After 33 years of putting it on the line at Mifflin, Jeff Lang to step away from football
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Come next August Jeff Lang will be at camp, toiling under the hot sun, fixing things, trying to keep things running smoothly.
Only it won’t be a football camp, as it has been for the last four decades. It’ll be at a campground in Lehighton working in the family business.
His football day are behind him now.
The 54-year-old Lang gave his Gov. Mifflin football team the news Wednesday afternoon, essentially ending his 33-year run with the Mustangs as an assistant coach and more recently as the head coach.
“I thought I’d be doing this a little bit longer,” Lang said of coaching and teaching, “but things come up in life that you’ve gotta take care of.”
His wife Holly is taking over the family business at Whippoorwill Campground and Lang is leaving education and coaching to help run the business. The 60-acre camp ground has been in the family since 1957.
Lang said he has been working there weekends the past two springs and summers; it has been a strain.
“It’s been cumbersome trying to do three full-time jobs,” he said. “Family is more important right now.”
Lang leaves behind a football family that’s been important to him for most of his adult life.
He got in on the ground floor with former head coach Mick Vecchio in 1992 and the two helped build Mifflin into a Berks football dynasty.
During Lang’s time in the program Mifflin won 14 league titles, a District 3 championship and 226 games, with two perfect regular seasons and nine seasons of 10 or more wins.
“What a great opportunity,” Lang said of coming on in Vecchio’s second season. “It’s been Mick and I for all those years. He was such a great mentor, such a great father to me for many, many years. Everything I know about coaching I owe to him.”
Lang was Vecchio’s offensive line coach for 26 seasons. He was held in such high regard by that he was elected to the Berks County Football Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2012, one of the few assistant coaches ever afforded such an honor.
Lang was Mifflin’s head coach for seven seasons, finishing with a 51-26 record and the highest winning percentage (.662) in program history.
He was named interim head coach just weeks before the 2016 season when Vecchio took a medical sabbatical. The Mustangs went 10-2 and won the Berks Football League Section 1 title; Lang was named Berks Coach of the Year.
Vecchio returned as head coach for the 2017 season. Lang took over for good in 2018 after Vecchio announced his retirement.
He led the Mustangs to three straight Section 1 titles, from 2019-21, and to a 24-1 record in league play before Mifflin returned to the Lancaster-Lebanon League for the 2022 season.
Things haven’t gone so well the past two seasons, the Mustangs finishing with losing records in back-to-back seasons for the first time in 20 years. They were 5-6 this season after losing to Pleasant Valley last week in an Eastern Conference playoff game.
Before recent seasons Lang enjoyed a great run. Lang was the head coach for a pair of 10-win seasons, including the program’s only District 3 championship, in 2020.
That team, spearheaded by Penn State recruit Nick Singleton, set a Berks scoring record by averaging 54.5 points per game. It’s winning margin of 39.9 points is second-highest in Berks history. They weren’t stopped until the state semifinals and a wild 48-44 loss to Pine-Richland.
Mifflin went unbeaten in 2021 until the District 3 Class 5A championship game, when it was upset by Exeter.
Lang’s 2021 team was ranked No. 1 in the state in Class 5A for much of the season, a first for the program.
The picture wasn’t always so rosy in Shillington. The Mustangs struggled for much of their first decade under Vecchio and Lang before finding the right formula for a success.
Lang says his confidence never wavered, even after a 1-10 finish in 1993 or a 1-9 record in 2003.
“It was a struggle, but getting to know Mick, working closely with him, I knew what kind of man he was, his values and what he believed in and how hard-working he was,” Lang said, “and I knew eventually with the right situation (we would turn it around). I give credit to Mick and the administration to put things in place that provided for our success.”
The Mustangs enjoyed many huge victories during Lang’s tenure.
They mercy-ruled Wilson in a 2006 District 3 semifinal, becoming the first Berks team to beat the Bulldogs twice in the same season.
They beat Northampton in 2004 to win an Eastern Conference championship, a victory Vecchio always credits for launching the program into a higher orbit.
The biggest may have come in 2017 when they knocked off unbeaten and nationally ranked Harrisburg in a district final at Severance Field – the final high school game for future NFL star Micah Parsons.
None of those wins, Lang says, are as important to him as the relationships he made along the way.
“I coached with so many great guys,” he said. “The relationships I built with the assistant coaches and the players are just phenomenal. In the end, I’m still a line coach. I did it as a head coach. I love coaching the offensive line and the relationships I built with some of those guys, working with them all summer long. . . I was able to get their attention and have some fun with them.”
