Penn Charter

The Germantown Academy football team learned a harsh, cruel lesson about adversity Saturday from its longtime Inter-Academic League archrival. With a crushing, season-ending 40-13 defeat to host Penn Charter, the Patriots will not soon forget the punishment they absorbed from a team that outperformed them in every phase of the game. Just two weeks after putting together their finest effort of the season in a 16-9 setback to Hun School (N.J.), the Patriots (3-6-1 overall, 0-3-1 league)

For the second straight year, Penn has landed the most valuable basketball player from the Inter-Academic League. Tim Krug, a 6-foot-7 academic standout from Penn Charter, told Quakers coach Fran Dunphy yesterday that he had selected Penn over Cornell. At Penn, Krug will join Jerome Allen, the Episcopal Academy star who won the MVP award in 1991. Krug averaged 19.1 points, 14 rebounds and 7 blocked shots for Penn Charter. He also carries a 3.5 grade-point average, according to Penn Charter coach Brian McMahon, and scored 1,360 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test.

After summers of traveling to ballparks, afternoons of firing countless backyard pitches that richocheted painfully off a patient father's shins and nights of nursing a sore arm, a high school pitcher will get a chance to become a college star. Joe Larkin, Penn Charter's lefthanded ace, signed a national letter of intent yesterday to attend Alabama on a baseball scholarship. Larkin, 17, of Media, was 8-3, with a 2.24 ERA and 72 strikeouts in 67 innings for the Inter-Ac runner-up Quakers last season.

Lefty Ervin could not have picked a better time to return to high school coaching. Ervin, the former coach at La Salle University, who is currently the coach and general manager of the Philadelphia Aces of the United States Basketball League, discovered when he got the head-coaching job at Penn Charter that he would have five players who are 6-foot-6 or taller. "It's almost like I never left the pros, huh?" mused Ervin. So pencil in Penn Charter as the favorite to dethrone Episcopal Academy and Dan Dougherty, who last year led his Churchmen to a 26-2 record and was named the Inquirer's scholastic coach of the year.

Thanks to a snafu and a snub, Penn Charter's football schedule has turned into quite a mess. Things are so screwy, the Quakers will open their season Saturday at Frankford, which they scrimmaged just last Saturday, and later will play twice against a non-league opponent, Interboro. The Inter-Ac League's other football-playing members already have notched two games each. "Yeah, we're still here. We still have a team," coach Brian McCloskey said, laughing. "People must be wondering, right?

P.J. Kane - Paul James Kane, if you must - is toying with the idea of becoming a marine biologist. Then again . . . "I might want engineering or business," he said. "I might get greedy and just want money. " These days, what Kane wants most is an outright Inter-Ac championship for Penn Charter and the school's first perfect season since 1967. Yesterday, Kane, a 5-10, 150-pound senior safety and punter, took a gigantic step toward achieving both goals as the Quakers bested visiting Haverford School, 10-9, in a game that wasn't decided until the final two minutes.

With his more famous brother in attendance, Ken Koplove produced a pitching gem for Penn Charter in a 2-1 Inter-Ac League baseball win over visiting Germantown Academy on Saturday. Mike Koplove, who last pitched for the Mariners a year ago, watched as brother Ken, a junior righty who is a Duke commit, limited the Patriots to just three hits and struck out eight in going the full seven innings. Tucker Colton's single scored pinch-runner Sam Agre to break a 1-1 tie in the sixth inning.

There are two sides to Mike McGlinchey, the towering tackle on the Penn Charter offensive line. On the field, he's feisty. He's tough. He's, shall we say, mean? "Oh, he's mean," Quakers coach Jeff Humble said. "He certainly has that chip on his shoulder. And sometimes it draws attention because he's so big, which I think is unfair at times. But he's got it. " "I'm normally a pretty laid-back, kind of nice guy off the field, and I've been known to be the one to hit people into the ground, finish blocks, and get after it out there," McGlinchey said.

TOMMY COYLE is leaving his playing roots for his coaching roots. Coyle, 73-77 over the last 13 seasons at Father Judge High, Thursday was named Penn Charter's new football coach. He replaces Jeff Humble, who stepped down after compiling a 23-26 mark in five seasons. Coyle, a 1987 graduate of Judge, got his coaching start at Penn Charter under Bill Gallagher, who's also a Judge alum ('68). He was on PC's staff for 13 seasons (also under Brian McCloskey), rising as high as defensive coordinator, before replacing the retired John "Whitey" Sullivan at Judge for the 2000 campaign.