Simon Gratz earned a Public League football title despite its home field being unusable for the last two seasons: ‘I’m proud of them’

The frustration in his voice was unmistakable as Simon Gratz football coach Gene Faust hovered over a hole in the turf — almost 3 feet wide — near the 20-yard line of his team’s home field at Marcus Foster Memorial Stadium.

Similar damage, ranging from small divots to craters, covers several areas of the field’s turf.

Faust, now in his second season as coach of his alma mater, said the Bulldogs haven’t been able to practice on the full field since 2022.

Jimmy Lynch, the Philadelphia School District’s executive athletic director, said the damage to the field, which is owned by the school district, was the result of vandalism during the COVID-19 pandemic. Lynch said renovations are in the “design process” and should be completed by the start of next football season.

Until then, Gratz, which won the Public League Class 3A championship this season, has had to improvise on practically any patch of grass it could find.

“We’re getting down to the concrete in some spots,” Faust said, using his hand to show the contents inside a hole that turf once covered on Gratz’s home field on the corner of Germantown and Hunting Park Avenues. “That’s horrible.”

That was last week, just days before his Bulldogs competed for the District 12 Class 3A championship.

Gratz lost, 24-12, Saturday to Conwell-Egan, which had finished second in the Catholic League Blue Division.

The Eagles (8-3, 5-2), who practice on a “state-of-the-art” synthetic turf field that opened in 2020, will now face District 11’s Northwestern Lehigh on Friday in the first round of the PIAA Class 3A playoffs.

The season is over for Gratz. The Bulldogs split practice time between random patches of grass in Hunting Park, the new grass playground at the Shane Victorino Boys’ and Girls’ Club in Nicetown, and a small plot of grass within Marcus Foster Memorial Stadium that is behind a fence about 50 yards from the turf field.

“It’s unfortunate that our community had to go through this,” said Faust, who graduated from Gratz in 2000.

His Bulldogs may have lost Saturday’s battle, but Faust believes his players have learned valuable lessons about how to win in life.

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“Although we’ve gone through things we shouldn’t have,” Faust said, “I think it’s a blessing because we can teach them a lot more than just football.

“We can teach them that adversity happens in life. I think that we will be sending some great young men out into the world. I think they’ll be productive. I think they’ll raise families and I think they’ll have the right mindset through life’s ups and downs. I know they will.”

Two Gratz turnovers proved costly Saturday against C-E. A fumble led to a scoop-and-score followed by an interception return for a touchdown. Similar miscues, Faust said, hurt the Bulldogs (6-4, 2-3) all season. In two regular-season defeats, Gratz lost by a combined margin of eight points.

Faust declined to make excuses, but his team’s nomadic practice accommodations likely didn’t help its performance.

Teaching proper spacing during practices, he explained, was difficult on grass devoid of hash marks and yard lines.

In turn, players often struggled to adjust on game days.

“We’re so used to being so tight,” said junior running back Tray Parson. “It’s like we never really practice on a full field, so we don’t know how far to spread out, but we never gave up.”

That resilience is what Faust chooses to take from the experience.

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“I believe that they look at football as a way out,” he said of his players. “The requirements to play football make them focus more on taking care of their grades.

“In our particular situation this season, it’s just preparing you for life. Things happen and you’ve got to keep pressing on. … You have to figure it out as you go. And that doesn’t mean shut down. It means find a solution. Again, I’m not happy that they went through this, but I’m happy how they responded. I’m proud of them.”