Dave Franek, coach, and Mason Franek, student-athlete, finish the final chapter in a long awaited story of a father-son duo on the gridiron
By the time Mason Franek reached high school, he knew the football locker room better than most of the coaches. He’d been tagging along with his dad since he was barely tall enough to see over the shoulder pads. So when he cut straight through the coaches’ office as a sophomore, slipping between grown men mid-meeting while eighty players looped the long way around, the room went quiet.
But for Mason, it wasn’t rebellion, or too much confidence that led him to cut through that room. It was instinct.
“He’s been doing this forever,” Mr. Dave Franek said.
“Muscle memory,” Mason Franek laughed.
And that’s really what Mason’s senior season was, a final year built on routines, expectations, shortcuts, and the shared patterns of growing up in a program with his father.
When Mr. Dave Franek began teaching at 22, a professor told him something he never forgot, “They’re not your friends.” That short, simple sentence shaped every part of his career, his classroom, his practices, and his expectations.
Dave realized that keeping that statement might not be so black and white when it comes to coaching his son and son’s friends.
“I’m here to be a teacher, I’m here to be a coach,” he said. “I’ve been doing this so long, I’ve developed relationships with former athletes and students, and their families, you know, after they graduate. So, it really wasn’t too hard to have that same transition.”
Coaching a child’s football team, while also balancing the parental instincts, can be challenging for anyone, but Dave said he found a way to keep his “dad side” hidden.
“I do really keep it in check. Like, for example, he got hurt this past fall and I didn’t walk out onto the field. He rarely stays down, thank God. But there have been a couple times the head coach goes out, the trainers go out.”
This Fall, the unthinkable happened when Mason took a huge hit in the Round 2 district playoff game against Souderton.
“[Mason] did get hurt this year then he had to go to the ER. The “dad” side did have to come out at that point to support my wife who was on our way to the ER. Thank goodness the game was in hand, and I left at the end of the 3rd quarter. So, that trumped everything. Dad came out of that.”
Dave did admit that he finds himself holding Mason to a higher standard than he does for the other players.
“He’s been around [North Penn football] and he sees it and he knows the success and expectations that we have,” Dave said.
Even though they don’t share a position group, Mason finds help from his dad everywhere. At school, in the locker room, and at home.
“I like that extra coaching, like he’d always be on me. Outside the classroom, when we’re in film or practice about other stuff going over information, writing on a piece of paper. I think that little extra behind the scenes has helped me with stuff like the on field and in the classroom stuff to prepare me,” Mason said.
Mason also said that if he could go back in time and talk to his freshman-self, he’d make sure to always listen to his dad.
“I’d tell my past self to just trust what he says,” Mason said.
“Have skin like an armadillo,” Dave joked.
“Yeah exactly. Just listen to whatever he says. He’s the coach, listen to the coach,” Mason said.
Last season ended one win shy of a district title. All year, expectations hovered. And in his senior season, Mason was part of that next big step, winning that district title.
“When we got there, right after that Penridge game, it was just like an unlocking feeling,” Mason said. “That we knew that we could get back here and win it, and we really went through it together.”
Dave admitted one image replayed through his mind almost daily: him and Mason, together, holding the District championship trophy.
And the image became reality when North Penn won the District Championship against Pennridge, after having lost to them earlier in the season.
“I had that picture in my head for 365 days,” Dave explained. “And it happened. I feel like that was what we knew; that was the goal along, and we shared that goal together.”
If you were to ask Mason what he’d miss most about sharing a field with his dad, he’d laugh at first because he does remember some of the tougher moments.
But in reality, this fall marked the end of something both familiar and unspoken. Mason won’t hear his dad’s voice across the field anymore. Dave won’t glance over to the offense to check on his son. And the muscle memory that guided them through the same hallways for so many years will shift to something else.
“It was great having him out there,” Mason said. “I’m not going to have this after high school.”
What they shared this year wasn’t about play calls or positions. It was continuity, years of muscle memory, as Mason would put it, finally meeting a moment neither of them had to imagine anymore.
This article appears courtesy of a student journalist at "The Knight Crier" at North Penn High School. To read more stories like this, visit https://www.knightcrier.org/.
