One last hurrah

Part of John Emel’s family legacy is playing football on Salem’s Walnut Street Field; Saturday he brings his Penns Grove team to play there in the facility’s final high school game

By Al Muskewitz
Riverview Sports News

SALEM – John Emel has never taken dirt from another team’s field either as a player or a coach, but this time he might make an exception.

The Penns Grove football coach is genuinely going to miss Walnut Street Field.

After serving as the home field for the Salem High School football team for decades, The Nut will host what likely will be the last high school football game Saturday when, ironically, Emel brings his Red Devils (0-3) to play the Rams (0-3) in what is always a big game for both teams regardless of their records.

“For starters, it’s a great place to play a game,” Emel said. “You know, people get hung up in the facilities and the weight room and the locker room and things like that and that place doesn’t have that, but it’s an awesome place to play and coach a big game. There have been a lot of big games there over the years.”

The field holds a lot of memories for him. Five generations of Emel men have played on it. His great-great grandfather, great grandfather, grandfather and dad all played there. John Emel was a starting lineman for the Rams when he played there from 1998 to 2001. His brothers played there, as well as several cousins and uncles. His uncle Dave, a two-way starting lineman on Salem’s 1983 championship team, is a member of the chain crew there now.

As other long-standing schools have moved their athletics program into more modern facilities on their campuses, facilities like Walnut Street have remained vigilant gatekeepers of bygone days. Sadly, many have fallen into disrepair.

The field has virtually been unchanged since 1962, but there was a time before that when it looked a lot different. It actually ran diagonally to its present configuration to accommodate a baseball field. The current design has the scoreboard, entrance gates and concession stand on the Walnut Street end of the stadium. 

“There are just a lot of memories there,” Emel said. “I haven’t been there since the bleachers came down, but to me what made it so unique was the big old-style home bleachers.

“The field is always in awesome shape. The Salem field playing surface, to be honest, is as good as any around. I’ve played there over the years in wet, sometimes rainy, conditions, all types of conditions, and no one ever complained about the playing surface.”

Some of Emel’s fondest members as a player and a coach have been created on that field.

His two fondest memories as a player were his first-ever start against Glassboro and winning his final home game. 

The start came as a sophomore against one of the best Glassboro teams ever in a game that was forced to a Monday by the arrival of Hurricane Floyd; ironically, he would be blocking for his future Penns Grove athletics director Anwar Golden, then Salem’s senior starting running back and safety, in that game. Glassboro won 33-14, pulling away from a game that was tight for a while and going on to be 12-0, but Emel played one of his better games and it “helped further my love of football.”

His final home game was Senior Day against Pennsville. The Rams won and went on the road for the playoffs the next week. “I felt the year before against them I didn’t play that well and came back and played one of my better games,” he said. “That year I got to play with my brother on the field a little and other guys I was really close with. It was just special.”

Two of his fondest memories as a coach are the last two times he took a team to Salem. In 2016, an 0-2 Red Devils teams trekked down Rt. 49, held future NFL All-Pro Jonathan Taylor out of the end zone and beat the Rams 20-8. In 2018, they were the best two teams in Group I and the Red Devils prevailed again 26-20 and then beat their rivals in the rematch at Penns Grove for the South Jersey championship to cap an undefeated season.

In the interest of full disclosure, Emel admitted a couple of his toughest losses came on Walnut Street as well, including a playoff loss to the Rams his first year as Penns Grove’s coach.

“I want to end up a high note,” he said.

It looked like Walnut Street had seen its final days last season when the city condemned the old wooden bleachers. That decision led Salem school officials to start building an on-campus facility, but with that project on-going it also was going to force the football team with a new coach to play all of its games on the road until October.

The city continued to work to make the field ready for its youth team, but It picked up the pace when logistical issues at Abessinio Stadium in Wilmington forced Salem and Camden to pull its game out of the Mid-Atlantic Classic without a place to go. The city got Walnut Street put together well enough to host the game and it worked so well Salem moved the Penns Grove game back there as well.

The Rams are expected to open their on-campus facility Oct. 7.

Not even some off-the-field drama following the Camden-Salem game that forcing Saturday’s contest to be played without outside fans in attendance due can put a damper on the significance of the day.

“I don’t think I’m crying like (Eagles head coach) Nick Sirianni during the national anthem of the Super Bowl,” Emel said. “But football is an emotional game. You want to play with emotion and coach with emotion.

“I want to win every game, but I really want to win this one because not only is it the next one, but it’s Salem, it’s a rivalry and the fact that it’s the last game on Walnut Street it would make some of these other memories coaching that I mentioned that much sweeter. We want to close it out with a victory.”

Because the field means so much to him, perhaps when no one is looking Saturday, maybe as he walks through the gates for the final time, Emel will reach down and sneak a little souvenir to remember it by.

“I’ve never taken dirt from any other stadium,” he said. “Maybe this one should be the first.”