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By Matthew DeGeorge
Dominic Toy had tears in his eyes as he walked off the field at Ninth and Lamokin for the final time as a Chester Clipper Saturday. But the 6-5 tight end bound for the University of Connecticut held his head high, literally and figuratively.
The Clippers didn’t want to be the team counting moral victories after the District 1 Class 5A final, a fate forced on them by Strath Haven’s suffocating offense in a 28-20 Panthers victory. But the atmosphere at the Chester Athletic Complex made the progress overseen by Toy and his classmates inescapable.
“I’m shocked to see everyone out here,” Toy said. “Look what we’ve done, what I did, what everybody has done. We changed the program. We made a way for everyone else. And I hope everyone can follow my blueprint on the way up.”
Games like Saturday haven’t happened in Chester in a long, long time. But then there hasn’t been a football team quite like the current group in Pennsylvania’s self-styled basketball capital in a very long while if ever.
You wouldn’t know it from the raucous environment, one that rivaled Delco’s best Thanksgiving Day gridiron gatherings in the last decade. A few thousand fans packed both sides of the stadium from the neighboring school districts, with the sound system, DJ and cowbells (and at least one makeshift coins-in-a-milk-jug noisemaker) creating the ambience. It’s a testament to the excitement the program has generated in the city, first under Ladontay Bell, who remains Chester’s athletic director, and now first-year head coach Dennis Shaw.
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