POTTSVILLE - After a 35-7 loss to Saucon Valley, Palmerton's season of promise quickly turned to one on the brink.

The Blue Bombers were 0-3, and searching for answers early this season."Those first three games, we weren't playing how we were capable of," said senior quarterback Garrett Perschy. "And we got in after that Week 3 loss to Saucon Valley, and I reamed the guys out, so did the coaches and so did the other captains."That was the spark that we needed. We went up to Pen Argyl, on The Hill, and we played a great game."What followed was a dominant 40-6 win at Pen Argyl, a team playing for the District 11 Class 3A championship. The triumph was a turning point for Palmerton, which closed out the regular season on a 5-2 run and advanced to Saturday's District 11 Class 2A championship game against Schuylkill Haven."Going into that week (against Pen Argyl) I had a meeting with the captains," said Palmerton head coach Chris Walkowiak. "I had a meeting with the players and he (Perschy) had a meeting with the captains and we said we needed a spark. We just needed a spark. Anybody can provide that spark. We didn't care what grade it came from, and we got that spark against Pen Argyl, which is a very good football team. We got some confidence going."Then we started to gel together and realize that yes, we can do this and we can be successful. But once we started being able to put our pieces back into place, that turned things around."An opening slate against Northwestern, Southern Lehigh and Saucon Valley posed its own challenges. But a roster beset by injuries made the stretch even more difficult for Palmerton, which scored a total of 26 points in the three early losses."We got healthy. The first three weeks we were banged up," Walkowiak said. "But that's football."As the Blue Bombers rounded into form, Perschy hit his stride, helping Palmerton average 31 points per game over the final seven weeks of the regular season before blasting Minersville 40-7 in the district semifinal.Perschy threw for 205 yards Saturday night against the Hurricanes and finished with 2,152 yards this season to surpass Brian Morgan's school record of 2,030, which was set in 1989. The senior signal caller also had a touchdown toss to Jordan Nelson, which gave him 19 for the year and broke a tie with Matt Falcone, who set the previous mark at 18 in 2008."Garrett's one of a kind," Walkowiak said. "His leadership stands out, the records. But he's humble. He's the first that's going to come in and say it's everybody else."Garrett is a film guru, a film junkie. He's a student of the game. He's the first one to show up and the last to leave, and that's what you want from your quarterback and your leader. He's a great role model and somebody for everyone else to emulate his work ethic, and if they do that, they're going to be very successful, just like he's going to be in life."Though their season came to an end with a 42-7 loss to Schuylkill Haven, Perschy and the Blue Bombers have created a legacy that will persist long after Saturday's final whistle."There was a tremendous amount of change," said Walkowiak. "There was definitely a lot of growth and a lot of maturity, and that's a credit to our senior leadership, and a credit to the whole team for never giving in. It would have been easy to pack things up when we were 0-3, but they kept on coming to practice. They kept on showing up and everyday we just kept on getting better."It's a long season. It's a journey, and it's a process, really. Football is a process and winning is a process. You have to do everything fundamentally (well) week in and week out to establish that. The kids did a great job this year of fighting back and fighting through adversity."