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The Pennsbury Falcons football program, one of the area’s most tradition-rich programs, is turning the page to their next chapter. It is being written by someone who already knows the ending matters.
John Greiner, a 1993 Pennsbury graduate and 26-year history teacher at the high school, will be the author of the next era of Falcon football, Pennsbury announced recently. The new head coach has been around the block, starting his coaching career at Pennsbury middle schools before working his way up to the high school level.
“I actually first started coaching girls' softball with Joe Lelinski down at Pennwood [Middle School], and that's how I got my start in coaching,” Greiner said. “I just worked my way up — coached with Coach [Galen] Snyder for 15 years, who showed me the ropes in terms of mentoring me how to run a program, and then went out to Bristol Borough as a head coach, then Council Rock North, and then it was at Bristol Borough two years as an assistant, and then here I am.”
New PHS Falcons Head Coach John Greiner
Photo credit: Blair Greiner
The Levittown native posted a 31-18 record as the head coach at Bristol Borough in his four years with the program. Greiner then took the helm at Council Rock North, where he recorded a 13-31 stint from 2019-23, a program that was a combined 4-45 in the three seasons prior to his arrival and two seasons after he left the team. Now Greiner returns to the place where he grew up, graduated from, and began his teaching and coaching career. Not coaching in the district where he worked sometimes made him feel disconnected from the school community.
“I think the toughest thing is the fact that if something would happen… I did not know about it,” Greiner said. “The unknown, I guess, in terms of the daily atmosphere of the school… that was difficult.”
Greiner is stepping into a historic program with high expectations. However, he enters facing some turbulence. Pennsbury went through a tough, 1-9 season in 2025. The two years before, the Falcons hovered around .500 all fall, underperforming throughout the way. There is pressure for Greiner to walk in and turn it around following Snyder, who leaves behind 17 years, divided into two stints, of league and district titles. Expectations remain high, something Greiner views not as pressure but as validation.
“There are high expectations because people care,” Greiner said. “If people didn’t care, there wouldn’t be expectations… You don’t run away from it.”
Greiner views the pressure surrounding Pennsbury not as a burden, but as evidence of a community invested in the program and its success.
With this, the CEO-style head coach is looking at the future, and it starts in the weight room.
Galen Snyder was the head coach of the Pennsbury Falcons for 17 years, spanning over two stints. He stepped down following the 2025 season.
Photo credit: Pennsbury School District
“We’re not looking at the past,” Greiner said. “Our focus is the here and now, what we’re doing today, this week. Looking back doesn’t help anybody. Be where your feet are. Right now, our feet are in the weight room.”
This mindset signals a program-wide reset, one that prioritizes hard work and rituals over dwelling on the previous season’s results.
Greiner has some plans to amend the program. It includes the return of some offseason camps for elementary, middle, and high schoolers; a different look offensively, where Pennsbury plans to look and take advantage of what the defense is giving them; and building trust and confidence back into his players.
“It doesn't matter the scheme… If you don't have the trust and the confidence of the people around you, I don't care what you do in life; you're not going to be successful,” Greiner said. “That's the biggest thing that I'm preaching to myself and to the assistant coaches. And also, people respect the fact that if you put the hard work in, then at that point in time, you're going to get the fruits of your labor out of it.”
Greiner, a multi-sport athlete during his time at Pennsbury, welcomes the idea of his student-athletes participating in multiple sports. He played football, basketball, and baseball in high school. It is an experience he believes keeps athletes engaged, conditioned, and competitive. Greiner says the skill ultimately strengthens the football program once players return to the weight room and offseason grind.
“You embrace the high school experience by doing as many things as possible,” Greiner said. “When they come back, you’ve got to get their focus back in on the football program.”
John Greiner spent four years as Bristol Borough's head coach before taking on that same role at Council Rock North for five seasons.
Photo credit: Fire Dawg Images
Greiner is also looking to institute a phrase he learned from defensive line coach Cliff Stout, a former Falcon football player and 1974 graduate who began coaching football for the Falcons in 1992: CPR, which stands for consistency, perseverance, and relentlessness.
“We’re going to preach the idea of consistency,” Greiner said. “And then perseverance… And the R is relentlessness.”
Greiner believes those traits apply beyond football, serving as a foundation for how his players handle adversity on and off the field.
“We all have negative things that happen in our life. Are we going to dwell on it? And then adjust to it? And overcome it?... So, like I said, the CPR aspect of anything in life. It can revive anything if you have those three things working in concert with the other.”
Greiner will look to revive the Falcons and bring them back to the glory days, which he was involved with as an assistant. He knows the taste of victory; he knows the feelings Falcon fans have. He seeks to bring the orange and black back, and it starts with engagement and presence within the football program and the community.
“One of the things that is special about the Pennsbury community is it's not a transient community,” Greiner said. “People come here, they move here, and you have generational families that live here. You have to utilize that to the best of your advantage. If you can convince the roots that they're getting the water, they're going to stay here, and they're going to embrace the football program.
“But not only embrace the football program, the things that come with it, the academics, and what we offer in terms of the theater program, the jazz band, the marching band. So all those things work in concert with each other. That's what we have to realize, and that's what, especially as a coach, that we're mentoring our students, we're mentoring our athletes. But in the process of doing that, we're bringing along the families as well.”
Written by PHS Senior Benjamin Goldstein
Benjamin is a senior at Pennsbury High School and has covered Pennsbury sports throughout his four years at the high school. He is an intern for WBCB, providing color commentary and stats during Pennsbury football, basketball, and baseball games. Benjamin is also the lead broadcaster for Pennsbury Athletic Interns, acting as the play-by-play voice of Falcon athletics, along with mentoring underclassmen. Benjamin is also the founder of Philly Sports Reports, a website he created at nine-years-old covering Philadelphia sports. Following graduation, Benjamin plans to attend college studying journalism and hopes to pursue a career in sports media.