First-year Avella football coach Scott Werner quickly qualified his answer.

"Well, we have 22 players on our roster," said Werner. a Whitehall resident. "But, there was a guy hurt, so we only had 21 in uniform on Saturday."

And what those kids did, what they banded together and accomplished, is something that -- even if the feeling lasted just a few hours -- superseded the agony that had been striking the program.

Before Avella's 48-14 non-conference win at Geibel on Saturday, the Eagles had lost 24 consecutive games. Prior to Saturday, Avella's last victory -- and the only bright spot of the 2003 season, a 1-8 campaign -- came against Fort Cherry on Sept. 12 of that year. That night, Avella picked up a 21-6 win against the Rangers.

That was the last time the players knew what it was like to be congratulated in a postgame locker room. That September night in '03 was the last time any Avella football player was able to stroll out after showering, knowing that they had executed the game plan with enough success to be on the correct side of the scoreboard.

So what the 21 young men who wore those Avella uniforms did on Saturday afternoon can't be overstated.

"That shows a lot about the resiliency of these kids," said Werner, a longtime youth coach in Brentwood, the town where he grew up. "For them to keep coming out here and playing hard through that losing streak shows a lot of character.

"They had one thing that had followed them around and that was the losing streak ? No, though, people can't talk about it anymore."

The book has been closed on that losing streak, but while it was on-going, could you blame anyone if they laughed a little bit when you mentioned the two words "Avella" and "football" in the same sentence?

Take last year, for example. It was, to say the least, trying.

The 0-8 season served as the first -- and last -- for Travis Miller as head coach.

Eliminating the 19-0 "nailbiter" against Burgettstown in the season finale last year, is to look at everything and quickly realize that Avella was never even close to picking up a win.

There was that 75-0 loss against Beth-Center, a 47-6 shellacking laid on Avella by West Greene and a 49-8 drilling compliments of Bishop Canevin. In one four-week span last season, Avella gave up 258 points (that's 64.5 points per game).

Werner was an assistant on last year's team and he was there for all the losses that the Eagles scuffled through.

He was there when the clock ran after the mercy rule was imposed time and time again.

He was there for the long bus rides home and the times when some of those then-juniors had to be asking themselves if they'd ever win a game during their Eagles career.

So when the Avella head coaching job came open in the offseason?

"People heard I was interested and a lot of them chuckled. They asked me if I was crazy," Werner said.

To keep everything in perspective, sure, Saturday was just one win.

But what it did for the Avella program was provide a concrete example that, through high school sports, life's lessons are easily learned.

Had those 21 kids had given up, had they said, "To heck with this," we'd be talking today about a 25-game losing streak.

Instead everyone is looking at the standings and can easily see -- and this is NOT a misprint -- that Avella is undefeated.

If you like high school sports, you have to like Avella football right now.