For many years now football has been a part of the Guedes family of Palmerton.

Going back to Gus Guedes and Benny Guedes as running backs in the 1960's and early 1970's the season never ended until the Thanksgiving day battle with Slatington.Then there is Manny Guedes, who coached Booster Club football in Palmerton from 1967 to 1980, the Blue Bombers High School Team from 1982 to 2000 as both and assistant and 10 years as a head coach. Manny still finds himself on the sidelines on the other side of the Mountain for Northern Lehigh where he has coached the last 10 years along with a one-year stint at Liberty High School and a three-year coaching experience at Plateau Valley High School in Colorado also as part of his resume.The newest Guedes is playing football and having success in a different environment.Tekoah Guedes, son of Matt Guedes who played quarterback and linebacker for Palmerton Area High School and then was a four-year starter as a linebacker for Dickinson College, coached two years at Palmerton as a JV Coach and four years as an assistant coach and one-year as a head coach at Plateau Valley High School in Colorado, is now a freshman in high school. He is a home school student who plays his athletics at Plateau Valley High School in Collbran, Colorado on the western slope of the Rockies.Tekoah started the year on the varsity team as the wing back on offense for the first two games where he had some good runs. But in the fourth quarter of the second game, he came on at the quarterback position and threw his first touchdown pass anda pair of two-point conversions which secured the starting position for him for the rest of the year. Tekoah threw for 12 touchdown passes and 992 yards in his freshman stint as the starting QB at PV. He also rushed for 100 yards. He was named All League Honorable Mention at quarterback.He also started all the games at middle linebacker. At only 140 pounds, Tekoah is undersized for a linebacker, but has made up for it with savvy play and lots of film time. Through nine games (now some have played up to 11) Tekoah was fourth in the nation on MaxPreps at any High School level for tackles with 194 in just nine games giving him an average 21.5 tackles per game. He even had one game, his last one, with 33 tackles in a single game. Tekoah is not the first Guedes to play quarterback and middle linebacker, but he may be on his way to being the best one for sure. He was named Defensive Player of the Year for the Cowboys.The season was rough for the eight-man team. The Cowboys, who only had three seniors on the squad, went 0-9. They played the number 1, number 2, number 4, and number 10 teams in the state in their grueling schedule this year. They grew a lot during the season and are looking to turn it around next year. Guedes is hitting the weight room immediately in preparation for next year's season.Football continues to be the center of attention in the fall for the Guedes family and will so for at least three more years and hopefully beyond.