Elek Erdosy will never forget “the march” in his senior 1974 football season at Northampton.

“We lined up as a brigade,” he recalled. “We lined up in height and there were about five rows. We would march about 200 yards from the high school down to the stadium. The sound of our cleats hitting the cement was really neat.

“It was something that I will never forget. It was crazy good, and you had to hear it.”

Edrosy’s memory of “the march” was one in a myriad that encapsulated the 1974 season, a year that saw the Konkrete Kids capture a share of the last Lehigh Valley League title with Slatington. Their 9-1 record stood as the most wins by a Northampton team until the 2008 team won 10 games and the 2019 squad also notched the same amount.

However, the ’74 team’s 7-1 start was only matched by the 2019 team.

“A lot us played together since Knee-Hi,” noted Erdosy, who was a defensive end/end on the team. “There are about a dozen of us that still see each other a lot.

“We were a heavy senior squad, but the turning point was when we were juniors. We got off to a 1-4 start and the coach (head coach Lou Wolf) made changes to the lineup where he had nine juniors and two sophomores.

“We went 4-1 in our last five games and finished .500. It worked and it helped us the following season.”

In 1974, the Kids opened the season with a 14-6 win over Berks County’s Gov. Mifflin, before they avenged a previous season loss against Phillipsburg with a 16-0 shutout.

They suffered a 7-6 loss to Emmaus the following week, but bounced back with a tight, 8-7 win over Whitehall.

The next week, the Kids bounced back from a 13-0 halftime deficit at Slatington to register a key, 18-13 victory.

“We were down 13-0 at halftime against Slatington and we weren’t playing well,” recalled Gene Tanzosh, who was a halfback/cornerback. “When we went in at halftime, I and few other players made some speeches.

“We came out and shut them out the rest of the way. That’s when we knew it was going to be a good season for us.”

“I remember when we went in at halftime we asked the coaches to leave and we talked it out,” added Erdosy about the Slatington game. “We came out and scored three touchdowns. I think that game turned it for us.”

From there, the Kids outscored their next four regular-season opponents by a 91-9 margin with a pair of shutouts. They did have a hard-fought, 7-6 home win over Nazareth and moved on to a 24-14 victory over Catasauqua on Thanksgiving.

“Nazareth was a tough game,” said Tanzosh. “They were pretty confident against us because they had beaten Parkland the week before, and Parkland had won 20 games in a row. That was one of the better games of the season, but we held tough.”

For the year, the Kids scored 177 points and allowed a paltry 55.

“The key for us was our defense,” stated Tanzosh. “I was slowed a little on offense because I pulled a hammy (hamstring) the third game into the season, but I still played defense. Phillipsburg wouldn’t run to our one side.”

“We could put a lot of people in the box and it was tough to block,” added Andy Onkotz, who was named an all-state choice at linebacker. “We got better as the year went on.

“We were good, and we worked well together. We practiced like champions, and our coaching staff was very composed. We knew we would have a good year.”

Fullback Donnie Arndt led the league in scoring with 11 touchdowns and four extra points. He and Tanzosh spearheaded the team’s rushing attack, as the Kids primarily kept the ball on the ground. Arndt (11 touchdowns) and Tanzosh (5) accounted for 16 of the Kids’ 26 scores.

Junior quarterback Joe Augustine threw only three touchdown passes, and he scored three on the ground.

“We went to a more prostyle offense in our senior year,” said Tanzosh. “We had been running the short punt offense. We did run some short punt because it always kept the defense guessing to see who was going to get the ball.

“When we went to the pro-set, we ran the Power-I. That was OK and it took us a while to get it going.”

“What also helped us was that the system was the same,” noted Erdosy. “It started at Knee-Hi and ran all the way through. We really didn’t have to adjust much and knew what was there.”

Steve Paukovits, a tackle, compared his experience to the song “The Boys of Fall” by country music star Kenny Chesney that describes his experiences growing up with the game.

“As the year went on, we all clicked better,” he said. “There was a lot of talent on this team. We all got along well and truly played as a team. We still stay in touch and we know we have each other’s backs. That still means a lot.”

Paukovits also recalled the support from the community.

“The stadiums were packed,” he stressed. “There was so much school support. Northampton and other schools had big bands at that time. People would come from all over to see a good game.”

“There could be 6,000, 8,000 or 10,00 people at a game,” added Tanzosh. “Thanksgiving game drew even more people. There were deep on the track. It was a great feeling to play in front of those types of crowds.”

Over the past two years, middle linebacker Larry Bush, tackle Jeff Christoff, and end Jeff Gober passed away.

“Those guys will be missed and were big parts of the team,” said Tanzosh. “We were all taken back, and we never want to lose track of what they contributed.”

Several members went on to collegiate careers. Tanzosh played at the University of Delaware, Erdosy went to Fork Union Academy and then to East Stroudsburg, Onkotz played football and baseball at Penn State, Arndt had a wrestling career at Pitt, Andy Pisulak played at Lycoming, Frank Deutsch played baseball at Penn State, Jerry Ritchie (a junior starter) played at Carnegie-Mellon, and Christoff played at Rutgers.

It has been 45 years since the team had their magical run, and the connections between the players still run deep.

“We still have remained good friends today,” said Tanzosh. “We have golf outings and other types of gatherings. We would have coach Wolf and the rest of the coaches also would join us when they could. They would ask us ‘who’s who?’ because of how guys changed over the years.”

“I’ll never forgot those games,” added Onkotz. “It was something, and my best experience in sports.”