Coaldale borough council's building committee will soon meet to weigh options on how to best display school trophies from the golden age of the Coaldale Tigers.

That responsibility might not sound so significant elsewhere.But we're talking Coaldale here.And Coaldale sports history is legendary.The Coaldale Tigers were the pride of the town, and deservedly so.The school's athletes and town-sponsored teams left an indelible mark in various sports, a decades-long tradition.For example, the 1962 Coaldale High School football team went undefeated and untied.The 1947 CHS baseball team won the Black Diamond League championship.The 1941 CHS track team grabbed the District 11 crown and the state championship, too.The Coaldale Big Green professional football team, 1912 to 1933, is so legendary they're regarded by many as the coal region's most consistently successful pigskin club.In fact, the team won the coveted Curran Cup three years in a row and beat the much ballyhooed Pottsville Maroons 3-0 in 1923.Since the 1800s, Coaldale has churned out outstanding athletes who went on to contribute at the state and national level. The trophies are a testament to a proud sports heritage that few communities can match.They're stored inside a long, custom-built, glass-and-wood display case standing about 6 feet high inside 1923 Coaldale High School. Few get a chance to see them. They've been stashed there since the 1950s or possibly much earlier.The case is sturdily built into the walls, and some believe the only way to move it is to destroy it.All of this is being studied as there's a move afoot to find a new home for the trophies, ideally a highly visible location where they'll be publicly accessible.It's a great idea.Given the Schuylkill County town's proud sports history, the trophies have the potential to be a tourism draw.They're not only a tangible link to the past, they're individual monuments to coal-region toughness.Each trophy tells a story about gritty, gut-felt ambition by native-born sons and daughters of coal miners and other working class residents of the salt-of-the-earth, blue-collar town.The trophies not only preserve history, but could prove useful for research purposes as well.There are plenty of obstacles to overcome.But if the old Save the Tiger rallying cry can be resurrected for this particular cause, Coaldale's timeless trophies will find a suitable place of honor in a town where residents always knew how to excel.By Donald R. Serfass |

dserfass@tnonline.com