Gavin Sidwar and Brett Gordon have an inside joke. It’s been going on for the past month.
“The closer he gets, we might start running the ball more,” Gordon said. “To hold on as long as we possibly can.”
Sidwar, sitting in an office at La Salle College High School on Thursday morning, shot his coach an incredulous look.
“I’ll just check out of it,” he replied with a grin.
Sidwar, 18, is just 48 yards and six touchdowns shy of setting a new school record. The current benchmarks — 6,837 yards, 84 touchdowns — were set nearly 30 years ago by Gordon, who was the team’s starting quarterback in the mid-1990s.
This has led to some good-natured ribbing (all of it in jest). If anything, Gordon sees his overlap with Sidwar as serendipitous. He feels lucky not just to be at La Salle to witness his pupil make history, but also helping him get there.
And, barring injury, he will get there. Gordon has no doubt about that.
He’s been following Sidwar’s rise through La Salle’s record books for years, long before he was hired as the school’s head coach.
Gordon watched from the stands, as a supportive alumni, and was struck by how physically gifted Sidwar was as a passer.
But he could also tell something was off. There was one game, in particular, that stood out to him: Sept. 1, 2023, when La Salle was hosting Malvern Prep. Sidwar looked lost. He wasn’t reading coverages and was taking sacks. It didn’t make sense to Gordon at the time, given the quarterback’s skill set.
» READ MORE: High school football: Cardinal O’Hara off to a hot start; three District 1 6A teams remain unbeaten
So, shortly after Gordon was hired as head coach in January 2024, he called Sidwar into his office.
He turned on a projector, and played footage of the Malvern Prep game. The coach asked Sidwar to talk through each play; to explain what he saw on the field, and what he had been thinking.
Sidwar didn’t have many answers.
“We didn’t really have a plan,” he said. “We just rolled up.”
After the film session had ended, the coach made a pledge to his pupil.
“We’re going to fix this,” he told him. “You’ll never feel this way on a football field again.”
‘He needed Brett’
Sidwar’s first two years at La Salle were difficult. He was the starting quarterback from his freshman year on, which presented a lot of opportunities, but the overall program wasn’t the best fit. The processes in place — how they practiced, their offseason routine, their culture — weren’t resonating. So, after his sophomore year, the quarterback began exploring other options.
Until Gordon was hired.
Sidwar’s father, Bryan, heard about the head coach through La Salle alumni. As a player, Gordon led La Salle to two Catholic League championships in 1995 and 1996. The team won 32 straight games over his tenure there. For years, Gordon’s mark of 84 career touchdowns was a state record.
Gordon’s late father, Drew, was also a longtime head coach at La Salle, and guided his team to six Catholic League championships from 2006-14. Brett worked as a quarterbacks coach at Villanova in 2003, a wide receivers coach at Lafayette in the spring of 2004, and was a defensive graduate assistant at Ole Miss for the 2004-05 season.
He worked as his father’s assistant coach from 2005-14, before returning as head coach in 2024.
“Many alumni throughout Gavin’s tenure always said that he needed Brett,” Bryan said. “And they were right. He did need Brett.”
There is an irony to all of this. Sidwar decided to stay at La Salle because of Gordon. Over the past two years, the head coach has unlocked a new gear in his quarterback, allowing him to inch closer to those 6,837 yards and 84 touchdowns.
But if Gordon hadn’t been hired, Sidwar would’ve gone elsewhere — and the coach’s records would’ve been preserved.
» READ MORE: La Salle’s Joey O’Brien is a prized two-way football recruit who could be the best to come through the area
The coach isn’t losing sleep over it. He didn’t know the record by heart (“6,800 and something,” he said) and wasn’t sure of exactly how far away his quarterback was.
He’s more proud of the progress they’ve made on the mental side of the game. Sidwar always had athleticism, arm strength, and accuracy, but lacked a deep understanding of football strategy.
Gordon was uniquely qualified to help him with this. When he was a quarterback at La Salle, then Villanova from 1999-2002, the future head coach was seen by Division I programs as undersized. He didn’t have the same height and build that Sidwar has, so he worked twice as hard as everybody else — both physically and mentally.
He knew that Sidwar — a Missouri pledge — would need more than physicality to thrive at the collegiate level.
“My thought was to take his physical attributes, and teach him the mental pieces that made me successful,” Gordon said. “The sky is the limit from there.”
Shortly after the coach was hired, Gordon and Sidwar began to have one-on-one meetings. They would meet two or three times a week to break down film, and go through different progressions, concepts, and coverages.
Gordon tried to make it as simple as possible for the quarterback. Rather than just explaining what the concepts were, he delineated why they were important. He didn’t want Sidwar to just memorize words — he wanted him to comprehend them, thoroughly.
The coach went beyond that. During practice, he’d ask his quarterback what coverage they were in. Last winter, he had Sidwar take a pop quiz, of sorts. The 18-year-old walked into Gordon’s office, expecting a film session, and found four coaches sitting in front of the projector screen.
» READ MORE: What to know about the Philly area’s top football recruits in the Class of 2026
“He made me teach it,” Sidwar said. “That was tough, for sure. The routes and stuff. He would tell me a formation or a play, and I had to go up there and draw it, and tell them why, and what we would do.”
Added Gordon: “I was always taught that until you can teach something, you haven’t mastered it. It’s one thing to be able to regurgitate. But then, one day he walked in, and I said, ‘All right, jump up on the board.’”
The results speak for themselves. Sidwar threw for a career-high 31 touchdowns in 2024. He also posted career-highs in completions (220) and passing yards (2,747).
Sidwar’s completion percentage has stood at 70.4% since Gordon became his coach, compared to 64.6% during his first two seasons at La Salle.
But to Gordon, the better indicator of the quarterback’s progress is in the feedback he’s gotten from college programs.
“The best compliment I ever got was from the Missouri staff,” Gordon said, “They called me after they had a 60-minute call with him in the spring or the summer, and said it was the most impressive high school player they’ve ever spoken to about football, in general.
“To hear them say that, and to see it come to fruition on the field … he’s a complete player.”
» READ MORE: La Salle’s Grayson McKeogh made a late position switch and became the ‘left tackle of the future’
Sidwar currently has thrown for 6,789 yards and 78 touchdowns in his high school career. He could break his coach’s record as early as this Friday, when La Salle (4-0) plays Roman Catholic (2-2).
Regardless of when it happens, Gordon will be proud of his pupil, both for what he’s accomplished to date and what’s to come.
“The fact that I’m here, and in certain ways, experiencing it with him, is exciting,” Gordon said. “Getting to know him the way I have, and getting as close as we have over the last couple of years, if there’s anybody that could break it up to this point, I would want it to be him.”