(WHTM) — The 2025 season was a bit of a roller coaster for East Pennsboro football.

After starting the season with a loss, the Panthers rallied off four straight victories highlighted by a 16-9 overtime win against Trinity. But then the script flipped. The Panthers lost four of their last five games to finish the season 5-5. Now with the new season set to begin, the Panthers are determined to bounce back in 2026.

“We prepared pretty well last year,” head coach John Denniston said. “Most games we had good weeks of practice and got ourselves in some close games. There were some games maybe we could have put away or we should have maybe started a little bit earlier. So I think those are lessons, how you’re preparing and how you play the full 48 minutes. But I think one of the lessons was there too, is you can really do everything right and you’re still playing against a team that’s trying to beat you. And sometimes you gotta be able to accept those results if you’ve done everything right. We were a pretty young team last year, learned a lot, we banked a lot of experience, so the expectations are really, really high this year.”

“Going into week one and this year as a whole, composure is a big part of it” wide receiver and linebacker Kolton Keys said. “Being able to stay level-headed throughout the entire game. I know Coach Denniston is a big preacher of you’re going to face adversity throughout a game no matter if it’s good adversity or bad adversity and you just have to be able to stay level-headed throughout the entire game.”

“Us as seniors, we are ready to go like we are ready to go week one, game one,” wide receiver and cornerback Nasiere Ingram said. “We ready to go.”

Week one for the panthers will be at home when they host Northeastern on Saturday, August 29th.

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