Mercury All-Area: Teets’ diverse skillset helps Spring-Ford to another PAC title
ROYERSFORD >> Spring-Ford football coach Chad Brubaker can still remember the first time he met Nick Teets.
“I don’t remember who the coach was, but he came up to me at our youth football camp and said, ‘You’ve got to come check out this kid – he’s shorter than all the other guys, but no one can touch him!’” the coach remembered. “This was probably as early as second grade.”
Ten years later, things haven’t changed. No one could touch Teets’ ability to impact a high school football game in so many ways during the 2020 season as the multi-talented senior led Spring-Ford to their first back-to-back Pioneer Athletic Conference championships in 25 years, becoming the 2020 Mercury Area Player of the Year.
Teets’ stat line tells only part of the story, but it’s plenty impressive as he tied for the conference lead with 28 receptions for 412 yards, and carried 24 times for 123 yards, amassing an area-leading eight total touchdowns over seven games. On defense, he finished third on the team on the team in tackles, anchoring the secondary for a defense chock full of All-Area performers. Spring-Ford allowed less than six points per game over the five-game PAC slate, at one point stringing together three consecutive shutouts in a show of season-long dominance.
“He was the best player in the area this year,” Brubaker agreed. “He didn’t even start playing defense until [his junior] year, when we needed him because of some injuries. By the end of the year, he was an all-league player at safety. There are very few kids who can do as many things on the field as Nick can. If we asked him to play guard, he’d probably find a way to do it.”
Mercury All-Area: 2020 Football Teams
There isn’t enough space to recap all the twists and turns of 2020, whether on the football field or otherwise. But truthfully, the path to this season started for Nick Teets before the 2019 season even ended.
As it has done for several years, Spring-Ford’s tilt with Perkiomen Valley was set to culminate the 2019 campaign and crown a Liberty Division champion. But an injury-depleted Spring-Ford defense suffered yet another blow when starting safety Teets was suspended for the contest, the outcome of a targeting penalty in a previous contest that, upon further review, appeared to be an erroneous call.
“I’m not going to sugarcoat it – I was upset about that,” confirmed Teets. “It drove me this entire offseason, and then when everything started with COVID-19, it hit me that it might have been my last chance to play against PV. I spent a lot of time feeling kind of angry about that.”
But thanks to hard work from personnel at both schools, on September 25 Spring-Ford and Perkiomen Valley took the field again, this time at Coach McNelly Stadium. Nick Teets made up for lost time, operating as Spring-Ford’s short-yardage quarterback at times and taking a series of end-arounds and direct snaps for 41 rushing yards and a pair of first-half touchdowns as the Rams extended their winning streak against the Vikings with a 27-13 victory.
From a purely offensive statistical standpoint, Teets appeared to have a modest evening – 48 total yards and only two receptions. But a 29-yard run for his second score put the game effectively out of reach at 17-0, and he forced a fumble to end Perkiomen Valley’s best drive of the first half. The senior star even attempted a pass at one point. (“We don’t need to revisit that film,” Teets laughed.)
“I wanted to make a statement, make up for last season,” he recalled. “But I learned something too. I was so busy trying to make up for last year that I was forcing things, wasn’t letting the game come to me. It led to some silly mistakes, like when I dropped what should’ve been a touchdown pass.”
The lesson served Teets well throughout the rest of the Rams’ season, as he focused on doing his (many) jobs in victories over Boyertown, Upper Perkiomen, and Methacton. Statistically, his biggest night came against Owen J. Roberts in the title-clinching contest, as Teets made 10 catches for 154 yards and anchored the defense with seven tackles in a 28-0 win. On the second snap of the game, Teets had a season-long 62-yard reception that set the tone for his big evening.
“I think we called an RPO play,” Teets recalled, “and I saw a linebacker creep up too far, and I was able to get behind him.
“I couldn’t believe he didn’t tackle me sooner – I don’t have much speed in the open field,” he laughed. “But after that, we started to call my number a little bit more the rest of the night.”
On the defensive side of the ball, Teets echoed a line that Spring-Ford players and coaches used all season in describing the area’s dominant unit – there wasn’t any single standout, just a group of competitors who had a blast in working together.
“We were just having fun,” he said. “Every guy out there wanted to make the play, make the tackle, create the turnover. Then we saw everybody talking about the shutouts, and it gave us that added motivation. Getting a shutout was a goal every week.
“I wouldn’t even call myself the leader in the defense – more of that guy who’s just in everybody’s ear, trying to be encouraging. We had a bunch of seniors, like Naphtali Stine, Nate Capers, Mason Brill, DJ Francis, who shared in those roles as well.”
The defensive accomplishments were made possible by Spring-Ford’s mindset in attacking a season like none other. Ultimately, the team never endured a postponement beyond the league-mandated delay to the start of the season, but Brubaker and his staff prided themselves on being upfront with their players throughout the process.
“Starting July 1st, we never wavered,” said Brubaker. “I was as transparent as possible with the kids, telling them ‘this stinks – we don’t even know if we’ll get to game one. But that’s all we have to do right now is get to game one.’ That was how we posed it, as a choice, a decision. Do you want to hang out at the pool with your friends, or do you want to play Perkiomen Valley?”
“From there, it was them – they worked hard, they took nothing for granted.”
Teets added that football practice provided motivation to get through what otherwise could’ve been a pretty uneventful summer. “I mean, there was literally nothing else going on,” he explained. “It made it easier for me to focus on lifting or whatever needed to be accomplished that day.”
Teets added that he doesn’t feel cheated in any way by the shortened season. “What we did was so much harder than any other season,” he said. “Maybe not physically, but mentally we had so many things to overcome. It wasn’t just practice, it was the fact that we couldn’t kick back, relax together after practice.”
“These guys had to sacrifice the camaraderie of football,” added Brubaker, who earned the honor of Mercury Area Coach of the Year. “Even during two-a-days, they can’t hang out in the locker room or anything, they missed out on that. Those are the things that help take pressure kids most of the time – this year, they’re bringing everything to the field with them. That decompression portion of being a team was missing, not just at Spring-Ford but for everyone.”
“Starting with our administration – we, as a coaching staff, felt supported in wanting to go forward with our season. They would’ve supported us either way, but they fought for us. The kids, they came to practice, they got their temperatures checked and we were fortunate in that no one ever showed up with a fever. Drills were different – we weren’t allowed to touch each other or hit bags. We were allowed to touch footballs, but that was about it.”
Ultimately, Spring-Ford played a seven-game slate without interruption, starting on September 25 and culminating in a three-point semifinal playoff loss to eventual District One champion Souderton the first week of November.
Brubaker spoke frankly about what it took to get to that point. “If we’d had even one or two malcontents among our senior class, everything could’ve turned out differently,” he said. “But these kids did a tremendous job setting a tone, an example – not by strong-arming anyone, just leading by example. And it carries to our defense – we don’t have a bunch of Division One performers, just determined, hard workers who are happy to share in the credit as a team.”
For Nick Teets and the rest of the Rams, the unique season came to an end with the 27-24 loss to Souderton on November 6, a game where SF fell behind early by a 20-0 margin before staging a furious rally and running out of time late.
“As seniors, we just looked at one another and said, ‘if this is going to be our last game, how do we want to go out?’ We always talked about going down swinging, and that’s how we wanted to leave it,” Teets explained.
Does that make it easier to swallow? “No,” answered Teets succinctly. “I look at what Souderton accomplished (District One champions and lost 51-43 to eventual PIAA 6A champion St. Joseph’s Prep in the state semifinals) and I think “man, that could’ve been us.”
“It still bothers me today.”
That tenacity is what separates Teets – by his own admission, never the biggest or fastest guy on the field – from his peers. It will continue to serve him well in the future, as he heads off to play Division 1 lacrosse at a school still to be named.
“We support our players playing multiple sports,” said Brubaker. “I don’t know what I could’ve done, but I’ve told Nick if I could ever help with anything lacrosse-related, I’d be glad to do it. Lacrosse might be number one for Nick, but I don’t think football ever took a back seat.”
Nick’s competitive spirit was forged through his competition-laden childhood, where he consistently matched himself up against and alongside his first cousin (and 2019 Mercury Player of the Year) Ryan Engro. “It’s not even as if we’re cousins, we’re more like friends,” Nick said. “But we were very competitive with one another, we each wanted to be the best.”
Nick credits his uncle Mike (Ryan’s father) with being his main motivator in football. “My parents (Jeff and Jeanette) and my sister (Mikayla) were always my biggest fans. They’ve supported me in everything I do.”
When the cousins got to high school, for the first time they were able to team up alongside one another for the first time. “I feel like that was a bigger deal to our parents than it was to us,” recalled Nick. “For us, Ryan and I, it was another teammate, another friend on the field.”
And for Spring-Ford football, another championship and another Player of the Year.
