The season did not go as planned for an Upper Dublin football team with its sights set on defending its District One 5A title, but the Cardinals stuck together through it all. (The article below is sponsored by Upper Dublin Football Booster Club.)
Mike Slivka and his fellow seniors were looking to write a happy ending to their high school football careers. Many of them had played together since they were youngsters, and this was going to their year.
The script was going exactly as planned.
Upper Dublin won its first three games, and Slivka, the team’s veteran quarterback, was working his magic behind center, throwing for six touchdowns while the Cardinals put up over 100 points in those three games combined.
In a rout of Hatboro-Horsham in UD’s third game of the season, Slivka tweaked his knee, but it wasn’t cause for concern.
“It was relieving because it seemed like all the work I put in during the offseason was for the better, and that’s what prevented me from a serious injury,” he said.
A week later against Penn Charter on the second drive of the game, Slivka rolled out, and his knee gave out. There was no contact, and this time there was cause for concern.
“I didn’t even plant,” he said. “At that point, I knew I was done.
“It’s kind of cliché if you really think about it – high school quarterback (torn) ACL. It sucked really badly.”
It was a devastating blow not only for Slivka but for an entire Upper Dublin team with its sights set on defending a pair of titles it owned – the SOL American Conference crown as well as the District One 5A title.
“Seeing my team go out and having to watch from the sidelines, it hurt really bad,” Slivka said. “I don’t even know how to explain it. It just sucked. After that happened, everything went downhill.”
Downhill hardly covers it. The Flying Cardinals lost three straight games, and the injuries began to mount.
If there was a low point, it came in the game against Quakertown – the third loss in a string of three - when the Cardinals lost back-up quarterback Tristan Cairnes to an injury. Senior captain Logan Heim also went down with a high ankle and shin sprain.
“I just felt really bad for the team because Mike and our other captain (junior Micah Bootman) were already out, and I was the only captain left playing,” Heim said. “I remember as soon I came off the field I was like, ‘No, I can’t be hurt now because my team needs me.’”
Also in the Quakertown game, Bazel Brady suffered a freak injury to his hand. Heim was sidelined for two weeks, Brady was lost for the season.
“I was diving for a fumble – I believe I got squeezed between the guy and the turf,” Brady said. “I broke three of the bones in my hand and one was displaced.”
Brady had surgery a week later and will return for his senior basketball season, but that did not soften the blow.
“I was devastated,” he said. “It was my first year ever playing football, and I loved it. It was the best decision to play.
“It just stinks going out like that. Like Mike said, being on the sidelines watching - it’s just hard to watch and not be able to play.”
Bootman missed three games with a high ankle sprain, joining the growing list of sidelined players.
“One game we didn’t even have captains that were dressed so I sent out a whole other fleet of captains,” UD coach Bret Stover said. “Being a smaller school, we just don’t have that depth – some of the bigger schools might be able to just pop another kid in. We’re moving three or four kids around. Then we’re moving three or four more kids around out of position.
“My staff did an awesome, awesome job puzzling this thing all year long because we didn’t know a lot of times if we were going to have kids back until game day. If they weren’t back, we had to plan for that. They did an awesome job of putting this together – I say week by week. It was actually play by play. It was on the fly. Our trainer also does a great job. If anything, I would give Katie Bartosik the MVP. She puzzled everything with us.
“I know we as a staff learned a lot about going back to grind and basics. When you have the run of players we had, you get where we were – we were 0-11 at one point – and how hard we had to grind to get out of 0-11. We weren’t 0-fer this year, but we worked just as hard as when we were in the 0-11 season because you want to continue the success.”
Life without Slivka
There’s no mistaking the Cardinals’ season turned when Slivka was lost for the season.
“It was just devastating because we all know how much work Mike put in and how much he wanted to play with us and be with us on the field,” Heim said.
“He’s a great leader and just losing that leader is hard,” Brady said.
“I have been playing football with Mike since township all the way up through high school,” senior Ryan Jamison said. “That sucked.”
A first team all-league selection as a junior, Slivka was a unanimous first team choice at quarterback this season despite playing just three games.
“We said - if it was 2015, it was Ryan Stover, if it was ’13, it was (John) Derr, and if it was ’16, it was (Justin) Horn,” Stover said of the UD quarterbacks who preceded Slivka. “If we lose any of those pieces, it changes the whole complexion.
“If you look back at those years, you can say, ‘We were really lucky. We dodged the bullet in those years, and it caught up to us this year.’ Mike covered a lot of shortcomings that we have.”
It would be easy for everyone involved to say ‘would have, should have, could have’ about a season that didn’t turn out the way they’d hoped.
“I’m not going to say anything about that,” Slivka said. “Coach told us – ‘No one is going to feel sorry for you. You have to keep playing.’
“It sucks seeing other teams win, but I wish nothing but the best for those kids that are going to go on to the next level and go further in the playoffs. I’ll probably go to some games.”
“Mike puts it in perspective,” Stover said. “He’s a well-grounded kid – the humblest of humblest, but the hardest working also.
“When he speaks, everyone listens, and as hard as it was to lose him on offense, he’s just as important on defense.”
Upper Dublin’s season ended with a District One 5A opening round loss to West Chester Rustin, the same Rustin team the Cardinals defeated last year for the district crown.
“The Rustin coach sent his entire team to Mike on the sidelines to show respect,” Stover said. “He knew if he plays it’s an entirely different game.”
A silver lining in dark times
Slivka can’t talk about the devastating injuries without turning the conversation to a decidedly positive tone.
“The good thing was I got to see how many great people I had alongside me to help me along and make sure I was okay,” the senior quarterback said. “First off, let’s talk about the coaches. I don’t even know how to explain the relationships I had with the coaches, but the fact that they’re almost great friends with me now, the fact that they took it outside of football and told me I’ve got a future – I’ve got people around me to hug me when I was crying or just calm me down and keep me going. It was just awesome having coaches that cared about you even if you couldn’t play for them.
“In school, all the teachers felt for me, talked to me – ‘You’re going to make it through this, it’s going to be okay, we’re going to be here for you.’ And having friends like these guys is just amazing. Even our parents talk about it. They never knew anyone as close as us. The fact that us being injured brought us closer – I just love these guys so much, and no matter what happened, it just made us better people.”
Slivka, who had his sights set on playing Division I football, still plans to play collegiate football, but the injury has put the recruiting process on hold. He acknowledged that the injury has forever changed his perspective.
“I guess you can look at it as it happens for a reason to make me stronger,” the senior QB said. “I have a brother (21-year-old Devon) who’s been in a wheelchair his whole life. It’s kind of given me insight into what he has to go through – although it’s not even close, but it’s given me a little insight that it’s hard, and it makes me love him more too.”
“I think there are definitely lessons,” Heim said. “As a team, we persevered a lot. We came back. I think we rallied pretty good at the end of the season.
“All the young guys stepped up. I tried to keep everyone up, I tried to teach everyone during practice and did a little extra helping people outside of practice responsibilities on defense. I think it made us a lot closer – we hung out a lot, kept everyone up. Everyone tried to stay together.”
Stover admits he’d never experienced anything quite like the season just completed.
“I’ve heard of it, I’ve never seen it,” the UD coach said. “You thought, ‘It’s going to end,’ and it just kept coming, and it just kept coming.
“We played a lot of kids. Maybe the good thing will be next year because we’ve got kids that got experience. We got kids that didn’t think they’d be on the varsity field that were on the varsity field.
“The kids banded together, they didn’t complain, they didn’t make excuses. They went to practice with their hats on every day and they worked hard. The staff did the same thing. I’m proud of that piece that they were able to pull it together, win five games, make it into playoffs and keep that streak alive for us. I think the District One championship from last year will shine through, but I think they learned more this year about themselves and each other than they did off of winning.”
Memories – they’ve got good ones
To a person, the players say they will walk away from Upper Dublin football with the best of memories.
“Last year was awesome,” Slivka said. “I think that will be one of my best memories. I think this will stick with me my whole life because I’ll probably have a scar, but I think it will make me a better football player in the future. I’m already in the weight room, I’m already doing PT. Once I can do full stuff, I’ll continue to get where I want to be.
“I’m just glad I got to play those three games and (team camp at) Millersville, all the 5:30 practices that I got to spend with those guys. I never knew that Thursday night on Sept. 19 was going to be my last practice with my best friends.”
“Every little thing gets me back to football,” Heim said. “Reminds me of memories we’ve all had as brothers and teammates. Just everything reminds me of good times.”
For Brady, a basketball player who had never played football until this year, it’s an experience he wouldn’t have wanted to miss.
“Just the bond - there are kids I didn’t know, I didn’t even talk to, and I’m just so much closer with them and talk to them so much more,” Brady said. “It really is a family. The season is over, but it’s not going to stop us from being brothers and family.”
Jamison had the opportunity to play high school football with his two siblings. As a sophomore, he played with his older brother Jack.
“I’ll never forget the last game coming off the field he’s hugging me – that was cool,” he said. “This year I got to play two games with my younger brother (Cael). He made the first tackle of the year, and that was really cool to see. “
Cael Jamison added his name to the list of injured when he suffered a fracture in his back and was sidelined for the year.
“All these guys that I’ve met – I moved here in third grade and the first thing I did was I started to play football,” Jamison said. “That’s the only reason I had friends. It just means so much to me. It’s going to be really tough without it. These guys are going to be my brothers for life. Just the lessons from the season – you have to push through the bad times to get back to the good ones.”
One of the best times, according to Jamison, was closing the regular season with a 16-14 win over Upper Moreland.
“Last year we won a district championship, but the happiest I’ve ever been after winning a football game was our last regular season game when we beat Upper Moreland because that was for these guys, that was for the guys that couldn’t play,” Jamison said. “That was really special. I’m never going to forget that.”
Stover credited the team’s 19 seniors for holding the team together.
“The senior class came into the season with high expectations coming off a District One championship that many of them had an integral part in,” Stover said. “Even though we had lost a lot to graduation, we still returned some key pieces.
“When those key pieces got hurt, you got some of the other seniors that were thrust in the limelight into the starting positions as a result and they stepped up. I think there were lessons that they learned as sophomores and juniors in the program as far as growing up in the Upper Dublin family from youth football all the way up. All those years of having played together, I think they drew on those experiences, and when they got their shot at it, they shined.”
Seniors on this year’s squad were, front row (l-r): Logan Heim, Bazel Brady, Brian McCarry, Jason Butler, Mike Slivka, Nate Cummins, Kevin Bartholomew, Nick Freeman; second row (l-r) Scott Silk, Skyler Hackett, Ron Johnson, Aman Orlena, Adam Overton, Alec Joseph, Ryan Jamison; third row (l-r) Ki Shon, Joe Wachter, Randy Bardol, Andrew Senlick
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