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MWSA Review
The Best Year of our Lives is the story of a small high school’s quest for the 2015 Pennsylvania football championship. The team, Saucon Valley Panthers, was only moderately successful in the past and were rarely considered a threat within its own district.
The author, Robert Lofthouse, takes the reader through each of the games of that season, highlighting the significant plays, the players, and the community support. Unique to this football tale is the emphasis on the community’s involvement from the players’ families to the local townspeople, who rallied to the team games and events.
Insights into the team members and their families during that season and after added depth to the story. Additionally, an account of the head coach’s mental struggles was very moving.
The author was the statistician for the team during that season. He was able to provide accurate details about the team and the events of that year. Included in the book are numerous excerpts from local newspapers as they followed the growing success of the team. Numerous photographs of game plays, players, and families provide a more intimate look at the events and characters in the book.
This book will appeal to anyone who is interested in high school football or someone who is familiar with the Saucon Valley area of Pennsylvania.
Review by Walter Walkow (March 2025)
Author's Synopsis
Saucon Valley High School, a small school in Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley, wasn't historically known as a football powerhouse. Having to rely on homegrown talent, they'd often lose out to bigger schools with larger recruiting bases. But 2015 would prove to be different. Digging deep and pounding out their final year as Saucon Valley Panthers, cocaptains Zach Thatcher, Evan Culver, Mike Kane, Christian Carvis and their teammates embarked on a quest for a Pennsylvania state football championship that would defy the odds. Fielding the school's best team in decades, Head Coach Matt Evancho brought a group of determined young men together for a journey none of them will every forget. With local roots but universal appeal, The Best Year of Our Lives uses recent interviews, personal stories, and media accounts from the time to paint the picture of everything the players, coaches and local community experienced that storied year - the unity, the disappointments and the triumphs.
Format(s) for review: Paper only
Review Genre: Nonfiction—History
Number of Pages: 228
Word Count: 58,859