South Jersey football: Collingswood will travel to California in 2021

The Collingswood High School football team is headed to California.

The Panthers have agreed to a home-and-home series with Northgate High School starting in 2020. They’ll host the Broncos at Ocean City on Sept. 4 and will travel to Walnut Creek, California, for the “Bay Shout Out” in 2021. The school is 20 minutes from San Francisco.

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“My sophomores are like, we’re going bathing suit shopping tomorrow,” head coach Mike McKeown said last week. “They’re fired up. How can you not be?”

Collingswood is looking to raise $25,000 to fund the trip.

“I think we’ll get it done,” McKeown said. “I think we can find a way.”

The “once in a lifetime experience for our kids,” as McKeown put it, came about with help of a former Collingswood resident, Rich Berger.

Berger is an assistant with Northgate. McKeown actually played youth baseball with him, and Berger stays in contact with people in the area.

The Broncos have been trying to get out to the East Coast for a game the last couple of years.

“We’ve been working on this for the past 8 months,” McKeown said. “… He’s from out here. He knows kind of our football mentality. He thinks it’d be a really, really good game.”

McKeown excited about the idea immediately but wasn’t sure about the logistics. So, he reached out to Timber Creek head coach Rob Hinson, who’s taken the Chargers out of state the last three years, for advice.

That helped seal the deal.

When McKeown broke the news to his kids, they were overjoyed.

“Can I get held back a year?” McKeown was asked by one of his older players.

The trip has juiced up the program, and while it’s still a couple years away, McKeown believes it’ll really benefit the team in the short term too.

“Kids finally have something to shoot for a couple years from now,” he said. “We care about those guys and this gives them something they’d never do or thought they’d do.”

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Josh Friedman has produced award-winning South Jersey sports coverage for the Courier Post and The Daily Journal for more than a decade. If you have or know of an interesting story to tell, reach out on Twitter at @JFriedman57 or via email at jfriedman2@gannettnj.com. You can also contact him at 856-486-2431. Help support local journalism with a Courier Post subscription.