Right in the center of it all was Margaret “Peg” Berguson, the person whose memory will be forever etched in the lore of the rivalry, as her name dons the trophy awarded to the winner of the first non-tournament meeting between the two teams annually.

Peg was a longtime beloved Spanish teacher at Wellsboro High School and her four sons — Jeff, Mark, Tim and Luke — were mainstays in the Tiger basketball program for nearly a decade. Those four boys were a part of some of Mansfield’s greatest teams with multiple district titles, nearly a half-dozen state playoff wins, a PIAA Elite Eight appearance in 2007 with Mark as a senior being a crucial role player and Tim emerging as a force late in the season.

Teaching at one school district and having kids in another is not in and of itself special. But, anyone that knew Peg Berguson knew that special was not a word that went nearly far enough to describe her and her impact on others. She suddenly passed away on Feb. 4, 2013, and left a huge hole in both the Wellsboro and Mansfield communities.

“Mrs. B was special because she had a knack for accepting people just as they were, for believing in second chances, and for working hard to make our community in Tioga County a better place. She made everyone feel like they were special to her, and I believe they were. Her heart was just endlessly big,” said Lara Owlett, a French teacher at Wellsboro and mentee and close friend of Berguson.

PHOTO PROVIDED Peg Berguson (far right) stands with her son Tim (second from right). Also standing are North Penn-Mansfield coach Kipper Burleigh and her husband Bruce. Kneeling are, from left, Luke Berguson and Mark Berguson.

She was so many things to so many people: a wife, a mother, a mentor, a beloved teacher and a second mother to so many in both towns. Chief among those roles was raising her four boys on the Berguson farm with her husband Bruce.

“The thing that has stuck with me the most about my mom is how proud she always was of me and my brothers. She would be absolutely beaming over everything we did. Even if it was an accomplishment that seemed silly or insignificant we would get a big, genuine ‘Wow!’ and she would tell us how proud she was while getting teary-eyed,” her son Mark said. “I got the same enthusiastic praise when I scored four points in a game as when Tim or Luke scored their 1,000th point. It didn’t make any sense, but it was exactly what I needed to get to where I am today, and I can still feel that love and support even though she’s no longer with us.”

Longtime North Penn-Mansfield coach Kipper Burleigh coached all four Berguson boys and spoke highly of the kind of mother and person Peg was.

“She was a great mom. Look how successful all four of her boys are. She always knew where they were. She always looked out for them. She was one of the best,” Burleigh said.

All four have gone on to success.

Jeff is 34 and is a task force leader for disaster operations for the the Department of Homeland Security. Mark is 32 and practicing adult cardiothoracic anesthesiology at Lankenau Medical Center in Philadelphia. Tim is 31 and working for the New York State Senate as a legislative director. Luke is 28 and is a physical therapist working in Harrisburg.

She was not just a mother to her four biological sons. Numerous kids in both Wellsboro and Mansfield called her Momma B.

“I started calling Mrs. Berguson ‘Momma B’ during my first year with her in Spanish. She was such a positive and influential person,” said Jason Greenfield, a star on early 2010s Wellsboro teams.

Greenfield was in her homeroom for all four years at Wellsboro, and he frequently matched up against Peg’s son Luke in those big Wellsboro-Mansfield games. Luke was named NTL West MVP in 2010 and Jason won the award in 2011.

Instead of viewing Greenfield through the lens of someone competing with her own son for attention from colleges and accolades, there was maybe no student in her teaching career Peg took in under her wing more than him.

“She was like a mother to me in the classroom,” Greenfield said. “It was a special relationship and it was always a great matchup and I felt it always brought the best out of Luke and I. She used to count every point that Luke had ever scored on a notepad and then started to count mine, too.”

The same goes for Riley Bowen, a former star athlete at Mansfield and a starter on their 2007 District 4 championship and Elite Eight team. He fond memories of being at the Berguson farm and knowing he would always have a place to be at Momma B’s house.

“I was pretty close with the whole family. Having played basketball and football with three of her four sons we spent a bunch of time at the farm house playing cards and just hanging out. I always felt like she was just part of my family and I think she had that motherly impact on a lot of the friend group,” Bowen said. “It seemed like being at the farm house was always a safe place to be. And Momma Berg was always welcoming of the wide variety of friends that would visit. (There was) just a feeling of comfort.

She was a special teacher, too.

“Mrs. Berguson’s class was one that you always looked forward to going to because she had a great sense of humor and created a fun environment to learn and interact. More importantly though, she was a teacher that cared about so much more than just the content that she was teaching in her courses and typical teaching responsibilities. I feel as if the title teacher does not do justice for how she was so much more to so many students. She valued and cared about every single one of the kids as if they were her own and they felt that,” Matt Reese said. “She welcomed anyone into her room at any time because she knew how important it was for kids to have some place to go or someone to talk to.

“She was so genuine and authentic that students felt they could share anything with her. She had a very unique sense of being able to tell when something was off with one of her students, which speaks volumes to how much she cared and close she really was to her students to understand their demeanor or behaviors. Her compassion and empathy were two characteristics that will forever resonate with me. At the end of the day, she understood that it is important to learn Spanish, but life is so much bigger than that.”

Reese was a captain on NTL championship Wellsboro teams in 2012 and 2013 and was the league’s MVP in his junior season. He currently works in education, serving as the assistant director of academics for the University of Houston’s football team. And Berguson still serves as an inspiration for him.

“Working in higher education today, I try to emulate a lot of things that she did in her classroom because I saw her impact on so many students and I could only hope to impact half of the number of students she touched,” Reese said.

With that love of teaching came her love of kids at both Wellsboro and Mansfield. Berguson was always in tune with not just Mansfield, but the Wellsboro program too, and had an opinion on every team in the NTL. Even after the last of the Berguson clan, Luke, graduated in 2011, she was a mainstay at Wellsboro and North Penn-Mansfield basketball games.

“She genuinely loved her students. She definitely missed watching us play in these games after we all graduated. Being able to continue to support the students and the programs that she loved meant the world to her,” Luke said. “That is a testament to both the caring person she was as well as the kindness of her students to keep her involved in the rivalry. Even after I graduated she said she would still occasionally get some of the playful smack talk which she loved.”

Current Wellsboro coach Steve Adams took over the program in his first stint from 1997-2010, and served as an assistant principal at Wellsboro High School where he got to know Peg Berguson well.

“Peggy loved basketball. She loved watching Wellsboro kids play. She loved watching Mansfield kids play,” he said. “She was going to support kids, whether you were a kid in her class, a kid down the road, a kid at Mansfield, she was going to do what she could.”

With that came her love of the rivalry. Maybe no single person enjoyed it more than she did. She was the instigator of much of the friendly trash talk between the two programs, always keeping it classy and fun. In all of those big games in the late 2000s and early 2010s, it would be Peg sticking around to make sure she talked to all the players from both teams and make sure they knew how proud she was of them, whether it was a Mansfield or Wellsboro win.

“She would tell me all about the things students and Coach Adams were saying to her in the days leading up to the game and she had a lot of fun with the game too. She loved how her students involved her in the rivalry so much and enjoyed the light smack talk that she heard. She would also joke around with my teammates as well about how they were going to have their hands full with the match up,” Luke said. “She definitely had a nervous energy in the days leading up to the game. She would project the nervousness onto me a little bit by giving me daily reminders of how many more days till we played Wellsboro and constantly asking me ‘are you sure you’re ready?’ She was such a big supporter of both programs that it was tough for her to even pick who she was rooting for. I would have to essentially talk her into saying that she should want us to win since I’m her son and even at that I’m convinced that she would say to her students that she was rooting for them just so she could make everyone happy,”

Peg and Adams had fun with the rivalry, too. An added layer was that the Berguson farm is nearly right on the dividing line between Wellsboro and Southern Tioga School Districts. The Berguson boys frequently worked out in the Wellsboro gyms.

“I would tell her all the time, ‘hey come over. I’ve got an enrollment paper here for the boys’ and we would joke around like that,” Adams said.

Her presence at games was something cherished by the players.

“I remember the kids always asking ‘Is Mrs B. at the game? Did Mrs. B come to the game?’ and I got a lead-up into how much of an impact she had,” said former Wellsboro coach Todd Outman (2010-2019).

When she passed away so suddenly, it impacted both programs. Both Wellsboro-Mansfield games were played in the month of January, but, according to Reese, her memory helped inspire Wellsboro and surely helped inspire Mansfield, too.

Wellsboro advanced to their first district final in 14 years just weeks after her death, and Mansfield finished as league runner-up.

“She had impacted all of our guys in such a positive way that it weighed heavily on many of us when she passed. I cannot think of a bigger supporter of their students than Mrs. B, so not seeing her at games or after games was something that we struggled with but also we knew she was really there watching over us as well,” Reese said. “The next time we played was very emotional for everyone involved. The influence she had on not only the basketball team, but also the community was felt and was just not the same. The best way that we could honor her was to play the game that she loved and, most importantly, have fun while doing it.”

Even immediately after her death, members of the Berguson family could be seen at both Wellsboro and Mansfield games.

“The kids were her second family,” her husband Bruce said. “She would’ve wanted us to be there.”

Maybe nothing signifies how much she loved both places and programs than the family’s request upon her passing that donations be made to both Wellsboro and Mansfield athletic programs.

“Both schools were so important to her,” Bruce said. “As far as Wellsboro, her teaching job helped us out a whole lot as a family and as far as Mansfield, they did a great job with our kids. She would’ve wanted (donations to go to both schools.) It was so nice to be able to ask people to do that.”

The first Berguson Trophy Game, awarded in the 2014-15 season, was the idea of two Hornet seniors at the time, Kieron Smethers and Peyton Wilson.

“The game of basketball means a lot to me, and Mrs. Berguson means a lot to me and I knew she meant a lot to the Wellsboro and Mansfield communities,” Smethers said. “I decided, ‘why not honor her legacy by creating this trophy and naming it after her?'”

“I told Kieron I thought it was an incredible idea and that there was no better way to honor her love for watching high school basketball,” Wilson said. “She would always taunt our students before the game and especially after if (Mansfield) was victorious, but could also take the heat if we won and dish it back at her.”

North Penn-Mansfield won the first three Berguson games in 2015-17, and Wellsboro has won three of four since, giving the Tigers a 4-3 series lead. All but two of the games have been decided by 12 points or less, and there is seldom an empty seat at the gym, whether the game is played in Mansfield or Wellsboro.

Wellsboro won last year’s matchup, 68-56, but the Tigers are determined to take that trophy back Saturday.

“It’s the most special game of the year and then you add in Wellsboro and it’s even more impressive” Burleigh said. “We had a pretty good streak of winning the game early and we hope to get it back at 4-3 this year and I know they want it too.”

Saturday’s game could come down to the wire. North Penn-Mansfield is the last District 4 team to be undefeated while Wellsboro came into the year returning the vast majority of their production from their NTL Large School-runner up team from a year ago.

“Coach Burleigh and Coach Adams always do a great job of getting the most out of their players, and that goes especially for any time Mansfield and Wellsboro face off. Our mom really loved being a part of these two great communities, and it’s difficult to put to words how special it is that they’ve found such a great way to honor the impact she had on both communities,” Mark said.

For so many players that have come through, this rivalry, even before the trophy, was as big as it could be.

“That rivalry was always super important for me and my brothers and it was every bit as important to her too,” Luke said. “There was nothing quite like the energy in the gym during those games. So much anticipation and I feel like every single one of those games lived up to the hype.”

It’s the same on the Wellsboro side.

“I was fortunate to play in some of the bigger games of this rivalry and I saw how it could rally communities all towards one goal. As a high school athlete, it does not get much bigger than this game,” Reese said.

As more and more time passes since her untimely death, it’s now more important than ever that players today are reminded what she stood for and why she was so beloved.

“This game is about so much more than just basketball. It is about bringing communities and schools together to celebrate one of the most influential pillars both communities have seen in Mrs. B. She bridged the gap between both communities with how compassionate, authentic and caring she was to every single person around her,” Reese said. “She always was passionate and took pride in what her students were doing and she would want you to be the same way when playing in this game.”

Luke echoed a similar sentiment.

“She wasn’t just a fan of basketball or a huge supporter of both the Mansfield and Wellsboro programs. She genuinely cared for all of her students as if they were her own kids. If she were still here they would definitely have one more person to care for them and give them unconditional support,” Luke said.

One of the teams will be disappointed Saturday evening while they watch the other team be handed the trophy, traditionally by members of the Berguson family. No matter what the outcome, her impact on the game and both communities is truly larger than life.