The Pennridge football captains addressed the Quakertown student body at a pep rally one day before the 1970 Thanksgiving Day game.

After fellow captains Phil Vanderstine and Don Fisher spoke in the Quakertown gym, starting quarterback Jeff Hollenbach turned up the heat.

"I said, 'We're coming into Quakertown tomorrow (and) if Pennridge loses, you're all invited to my house for Thanksgiving Day dinner,'" Hollenbach recalled.

At the same time, Quakertown captains Ken Schroy, Jeff Barndt, Tom Schlichter and Todd Youngblood were talking to the Pennridge students in the school's Perkasie gym.

"It went well. What are you going to say to them? They're going to boo you. It was fun," said Schroy, laughing.

Word of Hollenbach's remarks "pretty much went around the school once he said that," according to Schroy, the lone NFL player from Quakertown.

Pennridge entered the game 6-1 in the Bux-Mont League and would win the title outright by beating Quakertown, which was 5-1-1 in the league. The Panthers would tie Hatboro-Horsham (6-1-1) for first place with a victory.

Hollenbach said he hadn't prepared anything beforehand and "I was a pretty arrogant 17-year-old and thought we could win that game" coming off of a 27-0 victory over Souderton — the Rams' third shutout of the season — in which the Pennridge defense limited the Big Red to negative-33 yards rushing in the mud.

He quickly learned that wasn't the case.

Led by senior fulback Jeff Barndt's four touchdowns and three 2-point conversions, as well as future New York Jets safety Ken Schroy scoring the first two TDs, Quakertown rolled to a 66-28 victory at Alumni Field.

The point total is the highest in the 92 Thanksgiving Day matchups and the most in school history, as is the Panthers' 50 first-half points. Quakertown was so dominant that it converted six of nine 2-point conversions, ran for 299 yards and averaged 9.5 yards per rush, thanks mostly to Barndt (22 carries for 243 yards, 11.5 average) and Schroy (11 for 139, 12.6). The prolific Panthers scored an astounding 286 points in their last six games (47.7 average) of 1970, surpassing 50 points four times.

Upset at how his final high school contest turned out, Hollenbach didn't think about his confident statement at Quakertown the day before until the end of the game when he heard some Quakertown fans say "Here we come, Hollenbach. Here we come."

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During dessert after Thanksgiving dinner at the family's home in the Highland Terrace section of Perkasie, Hollenbach heard car horns, but it didn't immediately dawn on him what was happening. When he realized, he told mother Maggie what he said at Quakertown. "You did what?" she replied.

"I remember taking out pretzels, soda and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups (to the Quakertown students that stopped by)," he said. "They were giving us a hard time, which they deserved to."

Perhaps the ultimate insult was some of the six or seven carloads of Panthers' faithful had Hollenbach put a big 'Q' surrounded by '70 71' in blue (Quakertown's color) crepe paper on the big back window of the 1966 Plymouth Barracuda that belonged to his dad Charles "Bud" Hollenbach, a Pennridge teacher and longtime assistant coach. There was also '66-28' in crepe paper on the trunk. A large photo showing at least 18 Quakertown students standing around the car with Hollenbach, wearing his green letterman's jacket with hands in his pants pockets, appeared in the 1971 Quakertown yearbook.

"I know some of them took him up on it," Schroy said. "… I didn't think it was a real big deal."

Quakertown hosts Thursday's 93rd Thanksgiving Day meeting, dating back to 1930, with Pennridge at 10:15 a.m. The Rams lead the series 58–29–5.

In an interesting twist, Hollenbach, later the Pennridge coach for 13 years (going 113-47 with five championships) and now the mayor of Perkasie, joined Frank Prusch, the Quakertown coach in 1970, as the offensive coordinator at Palisades for the 1995 season.

Perhaps the biggest silver lining for Hollenbach occurred two weeks after the Thanksgiving defeat.

Sitting in social studies class late in the school day, he was called down to the office and didn't know why.

"There was a gentleman in a coat and tie who said, 'I'm John Nelson, (assistant) football coach Dartmouth,'" Hollenbach said. "'I want to talk to you about coming to play football at Dartmouth.'"

Hollenbach asked how Nelson knew about him and found out Prusch had been showing Nelson, who was interested in some Quakertown players, the film of the Thanksgiving Day game and noticed Hollenbach, who had thrown for 255 yards on 23-for-38 passing in the one-sided defeat. Hollenbach was intrigued with the idea of playing for head coach Bob Blackman and Dartmouth.

Fast forward to the spring and, when the Illinois job opens up, Blackman gets it. Pennridge grad Jake Crouthamel, who babysat Hollenbach and younger brother Mark, succeeded Blackman at Dartmouth. Hollenbach, who had also been accepted at Army West Point, considered all three schools but chose Illinois, where he started at quarterback in 1973 and '74.

If not for the Quakertown game, Hollenbach probably wouldn't have played football in the Big Ten Conference.

As for his bold statement, it still hasn't been forgotten 52 years later.

"I want to say over the years, I've had 50 Quakertown people come up to me and say, 'I was at your house,'" Hollenbach said. "I've heard from lots of people, (including when I) show my credit card at Walmart or something like that. They say, 'Are you the Hollenbach that invited everybody to dinner?'"

Tom Moore: tmoore@couriertimes; @TomMoorePhilly

This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Still talking about this Pennridge-Quakertown Thanksgiving moment 52 years later