece of the puzzle for the Crimson Tide, shared a similar sentiment.

“I would say after our 19-play drive against Pleasant Valley,” he said. “We all knew our first few games were going to be difficult, but that moment showed me the fight of this team and the inability to quit. It proved that we could do special things, and it has shown over the last few weeks.”

“I think seeing teams like Blue Mountain, Mount Carmel, and Shamokin helped us realize — as a very inexperienced group at the time — that it isn’t easy,” he added. “There would be weeks we would be the smaller line, but we had to fight for everything, come back each week, learn from it, and move on to the next team.”

But one win didn’t automatically turn into two wins for the Tide. One week after that win over Pleasant Valley, Pottsville faced rival Blue Mountain, falling 44-14 in a hard-fought game that got away from the Crimson Tide late.

Following the loss, the Crimson Tide’s seniors didn’t feel sorry for themselves or hang their heads. They got back to work, once again setting the standard.

“Just maintain being a good role model,” Donovann Durham said about his and other leaders’ mentality coming out of the tough first four-game stretch. “Showing these kids that they can do it and we can do it. Just keeping our heads up even though it was a tough few weeks. We stayed locked in and committed.”

“We have to push everybody at practice so you can get better every day, every week,” Shay Strencosky said. “Just a Monday lift day — you can’t take it off. You have to be locked in the weight room, getting stronger, keeping your weight up. Same in the film room, just watching as much film as you can, really dialing into that. Coach Brennan preaches that to us seniors: leave it better than what it was before. So that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re really trying to put a good product out for these younger kids so that they can grow on this.”

Since that loss to Blue Mountain, the Tide have put together their longest winning streak since 2001 at five games, including beating Berwick for the first time since 1999. During the stretch, the Crimson Tide have averaged 40.8 points per game while allowing just 11.

Being selfless

A major part of Pottsville’s success, especially offensively as the season has progressed, has been the selfless approach, especially by their three stars in Max Clews, Shay Strencosky, and Donovann Durham.

“I think this team understands — and it’s something I’ve preached every offseason, and whether they hear it or not, I’m not sure — but your individual success is based so largely on team success,” Brennan said. “I understand that from my three decades of being a head football coach in Pennsylvania; when your team wins, when your team advances in the playoffs, the better your team produces and plays, the more individual accolades kids get. That’s really the way it’s designed. The more attention you bring to your program, the more individual attention the players within your program get.”

“I think they understand that because they really, truly don’t seem to care (about stats),” he said. “There’s nobody that’s upset. Nick Huda is an outstanding receiver — one of our better football players. From a productivity standpoint, Nick has his typical quiet 20-some catches, returns punts, and had some big kick returns this year for us. But Nick just goes about his business. That’s the way our team is in a nutshell. They don’t really seem to care. They are a close-knit group, and there’s no jealousy among them.”

In the backfield, Clews and Durham have had to split reps. Both players are superbly talented; both as bell-cow running backs would have the potential to put up All-State level numbers in the backfield. But both are content playing their role and doing whatever is asked.

Heading into Week 10, their numbers are similar. Durham has 87 carries for 652 yards and nine touchdowns; Clews has 81 carries for 449 yards and a trio of scores.

“Everybody here has a team-first mentality and all we want to do is win,” Clews said. “It’s our number one priority. Our number one goal is to just win games and go out there and put out the best product that we can for our fans and for our program, because our program carries a lot of history and we want to uphold that history.”

“Coach just tells us he picks whoever runs the ball well, and we just run the ball hard,” Durham added. “We share it equally. There’s no fighting about it. Me and Max, we like sharing the ball together. If one of us has to have a big game, we will. There’s just no selfishness, and we’re really a tight, compact team.”

Strencosky is a part of that rotation as well, as he’s developed into an all-around athlete for the Crimson Tide with 182 rushing yards and 554 receiving yards on the season, developing into the program’s go-to receiver after starting the season in the backfield.

“I started off at running back, but as we grew into our offense, we kind of grew into a more traditional offense,” he said. “I moved to receiver, but I still play H-back. When I’m not catching the ball, I’m in at tight end blocking for my guys running the ball. If I have to run the ball on a third or fourth down, I’ll go in and run the ball. I just love contributing for the offense.”

‘He’s everything to our program’

No player, however, within Pottsville’s roster may have a better understanding of that selflessness than Andrew Allen.

After entering the season as the starting quarterback for the Crimson Tide, a mid-season injury forced Allen out of the role, leading the way to sophomore Tommy Welsh. Welsh’s play has been strong enough that the Tide have rolled with the hot hand over the last few weeks.

Some players in Allen’s shoes would’ve reacted poorly to losing a starting quarterback job, but instead, Allen has found numerous ways to contribute to Pottsville’s success.

“He’s everything to our program,” Brennan said. “He really is. He can do everything, and he can play almost every skill position. Not just what he’s done at quarterback and receiver — and we still work him at quarterback — but the fact that he can play corner and safety, the fact that he punts, kicks off and kicks extra points. He’s made game-winning field goals in his career. He’s made great throws in his career. He’s done so many things well. That’s just the way he is. It’s the way he was raised.”

“Andrew’s been a great role model for Tommy these past two years,” Strencosky said. “They learn from each other. Andrew still takes reps at quarterback—he just wants to help the team out. He’s a positive kid, and he was just happy to get back on the field. He was so happy to play defense, special teams, and just contribute.”

“Andrew will do anything for the team. He’ll go out and block; he’ll go out and catch. Even if he’s not catching as many balls, he just comes out and brings great energy.”

The unsung heroes

Everyone knows the names of Durham, Clews, and Strencosky, but the Crimson Tide’s success goes far beyond that trio.

Among those who don’t receive the recognition and accolades as much as others but have played their role in the turnaround include Nick Huda, Brody Eroh, Colin McGinley, Jamie McClure, Landon Hollen, Pat Bolich, Dylan Hinkle, and Gage Bowers.

“Those guys set us apart,” Brennan said about his group of unsung senior heroes.

That’s not to mention players such as Colin Kline, a key piece of the Crimson Tide defense who suffered a significant leg injury earlier in the season, costing him his senior season.

But then there’s also Ryan Beltz, the anchor of Pottsville’s offensive and defensive lines.

“He’s super intelligent. He makes all our adjustments and all our calls on the field,” Brennan said of Beltz. “He processes it, he sees what’s happening, he gets people in the right schemes, and then he comes and tells me the adjustments that he’s made. That’s what you’re dealing with with Ryan Beltz.”

“Then he flips over to the defensive side of the ball, and he’s just so consistent, so precise, and so fundamentally sound with everything he does on the defensive line,” he continued.

A part of a younger and inexperienced offensive line, Beltz emerged as a leader in the trenches since the end of last season.

“I wanted to become someone that the rest of the team, and most importantly the offensive line, could look at and say, ‘I know he gives me 100 percent all the time, he will always have my back, and if I need any help, he is there,'” Beltz said.

Leaving the program in a better place

For this year’s senior class for the Crimson Tide, their everlasting mark will be the culture that they instilled within the program.

“This team is a really good group of workers. We have 100 percent attendance at our workouts year-round,” Brennan said. “I’m talking like none of these guys ever miss a workout under any circumstances. Most schools can’t say that.”

“One of the things we preach and talk about is the historical part—this being a program of 100-plus years. You are just a part of it, and we are just a part of it. It’s our job to make sure that we handle it with respect and we pass it on to the next generation being better than when we got it.”

“Coming in freshman year, we had a bunch of different things going on here. We’ve changed our culture completely,” Clews said. “We’ve shown all these younger kids what it takes to be a winning program. We’ve done well so far this season, and we hope to continue doing that in the playoffs and get ourselves a championship.”

But the work isn’t finished for Clews, Strencosky, Durham, or the 16 other Tide seniors.

“Just because we’ve been on a winning streak, that doesn’t mean anything,” Strencosky added. “We’re still hungry. We want to go as far as we can in the playoffs, make as many plays as we can, and win as many games as we can. That’s just our goal.”

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