Four times a week, I make my way around the local BP gas station in Palatka as part of my 3.4-mile walk.
Three things remind me of why I don't like the place. One, it's where the most expensive price for a gallon of gas is located. That gets my blood boiling. Two, it's BP. Does anyone have any memory of what happened April 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico? Those boys at British Petroleum have such a way of passing blame around to everyone but on themselves.
And three, it's where I had my most uncomfortable moment in my time in Palatka.
It was Thursday, March 18, 2004. All that week, I was getting excited with running the paper's March Madness pool. I wasn't having a lot of luck getting people involved, but I was getting my share. I had not been at the place more than just six months, yet I was still able to persuade others to join in.
It was a good week up until Thursday. On that Sunday, my girlfriend of a month and I had gone to the Jacksonville Zoo and had a wonderful time. On Monday evening, I was hungry and really didn't feel like cooking, so I decided to make a stop at the Long John Silvers fish restaurant at the aforementioned BP. I had eaten a couple of times before there, so I was OK with getting food there.
And this was nothing different on that Monday. I ordered a fish sandwich, went home with it, ate it, and then went back to work. All was fine.
On Tuesday, I started to feel discomfort, but nothing that sounded bells and whistles. By Wednesday, the pain began to increase. I wasn't able to go the bathroom, and suspected something wasn't right, but I was willing to gut out the night at work, while trying to get people involved in the March Madness pool that I had to get an OK to run from my publisher.
When I woke up Thursday morning, the main thing I was looking to do was get into work by about 10 o'clock and start working on the pool, work my way to get people involved. But at 9:30 that morning, the pain inside me was relentless. It had gone from just mere discomfort to the feeling of wanting to die.
In seven months in Palatka, I had not once gone to a doctor. I had no need to. Now I was trying to find one that would take me. Before I did, I called up Joyce in our finance department. She was also in charge of getting people on the health plan. When I called her, I got the impression all was all right. I found a doctor to go to near me on Crill Avenue. But halfway to the doctor's office, I get a call.
It was Joyce.
"You're not on the healthcare plan," she said.
"Wait a minute. I thought I was on it after the 90-day probation period," I answered back.
Apparently not. Simple, stupid miscommunication. Nonetheless I had to figure something out while doubled up in pain and not up to having to go all over Palatka to fill out papers and do this, that and the other thing.
At St. Johns Urgent Care, I met Dr. Jerry Jacobson for the first time, a very witty man who made me fill out all these papers. Like I really wanted to do this, having to answer one question after another while feeling like death warmed over and having to be stoic about it.
He gave me a number of tests, and yes, I got prodded and poked in that area where the sun don't shine. He would run some tests and get back to me.
It was off to work I went from there. Even though I wasn't feeling up to getting people to play in a pool, it was still my personal responsibility to get more people invovled, which I did. The last person I got involved was my best friend Ted in Baltimore, who ended up faxing me his bracket at about the time the games began.
All the while, I had to fill out medical forms for Joyce, the same medical forms I thought were being taken care of the previous November. I guess better late than never.
I had no idea what was ailing me. I mean, I don't miss work with colds, but yet, here I was feeling a pain I had never quite felt in my 37 years on this planet. Our daytime press plant boss said he felt the same pain years earlier and found he had a bursting appendix. Thanks guy ... the last thing I needed to hear was my appendix without said insurance.
Well, my new doctor calls me up about a half hour later and wants me to come in. He has me do more tests and then wants me to go over to Putnam Community Medical Center around the corner for X-rays. Now I'm thinking anything.
One thing I have never been good at in my life is calling someone when I needed help. I figured to be a man, you don't need anyone's help, you'll do it by yourself and you'll be fine in the end.
Now I had a girlfriend and she demanded that if something ever happened, I should call her as soon as I could. I really don't tell my own family anything, but she wanted me to call her. Here I am, a degree holder in communications, yet my biggest weakness with everyday people outside my job ... is communicating with others. Go figure.
So as I head to the hospital, I call her at her place of work in Jacksonville.
"Hi," I said.
"Hey, what's going on?" she answers.
"Oh, nothing. I'm at the hospital," I say.
"What?! Why are you there?" she says back.
"Remember the pain I've been going through? My new doctor thinks it's serious enough to go get X-rays."
"I'll be there! Just stay there. Bye."
Again, this is partly why I don't like communicating with others, even if I love them dearly. It's that over-reaction that maybe I'm closing in on my deathbed and that I need to be seen before the eyes shut for the last time and the coroner toe-tags me.
In other words, I don't like being fussed over. I'll probably take that to my grave with me. I'm sorry. That's just me. But with a girlfriend, I had to begrudgingly compromise that. It's nice to have that attention, but I swear to you, I'll be fine.
Now I'm at the hospital having to wait for the lab technician to come in, take information and then scan me. It's 3 p.m. and one round of March Madness games was well under way. And I'm missing them. Less than an hour later, I walk out of the hospital and who's trying to go in as I walk out a different entrance/exit? My girlfriend.
My doctor was going to get the results. For all I knew, I might have had cancer or maybe my appendix was in the middle of bursting, though I tend to believe if that was happening, I probably would have died there and then. By 4:45 p.m. and back at my apartment with my girlfriend, the phone rings. Doctor wants to see me.
She and I went over to meet the doctor. I told him for a first day, this was way too much time with the guy. Good thing he had a sense of humor. He first tells me my white blood cell count is enormously high. That means nothing to me other than "that is bad." Then he tells me what the real problem was.
Food poisoning. Whatever I ate was causing my digestive system to shut down and not allow me to, umm, how do I put this gently -- do No. 2. I had not eaten a whole lot since Tuesday and I knew what I had eaten was OK.
Then I figured out what it was -- yup, the fish sandwich from the quasi-Long John Silvers in the BP. The doctor gave me a couple of prescriptions and a shot. She and I got the prescriptions and came back to the apartment.
I called my boss up to let him know I wasn't coming in that night. He understood since he knew what kind of a day I was going through. And it was the second official day in my almost 20 years in the business that I took off for being sick -- the first being in the summer of 1986 after I nearly passed out in a phone booth dictating a summer-league basketball game story to the assistant sports editor at the time.
Needless to say, I went to sleep thanks to the shot. I know of one person who was happy to see me go to sleep ... that's because SHE had control of the television. By 8:15, I woke up, taking the first of my prescription hydrocodeine.
On Friday, I had to go into work because my boss had taken that day off. Though he worried about my own health, I told him I would honor his taking the day off. Let's just say it was one of the most uncomfortable days I've ever had to deal with professionally. The drugs I was taking were not working just yet, but I made it through the night nonetheless.
Saturday was still filled with pain, though I was taking the pills I had to take. Then at about 9:45 p.m. that Saturday, it happened. No. 2. And when it did ... wow! I still had to take the pills into Sunday, but I finally had my first piece of solid food in days that night when I ordered a chicken sandwich at the Ocala Hooter's after I had to pick up my Billboard magazine at the bookstore there.
By Tuesday, I was in the clear of the food poisoning. Needless to say I never ate at the quasi-Long John Silvers again and a year later, the restaurant portion of the BP went out of business. I had a number of people tell me I should've sued the restaurant for poisoning me, but I could never truly pinpoint the sandwich as the cause, and worse, I paid for the sandwich with cash. If it were on debit card, I could prove I paid for it when I did, but since I ate the sandwich that Monday night and threw the paper bag and receipt out, it was worthless.
As a matter of fact, I think I ate at a regular Long John Silvers only two more times. Other than the occasional trip to Red Lobster, I don't eat any fish at any restaurants anymore. I'm a lot more aware of what I put in me. If it's fish, I get it fresh at the supermarket and make it myself now.
As for the basketball pool, I was en route to winning it. Then John Lucas Jr. ripped my guts out by nailing the jump shot that sent Oklahoma State to the Final Four and kept St. Joseph's out. That was a different type of sick I felt, but not like I had felt a week and a half earlier.
I never want to feel the way I felt that March 18, 2004 ever again ... even if I have that reminder when I walk around it on my 3.4-mile walk.
I know, I know. Maybe I should choose another route.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Sunday, March 13, 2011
When you least expect a state championship
When you least expect it, you get pleasantly surprised. Sunday, March 10, 1996, was one of those moments.
When the 1995-96 Ocean County high school girls basketball season tipped off, I was expecting a nice season, but nothing quite like what I experienced that winter.
Not only did we have one team win a South Jersey sectional title, but we got two schools to win sectional crowns.
In SJ Group IV, Toms River North, which had graduated its heart and soul when center Dana Simonelli and point guard Sandy Bisogno left for college, were winners, thanks to a group of veteran players who stepped up in seniors Allyson Sieka and Kristen Herzer and junior gunner Melissa Fazio.
And in South Jersey Group II, Point Pleasant Boro had won its sectional title, led by the group of young ladies I called Run-DMC ... swing player Jessica Drennan, center Suzanne Manzi and point guard Jodie Cheasty, the former player a junior, the latter two seniors.
Of the two teams, though, there was no doubt that I felt North, which was playing with amazing momentum and coming off a stunning victory over Ashja Jones-led Piscataway in the Group IV semifinals, was the strongest hope to bring Ocean County its first state girls basketball championship and first basketball state title since St. Joseph's boys in 1981.
Like a lot of people who were around North, the thought was who could stand in the Mariners' way and ruin the parade? Anyone?
The state final was to be played on Saturday, March 9, but a final winter blast on the Thursday night before the final made it nearly impossible for anyone to get anywhere. As a matter of fact, I found it amazing that my father and I were able to get to West Long Branch to watch history on that Friday night as my alma mater, Monmouth, came from behind late to beat Rider to win the Northeast Conference men's basketball championship for the first time ever.
So on Sunday morning with the weather warm enough to thaw the snow and the ice, I made the trip up the Garden State Parkway and New Jersey Turnpike to Elizabeth's Dunn Center to watch possible history.
Originally, I was there to watch Toms River North make history and Point Boro be just a footnote on this historic day. Yeah, right.
The Mariners were going to go first against the hometown Minutemen of Elizabeth High School. I had seen North's talent all season long and was amazed at how much better this North team was compared to previous Mariner teams. Again, here I was thinking momentum would just sweep them to a state championship.
But this Minutemen team was really, really good. Elizabeth just out-hustled North at both ends of the court, and that was saying a lot for the group of scrappers North had. Quickness is a very big X-factor in basketball games and North didn't have quite the quickness the Minutemen ladies had. Elizabeth forced North into 12 first-half turnovers and led 31-17 at halftime.
The competitive portion of the Group IV state final was over. While Elizabeth's guards had caused enough havoc to ruin North's backcourt, it was the frontline of Ieesha Turnace and Omega Green who frustrated North's bigger trio of 5-9 Sieka, 5-11 Herzer and fellow 5-11 senior Mary Bellezza. The Elizabeth pair had 18 rebounds. Amazingly, the 5-8 Green had eight rebounds. That was more than the North trio had combined.
Guard Naimah Smith led the way with 17 points and Elizabeth ultimately finished off North, 53-38. Afterward, the media had a chance to talk with North coach Ray Cervino. Cervino had been coach of the Mariners since the 1980-81 season and he had seen the really bad with his program. But since the 1992-93 season, the season that turned everything around and gave the Mariners the first of four straight Class A South titles up through the '95-96 season, Cervino's Mariners were at their best.
Cervino took it in stride, proud of how far his girls got. No tears, even for an emotional man like him. Just pride.
The question as to whether Cervino ever getting this far again would come four years later when North finally captured that elusive Group IV state championship and made it to the Tournament of Champions final.
So that was one losing story I had to write. I got my Group IV state story started when I had to prepare for the very next game -- the last one of the day of the four public school group games. This would be Point Boro against North Jersey champion Caldwell.
For 24 hours, all I heard about Caldwell was its offensive might. The Chiefs averaged an amazing 72 points a game. There were boys teams that could never get close to that average in a season, yet these young ladies were an offensive dynamo that expected to take home the Group II state title trophy.
Someone forgot to tell the Panthers they were supposed to roll over.
The Panthers and coach Peter Cooke decided to take it down a notch. Thanks to the crafty Cheasty, they refused to get into an offensive, up-and-down, playground battle with the Chiefs. They trailed, 9-6, after the first quarter, but got warmed up when Cheasty kept finding the 6-foot Manzi underneath. She scored eight points in the second quarter and the Panthers turned it around and led 22-17 at halftime.
First thought -- this can't keep going on all game. One year earlier against a very good, offensive squad from Washington Township, I saw Southern Regional slow it down so much that the Rams led the South Jersey Group IV title game, 25-17. Then the Minutemen figured out what the Rams did, turned on their pressure in the second half and pulled away for a seven-point win.
So in that regard, I'd seen this script before.
But these Panthers came out of the locker room at halftime with a confident swagger. To them, it wasn't holding on for 16 more minutes. It was continuing to do what they did well for 16 minutes and knowing they'd have a trophy at the end of the night and history as well.
Caldwell got off to a quick start and had the lead down to three at 28-25 before the Panthers answered with a 6-0 run to put the lead back to nine as the fourth quarter began.
The teams traded baskets to start the quarter.
Then as if the bell sounded, the Chiefs made like Pavlov's dog and started to rally. A nine-point lead was cut to 36-35. Then a loose ball was picked up by Caldwell center Cathy Miller, who drove the paint for the go-ahead basket with 1:36 left to make it 37-36 in Caldwell's favor.
It was good to dream of what might have been at that point. But Cooke had something in mind when he called a timeout.
Patience was going to be the virtue again. Cheasty had the Panthers' half-court offense going. Suddenly, she found her classmate Manzi and fed the ball to her just beyond the reach of the 6-foot Miller. Manzi converted the layup to make it 38-37 with 1:15 left.
Then came the tipping point. The Chiefs found Miller and the center began her move to the basket. She also found Drennan and ran into her. The whistle blew. The referee called an offensive charging foul. It was Miller's fifth of the game.
With 50.7 seconds left, the Panthers had the slim lead AND the Chiefs' main big girl out of the game.
Maybe, just maybe, this was going to be it. The history I was in Elizabeth to see may just actually happen, albeit a couple of hours later.
Manzi was fouled with 30 seconds left and hit both free throws to make it 40-37.
The Chiefs decided on going for the tie and put the ball in guard Kim Richards' hands. But Richards' 3-point attempt clanked off the back rim. Diminuitive Panther guard Amy Clark came up with the rebound and fed to Drennan, who was fouled with 15 seconds left.
Drennan hit one free throw to make it a four-point game, and the Chiefs hurried back down and got the lead back to two points when forward Caroline Gehlen rebounded a Richards missed shot and scored with six seconds left.
All the Panthers had to do was just get those last six seconds off to clinch it. Cheasty hit Drennan, who was fouled with two seconds left. She hit the first free throw to make it a three-point game, but missed the second one. That was valuable time coming off the clock as the ball bounced away.
Caldwell could not get even get a decent shot off to tie it.
And Point Boro players stormed the court. Panther fans yelled "Group II champs! Group II champs! Group II champs!"
The Panthers held high-flying Caldwell 33 points under their season average. And they made history as the first Ocean County girls basketball team to win a state championship.
Not North like I thought ... Point Boro did it.
In my time I knew Peter Cooke as the Panther coach, he always worked with an edge, meaning if you didn't think his team was up to the challenge, he'd not only find a way for his girls to be up to that challenge, but then he'd let you know about it at the end of the game.
In 1991, he more than let me know it when I wasn't sure his smaller Panthers could handle Sterling in the South Jersey Group II title game and they won, 74-49, behind 25 points and 13 steals by Christie Pearce. And now, he was doing it all over again after big, bad Caldwell was sent home without a trophy.
"Nobody gave us a chance to win this game," he told media members, looking at me for a moment. "So our girls went out and proved it could be done."
Manzi was named the game's Most Valuable Player with 24 points. Drennan finished with eight points and 11 rebounds, but had done an outstanding job of keeping Miller in check. Miller finished with 12 points and nine rebounds. And Cheasty ran a halfcourt offense better than anyone else I had ever seen, especially in the situation her team was in against the run-happy Chiefs.
A state title means a lot to any high school program. But it means more to a small-town high school program. And at Point Boro, a school that has seen its share of great athletes over the years like Christie Pearce, Kim Yankowski and Dawn Kinghorn on the ladies' side, this championship meant everything.
The Panthers would lose to Notre Dame of Lawrenceville in the opening round of the Tournament of Champions four days later at the Dunn Center, but they had left their mark on Ocean County sports forever.
Interestingly, two days after watching North lose and Point Boro win, I get a phone call in the office. It was Kristen Herzer's mother, a delightful lady who was so sweet and wanted to thank me for the coverage. Then in a mockingly sad voice, she read me the headline my boss put on top of the game story I wrote from the North loss to Elizabeth.
"Elizabeth outhustles North, ends Herzer's, Sieka's careers," she read. "It made it sound like you sent them out in the pasture and had them shot."
I knew she wasn't all that upset about the headline the way she said it, but I couldn't help but laugh at that moment. And thinking about it again now made me laugh one more time.
The 1995-96 girls basketball season was a pleasantly surprising and rewarding winter. To have two county teams play for a state title was awesome.
To have one of them win it all was amazing.
To have the one that you didn't expect would win it made it even better.
When the 1995-96 Ocean County high school girls basketball season tipped off, I was expecting a nice season, but nothing quite like what I experienced that winter.
Not only did we have one team win a South Jersey sectional title, but we got two schools to win sectional crowns.
In SJ Group IV, Toms River North, which had graduated its heart and soul when center Dana Simonelli and point guard Sandy Bisogno left for college, were winners, thanks to a group of veteran players who stepped up in seniors Allyson Sieka and Kristen Herzer and junior gunner Melissa Fazio.
And in South Jersey Group II, Point Pleasant Boro had won its sectional title, led by the group of young ladies I called Run-DMC ... swing player Jessica Drennan, center Suzanne Manzi and point guard Jodie Cheasty, the former player a junior, the latter two seniors.
Of the two teams, though, there was no doubt that I felt North, which was playing with amazing momentum and coming off a stunning victory over Ashja Jones-led Piscataway in the Group IV semifinals, was the strongest hope to bring Ocean County its first state girls basketball championship and first basketball state title since St. Joseph's boys in 1981.
Like a lot of people who were around North, the thought was who could stand in the Mariners' way and ruin the parade? Anyone?
The state final was to be played on Saturday, March 9, but a final winter blast on the Thursday night before the final made it nearly impossible for anyone to get anywhere. As a matter of fact, I found it amazing that my father and I were able to get to West Long Branch to watch history on that Friday night as my alma mater, Monmouth, came from behind late to beat Rider to win the Northeast Conference men's basketball championship for the first time ever.
So on Sunday morning with the weather warm enough to thaw the snow and the ice, I made the trip up the Garden State Parkway and New Jersey Turnpike to Elizabeth's Dunn Center to watch possible history.
Originally, I was there to watch Toms River North make history and Point Boro be just a footnote on this historic day. Yeah, right.
The Mariners were going to go first against the hometown Minutemen of Elizabeth High School. I had seen North's talent all season long and was amazed at how much better this North team was compared to previous Mariner teams. Again, here I was thinking momentum would just sweep them to a state championship.
But this Minutemen team was really, really good. Elizabeth just out-hustled North at both ends of the court, and that was saying a lot for the group of scrappers North had. Quickness is a very big X-factor in basketball games and North didn't have quite the quickness the Minutemen ladies had. Elizabeth forced North into 12 first-half turnovers and led 31-17 at halftime.
The competitive portion of the Group IV state final was over. While Elizabeth's guards had caused enough havoc to ruin North's backcourt, it was the frontline of Ieesha Turnace and Omega Green who frustrated North's bigger trio of 5-9 Sieka, 5-11 Herzer and fellow 5-11 senior Mary Bellezza. The Elizabeth pair had 18 rebounds. Amazingly, the 5-8 Green had eight rebounds. That was more than the North trio had combined.
Guard Naimah Smith led the way with 17 points and Elizabeth ultimately finished off North, 53-38. Afterward, the media had a chance to talk with North coach Ray Cervino. Cervino had been coach of the Mariners since the 1980-81 season and he had seen the really bad with his program. But since the 1992-93 season, the season that turned everything around and gave the Mariners the first of four straight Class A South titles up through the '95-96 season, Cervino's Mariners were at their best.
Cervino took it in stride, proud of how far his girls got. No tears, even for an emotional man like him. Just pride.
The question as to whether Cervino ever getting this far again would come four years later when North finally captured that elusive Group IV state championship and made it to the Tournament of Champions final.
So that was one losing story I had to write. I got my Group IV state story started when I had to prepare for the very next game -- the last one of the day of the four public school group games. This would be Point Boro against North Jersey champion Caldwell.
For 24 hours, all I heard about Caldwell was its offensive might. The Chiefs averaged an amazing 72 points a game. There were boys teams that could never get close to that average in a season, yet these young ladies were an offensive dynamo that expected to take home the Group II state title trophy.
Someone forgot to tell the Panthers they were supposed to roll over.
The Panthers and coach Peter Cooke decided to take it down a notch. Thanks to the crafty Cheasty, they refused to get into an offensive, up-and-down, playground battle with the Chiefs. They trailed, 9-6, after the first quarter, but got warmed up when Cheasty kept finding the 6-foot Manzi underneath. She scored eight points in the second quarter and the Panthers turned it around and led 22-17 at halftime.
First thought -- this can't keep going on all game. One year earlier against a very good, offensive squad from Washington Township, I saw Southern Regional slow it down so much that the Rams led the South Jersey Group IV title game, 25-17. Then the Minutemen figured out what the Rams did, turned on their pressure in the second half and pulled away for a seven-point win.
So in that regard, I'd seen this script before.
But these Panthers came out of the locker room at halftime with a confident swagger. To them, it wasn't holding on for 16 more minutes. It was continuing to do what they did well for 16 minutes and knowing they'd have a trophy at the end of the night and history as well.
Caldwell got off to a quick start and had the lead down to three at 28-25 before the Panthers answered with a 6-0 run to put the lead back to nine as the fourth quarter began.
The teams traded baskets to start the quarter.
Then as if the bell sounded, the Chiefs made like Pavlov's dog and started to rally. A nine-point lead was cut to 36-35. Then a loose ball was picked up by Caldwell center Cathy Miller, who drove the paint for the go-ahead basket with 1:36 left to make it 37-36 in Caldwell's favor.
It was good to dream of what might have been at that point. But Cooke had something in mind when he called a timeout.
Patience was going to be the virtue again. Cheasty had the Panthers' half-court offense going. Suddenly, she found her classmate Manzi and fed the ball to her just beyond the reach of the 6-foot Miller. Manzi converted the layup to make it 38-37 with 1:15 left.
Then came the tipping point. The Chiefs found Miller and the center began her move to the basket. She also found Drennan and ran into her. The whistle blew. The referee called an offensive charging foul. It was Miller's fifth of the game.
With 50.7 seconds left, the Panthers had the slim lead AND the Chiefs' main big girl out of the game.
Maybe, just maybe, this was going to be it. The history I was in Elizabeth to see may just actually happen, albeit a couple of hours later.
Manzi was fouled with 30 seconds left and hit both free throws to make it 40-37.
The Chiefs decided on going for the tie and put the ball in guard Kim Richards' hands. But Richards' 3-point attempt clanked off the back rim. Diminuitive Panther guard Amy Clark came up with the rebound and fed to Drennan, who was fouled with 15 seconds left.
Drennan hit one free throw to make it a four-point game, and the Chiefs hurried back down and got the lead back to two points when forward Caroline Gehlen rebounded a Richards missed shot and scored with six seconds left.
All the Panthers had to do was just get those last six seconds off to clinch it. Cheasty hit Drennan, who was fouled with two seconds left. She hit the first free throw to make it a three-point game, but missed the second one. That was valuable time coming off the clock as the ball bounced away.
Caldwell could not get even get a decent shot off to tie it.
And Point Boro players stormed the court. Panther fans yelled "Group II champs! Group II champs! Group II champs!"
The Panthers held high-flying Caldwell 33 points under their season average. And they made history as the first Ocean County girls basketball team to win a state championship.
Not North like I thought ... Point Boro did it.
In my time I knew Peter Cooke as the Panther coach, he always worked with an edge, meaning if you didn't think his team was up to the challenge, he'd not only find a way for his girls to be up to that challenge, but then he'd let you know about it at the end of the game.
In 1991, he more than let me know it when I wasn't sure his smaller Panthers could handle Sterling in the South Jersey Group II title game and they won, 74-49, behind 25 points and 13 steals by Christie Pearce. And now, he was doing it all over again after big, bad Caldwell was sent home without a trophy.
"Nobody gave us a chance to win this game," he told media members, looking at me for a moment. "So our girls went out and proved it could be done."
Manzi was named the game's Most Valuable Player with 24 points. Drennan finished with eight points and 11 rebounds, but had done an outstanding job of keeping Miller in check. Miller finished with 12 points and nine rebounds. And Cheasty ran a halfcourt offense better than anyone else I had ever seen, especially in the situation her team was in against the run-happy Chiefs.
A state title means a lot to any high school program. But it means more to a small-town high school program. And at Point Boro, a school that has seen its share of great athletes over the years like Christie Pearce, Kim Yankowski and Dawn Kinghorn on the ladies' side, this championship meant everything.
The Panthers would lose to Notre Dame of Lawrenceville in the opening round of the Tournament of Champions four days later at the Dunn Center, but they had left their mark on Ocean County sports forever.
Interestingly, two days after watching North lose and Point Boro win, I get a phone call in the office. It was Kristen Herzer's mother, a delightful lady who was so sweet and wanted to thank me for the coverage. Then in a mockingly sad voice, she read me the headline my boss put on top of the game story I wrote from the North loss to Elizabeth.
"Elizabeth outhustles North, ends Herzer's, Sieka's careers," she read. "It made it sound like you sent them out in the pasture and had them shot."
I knew she wasn't all that upset about the headline the way she said it, but I couldn't help but laugh at that moment. And thinking about it again now made me laugh one more time.
The 1995-96 girls basketball season was a pleasantly surprising and rewarding winter. To have two county teams play for a state title was awesome.
To have one of them win it all was amazing.
To have the one that you didn't expect would win it made it even better.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Patiently waiting to win a championship
The lesson of this Friday afternoon, March 5, 1993, was patience. It was very much needed when the Shore Conference bowling championship rolled off at the HyWay 35 Lanes in Wall.
Bowling, in its own right, is a sport of patience. After all, no one is that talented to pick up a ball and roll a 200 the first time out. You need to be devoted to the sport -- like just about every other sport there is -- and commit yourself to excellence.
And for years, the Brick Memorial High School girls bowling team had done so. I was at Carolier Lanes in North Brunswick for the culmination of that excellence in 1990 when both the Mustang girls and the Brick Township High School boys teams won state championships.
Coach Marie Kobilnyk had another sensational team in the 1992-93 season, led by seniors Kris Kampf and Gina Gioia. The Mustangs had won their divisional title with a senior-laden team. On this day, though, the Mustangs would not have one of their seniors, Gioia, who was out sick.
This wasn't just a senior with experience. She was a two-time All-County bowler. This sounded like a bad loss, but enter backup Diane Jobes. Gioia's loss would not be so bad in the end.
To qualify for the Shore Conference Championship, teams from both Ocean County and Monmouth County had to finish in the top two in the four total divisions, meaning 16 boys and girls teams would compete for the two team championships.
But as bowling got underway for the 3 p.m. event that afternoon, something was missing. There were 15 teams there. One team had not shown up and its non-presence was immediately felt.
Ocean County South Division co-representative Central Regional, a team of free spirits and coached by the affable Arlene Leperi, had not gotten there. Word soon got to the bowling house that the Central Regional bus had been caught in an early afternoon car accident on the Garden State Parkway coming up from Bayville and all on the bus as well as the surrounding traffic had to patiently wait until things got cleaned up.
Fun-loving, free-spirited Central Regional. Yes, the Golden Eagles were. Central Regional had just started the program. And by bowling at their nearby Thunderbowl house off of Route 9, the Golden Eagles became very, very good immediately. Just six days before this Shore Conference event, the Golden Eagles had gone away with the South Jersey championship.
So while teams were bowling their first games, there was one Monmouth County team that was going on without a partner team. The Shore Conference Championship committee was deciding Central's fate. The tournament director for the meet could have easily told Central it was disqualified for not getting to HyWay 35 Lanes on time, but how do you blame the team for showing up late when it left its school on time and found itself part of a traffic accident it didn't have a part of?
Midway through the first game of the three-game set for all teams, the Golden Eagles arrived at HyWay 35 Lanes, practically sorry for being involved in an accident they didn't start. Leperi immediately had her girls set up and roll once they established where they could warm up.
By the time Leperi arrived, the committee had established that the Golden Eagles would hook up with the team they would roll against in the second game, but by the time the third and final game would finish, the Golden Eagles would roll their third game by themselves.
And if Central Regional was in striking distance of a title, guess where all the noise would be coming from at that particular moment?
Underclassman-dominated thanks to Toni Glowgower, Michelle Weinert and Stephanie Acker, the Golden Eagles were about to become a storyline ... even if it was just by themselves.
The meet was back to normal for the second game. Even without proper warmup, Central Regional destroyed the team it went against first. Then in the third game -- Central Regional's second -- the intensity rose. The lane assignments had both Brick Memorial AND Central Regional going against one another.
If ever you wanted to see two polar opposites team-wise, it was these two squads. While Central Regional had some outspoken free spirits who liked to have fun, Brick Memorial was a focused team whose fun was dictated by how it did on the alleys. Though there was respect between the teams, the two together were literally mixing oil and water. You could see it in their sign language. You could hear it in some of the comments quietly made.
Not surprisingly, both teams were on top of their games. Central Regional rolled an 834 in the first game and followed it up with an 858. Not bad, thus far.
But Brick Memorial stood up to the challenge and then some. Strikes were being made. Open frames were practically non-existence. When the game was over, the Mustangs had rolled a day-best 907 series -- an average of 181 per player. Turns out the star of that third game was Jobes, Gioia's substitute, who rolled a 214.
Memorial was well ahead in first place at 2,545, but now the Mustangs had to wait because Central Regional was capable of beating that score. The Golden Eagles had beaten the field six days earlier in the South Jersey championship and now they had a number that seemed easy enough to topple to snag this championship, too.
The Golden Eagles needed an 854 -- an average of almost 170 per bowler -- to win it. But now the Golden Eagles were going to have to do it in a far-away alley since bowling was back to normal for the regular customers. So stuck on lanes 3 and 4, Central Regional's quintet of bowlers got to decide the championship's fate by its lonesome. Anyone who understands competitive bowling knows that bowlers feed off not just one another, but their competition. And without competition, this was going to be just as hard.
I can still hear some Brick Memorial people quietly complaining that this would not be fair if Central took this title because it showed up late and had to go by the rules differently than everyone else there. Actually, if Central would come back and win this championship, it should have been praised for doing so. No competition, no one to drive the Golden Eagles and yet if they still logged an 854 or better, they'd win.
That would have been impressive.
The Golden Eagles got off to a fast start and looked on target to match that number ... 854. Each strike was followed by a loud cheer. And Memorial girls knew this wasn't good, Kampf saying, "I can't watch. I don't want to hear them cheering."
But by the middle of the final game, the Golden Eagle gals started to crack, doing the one thing they couldn't do to be successful ... leave open frames. No strikes, no spares. Suddnely 854 felt like 8,854 to them.
Still, they steadied the ship by the eighth frame. Going into the final frame, they had a chance to take the title that Mustang bowlers had their fingerprints on practically. Right off the bat, though, Glogower and Weinert rolled opens to start the 10th. Still, they had a chance with anchor Acker. But she needed a strike to get things off to a fast start.
She nailed nine pins. Memorial had its title.
Central would finish with 2,532 pins for the day, rolling an 840 in the final game, coming up 13 pins short.
And as Acker's ball hit all but that one pin, Mustangs bowlers finally broke out in the loud joyous cheer they had waited 45 minutes to do. They had the title in their grasp. Kobilnyk, Memorial's coach for over a decade, was relieved the day was over.
Central bowlers were disappointed afterward. With everything that happened that afternoon, from the accident that kept them from getting to their destination to the last frame of the day, the Golden Eagle girls nearly had a championship.
A different level of patience for them.
On this day, though, Brick Memorial exhibited that patience ... and was richly rewarded for it.
Bowling, in its own right, is a sport of patience. After all, no one is that talented to pick up a ball and roll a 200 the first time out. You need to be devoted to the sport -- like just about every other sport there is -- and commit yourself to excellence.
And for years, the Brick Memorial High School girls bowling team had done so. I was at Carolier Lanes in North Brunswick for the culmination of that excellence in 1990 when both the Mustang girls and the Brick Township High School boys teams won state championships.
Coach Marie Kobilnyk had another sensational team in the 1992-93 season, led by seniors Kris Kampf and Gina Gioia. The Mustangs had won their divisional title with a senior-laden team. On this day, though, the Mustangs would not have one of their seniors, Gioia, who was out sick.
This wasn't just a senior with experience. She was a two-time All-County bowler. This sounded like a bad loss, but enter backup Diane Jobes. Gioia's loss would not be so bad in the end.
To qualify for the Shore Conference Championship, teams from both Ocean County and Monmouth County had to finish in the top two in the four total divisions, meaning 16 boys and girls teams would compete for the two team championships.
But as bowling got underway for the 3 p.m. event that afternoon, something was missing. There were 15 teams there. One team had not shown up and its non-presence was immediately felt.
Ocean County South Division co-representative Central Regional, a team of free spirits and coached by the affable Arlene Leperi, had not gotten there. Word soon got to the bowling house that the Central Regional bus had been caught in an early afternoon car accident on the Garden State Parkway coming up from Bayville and all on the bus as well as the surrounding traffic had to patiently wait until things got cleaned up.
Fun-loving, free-spirited Central Regional. Yes, the Golden Eagles were. Central Regional had just started the program. And by bowling at their nearby Thunderbowl house off of Route 9, the Golden Eagles became very, very good immediately. Just six days before this Shore Conference event, the Golden Eagles had gone away with the South Jersey championship.
So while teams were bowling their first games, there was one Monmouth County team that was going on without a partner team. The Shore Conference Championship committee was deciding Central's fate. The tournament director for the meet could have easily told Central it was disqualified for not getting to HyWay 35 Lanes on time, but how do you blame the team for showing up late when it left its school on time and found itself part of a traffic accident it didn't have a part of?
Midway through the first game of the three-game set for all teams, the Golden Eagles arrived at HyWay 35 Lanes, practically sorry for being involved in an accident they didn't start. Leperi immediately had her girls set up and roll once they established where they could warm up.
By the time Leperi arrived, the committee had established that the Golden Eagles would hook up with the team they would roll against in the second game, but by the time the third and final game would finish, the Golden Eagles would roll their third game by themselves.
And if Central Regional was in striking distance of a title, guess where all the noise would be coming from at that particular moment?
Underclassman-dominated thanks to Toni Glowgower, Michelle Weinert and Stephanie Acker, the Golden Eagles were about to become a storyline ... even if it was just by themselves.
The meet was back to normal for the second game. Even without proper warmup, Central Regional destroyed the team it went against first. Then in the third game -- Central Regional's second -- the intensity rose. The lane assignments had both Brick Memorial AND Central Regional going against one another.
If ever you wanted to see two polar opposites team-wise, it was these two squads. While Central Regional had some outspoken free spirits who liked to have fun, Brick Memorial was a focused team whose fun was dictated by how it did on the alleys. Though there was respect between the teams, the two together were literally mixing oil and water. You could see it in their sign language. You could hear it in some of the comments quietly made.
Not surprisingly, both teams were on top of their games. Central Regional rolled an 834 in the first game and followed it up with an 858. Not bad, thus far.
But Brick Memorial stood up to the challenge and then some. Strikes were being made. Open frames were practically non-existence. When the game was over, the Mustangs had rolled a day-best 907 series -- an average of 181 per player. Turns out the star of that third game was Jobes, Gioia's substitute, who rolled a 214.
Memorial was well ahead in first place at 2,545, but now the Mustangs had to wait because Central Regional was capable of beating that score. The Golden Eagles had beaten the field six days earlier in the South Jersey championship and now they had a number that seemed easy enough to topple to snag this championship, too.
The Golden Eagles needed an 854 -- an average of almost 170 per bowler -- to win it. But now the Golden Eagles were going to have to do it in a far-away alley since bowling was back to normal for the regular customers. So stuck on lanes 3 and 4, Central Regional's quintet of bowlers got to decide the championship's fate by its lonesome. Anyone who understands competitive bowling knows that bowlers feed off not just one another, but their competition. And without competition, this was going to be just as hard.
I can still hear some Brick Memorial people quietly complaining that this would not be fair if Central took this title because it showed up late and had to go by the rules differently than everyone else there. Actually, if Central would come back and win this championship, it should have been praised for doing so. No competition, no one to drive the Golden Eagles and yet if they still logged an 854 or better, they'd win.
That would have been impressive.
The Golden Eagles got off to a fast start and looked on target to match that number ... 854. Each strike was followed by a loud cheer. And Memorial girls knew this wasn't good, Kampf saying, "I can't watch. I don't want to hear them cheering."
But by the middle of the final game, the Golden Eagle gals started to crack, doing the one thing they couldn't do to be successful ... leave open frames. No strikes, no spares. Suddnely 854 felt like 8,854 to them.
Still, they steadied the ship by the eighth frame. Going into the final frame, they had a chance to take the title that Mustang bowlers had their fingerprints on practically. Right off the bat, though, Glogower and Weinert rolled opens to start the 10th. Still, they had a chance with anchor Acker. But she needed a strike to get things off to a fast start.
She nailed nine pins. Memorial had its title.
Central would finish with 2,532 pins for the day, rolling an 840 in the final game, coming up 13 pins short.
And as Acker's ball hit all but that one pin, Mustangs bowlers finally broke out in the loud joyous cheer they had waited 45 minutes to do. They had the title in their grasp. Kobilnyk, Memorial's coach for over a decade, was relieved the day was over.
Central bowlers were disappointed afterward. With everything that happened that afternoon, from the accident that kept them from getting to their destination to the last frame of the day, the Golden Eagle girls nearly had a championship.
A different level of patience for them.
On this day, though, Brick Memorial exhibited that patience ... and was richly rewarded for it.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
How a questionable slam cost Brick Memorial a possible state wrestling title
Never question the power of New Jersey high school wrestling. Like football in the South ... well maybe not to THAT degree ... wrestling in the Garden State is a way of life.
And it is a way in Ocean County every winter. At one point in a 20-year period, most every school had a star wrestler or a dynamic team that competed for a title of some kind. But no team was dominant in Ocean County during that span than Brick Memorial High School.
From the time Brick Memorial became a school in 1980, wrestling was immediately becoming the star attraction due to the work of hard-driving head coach Tony Caravella. Caravella had a power in the county with his Mustangs, even though questions raged in the beginning over how he was able to build that dynamo on the north side of Brick Township.
Brick Memorial and Tony Caravella were like wrestling's New York Yankees ... you either loved them or you hated them. But there's one thing that you never did.
That was overlook them.
For years, Brick Memorial was "chasing the carrot" for county supremacy. Then on a February night in 1985, the Mustangs won in shocking fashion with the bearhug and pin heard round the Shore when Dean Kanabrocki got a hold of sure-shot heavyweight rival Tim Rioux of Toms River East and put him on the mat for six points and the first Shore Conference title in school history.
In 1986, the Mustangs repeated their SCT title and went on to not only win their first state Group III championship, but were named the No. 1 team in the state. Talk about going to the next level in a hurry.
A lot of the key wrestlers on that '86 team, however, graduated -- state champion Bob Martin, Kanabrocki and Dean Albanese. But in '87, the Mustangs were good again.
In the NJSIAA South Jersey Group III tournament, the Mustangs were the third seed. They would have to go to Blackwood and face No. 2 seed Highland Regional, which was far from a slouch itself. The Tartans were a four-time state Group IV champion under legendary coach Ralph Ross. They knew how to win and had ways of winning.
You'll see that later on here.
Everyone that was associated with the gold and green of Brick Memorial wrestling knew this might be the biggest hurdle to jump en route to another state champion.
And so on Wednesday, February 18, 1987, the Mustangs entered unfriendly territory at Highland Regional with the thoughts of a state champion repeat in mind.
Wrestling at most schools is no big deal ... you announce the lineups, the wrestlers come out and shake each other's hands and then it's off to the 101-pound match. No biggie.
Not at Highland Regional in the 1980s. The lights went down and the spotlight was on the two guys in the center of that mat. And though it wasn't as pitch black as, say, legendary Phillipsburg High School, that aura of something big was there. And on this cold February night, the gymnasium at Highland Regional was packed to the rafters.
The "Tony Twosome" got Brick Memorial off to a 9-0 lead as 101-pounder Tony Nash stunned state tournament qualifier Bob Aceto, 8-3, and unbeaten 108-pounder Tony Roselli pinned Jason Rivers in 4:39. Then Vinny Santanello and Stan Lewis went move for move at 115 pounds before the pair ended in a 6-6 tie.
Though it was a tie, it gave the Tartans some much-needed momentum, and they took advantage of it. Rob Sentman beat Dann Pulsifer at 122 pounds, 7-4, then Gino Giumarrello beat Chuck Marotta, 3-0, at 129, to make it 11-8.
The Highland fans were whipped into a frenzy. The Tartans had the advantage in the middleweights and they knew it, and so did the crowd. They continued that dominance with a Ken Johnson win over Jeff Scott, 6-4, at 135 pounds and Chad Cassidy's 3-2 nail-biter over Jon Barger at 141 to make it 14-11 in Highland's favor.
All that early Memorial momentum was gone. Any sign of Memorial cheering was practically drowned out now. But we were yet to get to the upperweights, where Memorial had the slight advantage. If the Mustangs could gain a little momentum near the end of the middleweight run, there's no doubt they could win the match.
It was going to start at 148 pounds with Memorial's Chris Dvorak taking on a very good Jon Reilly. Dvorak was working his moves on Reilly, and built a 6-0 lead going into the final two-minute period.
But wrestling's a funny sport. One minute you're dominating and the next minute, you find yourself on your back just like that. Reilly caught Dvorak and pinned him 30 seconds into the last period.
The wind had been knocked out of Memorial's sails to say the least. Instead of a tie, maybe even a one-point lead, Highland had a 20-11 lead with four bouts left.
Joe McCabe, though, got the Mustangs fans back into it. He worked over Dean Cacciavaliano for nearly two periods before he finally put him on his back in 3:52 to make it 20-17 with three bouts to go.
At 170 pounds stepped Memorial freshman Vinny Dallicardillo, the one Mustang wrestler I would get to know over the years, first as a two-star sport in wrestling and football, then as an assistant coach at Memorial and finally as Brick Memorial High's softball coach through most of the 2000 decade. It was Dallicardillo's Mustangs who pulled off the biggest upset in Ocean County Softball Tournament history in 2003 when as an 11th seed, they stunned No. 1 and unbeaten Manchester in nine innings, 5-4.
But that's another story for another time.
Dallicardillo was having to face a more experienced Rob Franks, one of Highland's top wrestlers, but was coming off a separated shoulder just two weeks earlier that forced him to miss time. Franks was not 100 percent and Dallicardillo, who would take fourth in the state at his weight class as a senior three years later, was laying it on Franks hard.
The two battled down to the final 15 seconds when Franks was able to escape Dallicardillo's hold for a point and 5-4 victory, giving the Tartans a 23-17 lead with two bouts left.
The stage was set for one of the most controversial moments in my 26 years.
Onto the mat at 189 pounds stepped junior Todd Narwid, an experienced wrestler, but part of a group of younger Mustangs who were filling the shoes of the graduated state championship team members. Narwid's challenge was Tom Meyers, a lanky young man, but almost white as a sheet the moment the whistle blew.
Before you can blink an eye, Narwid had Meyers down on the mat. And he was able to work him over and put near-fall moves on him that helped accumulate his total.
Narwid led 5-0 after the first period, but near the end of the first period, Narwid got Meyers in the air and brought him down hard ... a "thud" sound followed.
Nothing was called, but Meyers had hurt his neck. You would think at that point with a hurt neck, Meyers might tell his trainer he was not all that good, but since nothing got called against Narwid, the match was still on.
This would prove to be vital toward the ending that was to take place.
Narwid started the second period up with Meyers down on the mat. He worked him again and built the lead up against what seemingly was a defenseless Meyers, who was only now trying to avoid being pinned and sending the heavyweight bout into a winner-take-all scenario.
Meyers did that, but by the end of the second period, it was 11-0. This match was a foregone conclusion to who would win. It was only a matter now of how it would end.
This scenario, though, was not a part of the agenda.
Narwid again started in the up position and tried everything he could to put Meyers in pin placement, but Meyers was somewhere between wiggling and not trying to wrestle, which should have gotten him a warning from the referee, but didn't.
So Narwid decided to force the issue. He picked Meyers up again and this time, put him down on the ground hard. Not as loud as the "thud" the first time, but hard, nonetheless.
Meyers, this time, didn't get up. The referee awarded Meyers a point because of the slam. Out on the mat went Ross, an assistant coach and trainer Tom Storer. Each team is allotted two minutes for injury time per match and Storer attended to Highland's 189-pounder. About 90 seconds in, you could see Meyers start to get up, as if he wanted to finish the match.
But you could also see the coaches telling Meyers to go back down. Storer would tell me later on that Meyers suffered "a mild concussion and strained ligaments" in his neck.
I have no doubt to this day the kid was dazed and probably not at his full wits. However, the kid was almost jumping up, ready to finish this match. That, I will forever question. A concussed person gets up wobbly or doesn't get up at all. Certainly a concussed person never gets straight up or with little help.
And Memorial fans weren't buying this either. As soon as Ross and Storer told the referee their wrestler could not finish, Narwid was disqualified because of the slam ... anything that involves giving a point to an opponent for a slam and not allowing that person to continue is a DQ.
Highland Regional forfeited the heavyweight bout to Reggie Gadson, whose fate was just trivial now, and the Tartans slinked away with a 29-23 win.
I can't remember honestly if the teams shook hands at the end of the match, but I do remember one thing -- Tartans wrestling personnel got into their team room in a hurry. Even happy Highland fans felt ashamed that this was the way an even match was decided -- a questionable DQ call, something that still resonates in my mind 24 years later.
I can still see those referees getting out of Highland's gym in a New York minute. I can see the Blackwood police having to be called into the gym to restore order. I can feel the blood boiling of those Mustangs fans and parents who just saw a potential upset swiped away like that.
With all the talk nowadays of concussions in sports like football and soccer and how much more athletes are protected, it'd be neat to tell you that 24 years later, Tom Storer and Highland Regional were well ahead of that curve.
But I think I'd be lying to you. A young man who was willing to finish out a match was kept down and helped preserve a Highland Regional win.
Needless to say, Narwid wanted the kid to come out of the locker room afterward. Narwid had two losses up to that point -- and both for the same reason. He was DQ'd in a match earlier in the year against a very good Dan Bennette of Point Pleasant Boro when Narwid was winning.
"Their so-called strategy worked," Narwid said afterward. "They won because the kid stayed down and won (his) match."
But if you think Narwid was upset, you should have seen Caravella afterward. A former wrestler himself, Caravella sounded like a man who wanted to take Ross on himself in a winner-take-all bout.
He first dismissed the thought that Ross had nothing to do with pulling Meyers and it was Storer's call. Then he added, "That was atrocious. And they call themselves a wrestling school? To rob a state championship match like that was ludicrous. That wasn't a flagrant move. I'd be embarrassed if I ever had to take a kid out like that."
And as Caravella kept talking, one thing became noticeable -- his anger made his vocal octave range get shriekingly higher. By the time he finished his tirade, he was in tears. Then he went back to the door of his locker room, opened it and slammed it hard enough behind him for even a full gymnasium to hear. To this day, I can't believe the door stayed on its hinges.
On the other side of the door, Caravella was crying, brought to tears by a call that may have sounded all about safety, but was nothing about the gladiator sport wrestling represented. The referee had to do what he had to do, but for a young man to stay down when he was ready to finish the match will always be questionable.
Whether he liked it or not, though, Caravella and his boys were having to leave Blackwood with hopes of a repeat state championship over.
By 1988 and reloaded with most of the wrestlers who were in Blackwood that night, the Mustangs won a second Group III state title.
And who knows what may have happened if not for a questionable slam and the two minutes after that. It may have been a three-peat for Memorial the following year.
To this day, I'm sure Caravella doesn't worry about his program's place in New Jersey high school sports history.
But I'm sure he still gets a little hot about that night in 1987 when safety was even questioned.
And it is a way in Ocean County every winter. At one point in a 20-year period, most every school had a star wrestler or a dynamic team that competed for a title of some kind. But no team was dominant in Ocean County during that span than Brick Memorial High School.
From the time Brick Memorial became a school in 1980, wrestling was immediately becoming the star attraction due to the work of hard-driving head coach Tony Caravella. Caravella had a power in the county with his Mustangs, even though questions raged in the beginning over how he was able to build that dynamo on the north side of Brick Township.
Brick Memorial and Tony Caravella were like wrestling's New York Yankees ... you either loved them or you hated them. But there's one thing that you never did.
That was overlook them.
For years, Brick Memorial was "chasing the carrot" for county supremacy. Then on a February night in 1985, the Mustangs won in shocking fashion with the bearhug and pin heard round the Shore when Dean Kanabrocki got a hold of sure-shot heavyweight rival Tim Rioux of Toms River East and put him on the mat for six points and the first Shore Conference title in school history.
In 1986, the Mustangs repeated their SCT title and went on to not only win their first state Group III championship, but were named the No. 1 team in the state. Talk about going to the next level in a hurry.
A lot of the key wrestlers on that '86 team, however, graduated -- state champion Bob Martin, Kanabrocki and Dean Albanese. But in '87, the Mustangs were good again.
In the NJSIAA South Jersey Group III tournament, the Mustangs were the third seed. They would have to go to Blackwood and face No. 2 seed Highland Regional, which was far from a slouch itself. The Tartans were a four-time state Group IV champion under legendary coach Ralph Ross. They knew how to win and had ways of winning.
You'll see that later on here.
Everyone that was associated with the gold and green of Brick Memorial wrestling knew this might be the biggest hurdle to jump en route to another state champion.
And so on Wednesday, February 18, 1987, the Mustangs entered unfriendly territory at Highland Regional with the thoughts of a state champion repeat in mind.
Wrestling at most schools is no big deal ... you announce the lineups, the wrestlers come out and shake each other's hands and then it's off to the 101-pound match. No biggie.
Not at Highland Regional in the 1980s. The lights went down and the spotlight was on the two guys in the center of that mat. And though it wasn't as pitch black as, say, legendary Phillipsburg High School, that aura of something big was there. And on this cold February night, the gymnasium at Highland Regional was packed to the rafters.
The "Tony Twosome" got Brick Memorial off to a 9-0 lead as 101-pounder Tony Nash stunned state tournament qualifier Bob Aceto, 8-3, and unbeaten 108-pounder Tony Roselli pinned Jason Rivers in 4:39. Then Vinny Santanello and Stan Lewis went move for move at 115 pounds before the pair ended in a 6-6 tie.
Though it was a tie, it gave the Tartans some much-needed momentum, and they took advantage of it. Rob Sentman beat Dann Pulsifer at 122 pounds, 7-4, then Gino Giumarrello beat Chuck Marotta, 3-0, at 129, to make it 11-8.
The Highland fans were whipped into a frenzy. The Tartans had the advantage in the middleweights and they knew it, and so did the crowd. They continued that dominance with a Ken Johnson win over Jeff Scott, 6-4, at 135 pounds and Chad Cassidy's 3-2 nail-biter over Jon Barger at 141 to make it 14-11 in Highland's favor.
All that early Memorial momentum was gone. Any sign of Memorial cheering was practically drowned out now. But we were yet to get to the upperweights, where Memorial had the slight advantage. If the Mustangs could gain a little momentum near the end of the middleweight run, there's no doubt they could win the match.
It was going to start at 148 pounds with Memorial's Chris Dvorak taking on a very good Jon Reilly. Dvorak was working his moves on Reilly, and built a 6-0 lead going into the final two-minute period.
But wrestling's a funny sport. One minute you're dominating and the next minute, you find yourself on your back just like that. Reilly caught Dvorak and pinned him 30 seconds into the last period.
The wind had been knocked out of Memorial's sails to say the least. Instead of a tie, maybe even a one-point lead, Highland had a 20-11 lead with four bouts left.
Joe McCabe, though, got the Mustangs fans back into it. He worked over Dean Cacciavaliano for nearly two periods before he finally put him on his back in 3:52 to make it 20-17 with three bouts to go.
At 170 pounds stepped Memorial freshman Vinny Dallicardillo, the one Mustang wrestler I would get to know over the years, first as a two-star sport in wrestling and football, then as an assistant coach at Memorial and finally as Brick Memorial High's softball coach through most of the 2000 decade. It was Dallicardillo's Mustangs who pulled off the biggest upset in Ocean County Softball Tournament history in 2003 when as an 11th seed, they stunned No. 1 and unbeaten Manchester in nine innings, 5-4.
But that's another story for another time.
Dallicardillo was having to face a more experienced Rob Franks, one of Highland's top wrestlers, but was coming off a separated shoulder just two weeks earlier that forced him to miss time. Franks was not 100 percent and Dallicardillo, who would take fourth in the state at his weight class as a senior three years later, was laying it on Franks hard.
The two battled down to the final 15 seconds when Franks was able to escape Dallicardillo's hold for a point and 5-4 victory, giving the Tartans a 23-17 lead with two bouts left.
The stage was set for one of the most controversial moments in my 26 years.
Onto the mat at 189 pounds stepped junior Todd Narwid, an experienced wrestler, but part of a group of younger Mustangs who were filling the shoes of the graduated state championship team members. Narwid's challenge was Tom Meyers, a lanky young man, but almost white as a sheet the moment the whistle blew.
Before you can blink an eye, Narwid had Meyers down on the mat. And he was able to work him over and put near-fall moves on him that helped accumulate his total.
Narwid led 5-0 after the first period, but near the end of the first period, Narwid got Meyers in the air and brought him down hard ... a "thud" sound followed.
Nothing was called, but Meyers had hurt his neck. You would think at that point with a hurt neck, Meyers might tell his trainer he was not all that good, but since nothing got called against Narwid, the match was still on.
This would prove to be vital toward the ending that was to take place.
Narwid started the second period up with Meyers down on the mat. He worked him again and built the lead up against what seemingly was a defenseless Meyers, who was only now trying to avoid being pinned and sending the heavyweight bout into a winner-take-all scenario.
Meyers did that, but by the end of the second period, it was 11-0. This match was a foregone conclusion to who would win. It was only a matter now of how it would end.
This scenario, though, was not a part of the agenda.
Narwid again started in the up position and tried everything he could to put Meyers in pin placement, but Meyers was somewhere between wiggling and not trying to wrestle, which should have gotten him a warning from the referee, but didn't.
So Narwid decided to force the issue. He picked Meyers up again and this time, put him down on the ground hard. Not as loud as the "thud" the first time, but hard, nonetheless.
Meyers, this time, didn't get up. The referee awarded Meyers a point because of the slam. Out on the mat went Ross, an assistant coach and trainer Tom Storer. Each team is allotted two minutes for injury time per match and Storer attended to Highland's 189-pounder. About 90 seconds in, you could see Meyers start to get up, as if he wanted to finish the match.
But you could also see the coaches telling Meyers to go back down. Storer would tell me later on that Meyers suffered "a mild concussion and strained ligaments" in his neck.
I have no doubt to this day the kid was dazed and probably not at his full wits. However, the kid was almost jumping up, ready to finish this match. That, I will forever question. A concussed person gets up wobbly or doesn't get up at all. Certainly a concussed person never gets straight up or with little help.
And Memorial fans weren't buying this either. As soon as Ross and Storer told the referee their wrestler could not finish, Narwid was disqualified because of the slam ... anything that involves giving a point to an opponent for a slam and not allowing that person to continue is a DQ.
Highland Regional forfeited the heavyweight bout to Reggie Gadson, whose fate was just trivial now, and the Tartans slinked away with a 29-23 win.
I can't remember honestly if the teams shook hands at the end of the match, but I do remember one thing -- Tartans wrestling personnel got into their team room in a hurry. Even happy Highland fans felt ashamed that this was the way an even match was decided -- a questionable DQ call, something that still resonates in my mind 24 years later.
I can still see those referees getting out of Highland's gym in a New York minute. I can see the Blackwood police having to be called into the gym to restore order. I can feel the blood boiling of those Mustangs fans and parents who just saw a potential upset swiped away like that.
With all the talk nowadays of concussions in sports like football and soccer and how much more athletes are protected, it'd be neat to tell you that 24 years later, Tom Storer and Highland Regional were well ahead of that curve.
But I think I'd be lying to you. A young man who was willing to finish out a match was kept down and helped preserve a Highland Regional win.
Needless to say, Narwid wanted the kid to come out of the locker room afterward. Narwid had two losses up to that point -- and both for the same reason. He was DQ'd in a match earlier in the year against a very good Dan Bennette of Point Pleasant Boro when Narwid was winning.
"Their so-called strategy worked," Narwid said afterward. "They won because the kid stayed down and won (his) match."
But if you think Narwid was upset, you should have seen Caravella afterward. A former wrestler himself, Caravella sounded like a man who wanted to take Ross on himself in a winner-take-all bout.
He first dismissed the thought that Ross had nothing to do with pulling Meyers and it was Storer's call. Then he added, "That was atrocious. And they call themselves a wrestling school? To rob a state championship match like that was ludicrous. That wasn't a flagrant move. I'd be embarrassed if I ever had to take a kid out like that."
And as Caravella kept talking, one thing became noticeable -- his anger made his vocal octave range get shriekingly higher. By the time he finished his tirade, he was in tears. Then he went back to the door of his locker room, opened it and slammed it hard enough behind him for even a full gymnasium to hear. To this day, I can't believe the door stayed on its hinges.
On the other side of the door, Caravella was crying, brought to tears by a call that may have sounded all about safety, but was nothing about the gladiator sport wrestling represented. The referee had to do what he had to do, but for a young man to stay down when he was ready to finish the match will always be questionable.
Whether he liked it or not, though, Caravella and his boys were having to leave Blackwood with hopes of a repeat state championship over.
By 1988 and reloaded with most of the wrestlers who were in Blackwood that night, the Mustangs won a second Group III state title.
And who knows what may have happened if not for a questionable slam and the two minutes after that. It may have been a three-peat for Memorial the following year.
To this day, I'm sure Caravella doesn't worry about his program's place in New Jersey high school sports history.
But I'm sure he still gets a little hot about that night in 1987 when safety was even questioned.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
East's divine intervention perhaps
Divine intervention is something yours truly has never been a full-time subscriber to. I've always believed that in the end, it was the talent of one athlete or a team or a better strategy that proved why one side was better than the other.
Sometimes, though, you just have to believe.
On Friday night, February 15, 1985, that just might have been the case.
Toms River High School East's boys swimming team was the two-time defending Shore Conference Tournament champion, but was having to go in for the first time in this meet without its greatest swimmer, Chris Marshall, who had graduated the year before, and cross-town rival Toms River South was loaded.
Like, ridiculously loaded. They were the area's swimming version of Murderer's Row -- stroke specialists Kevin Ansbro and Keith DeWitt complementing freestyle mavens Terence Donnelly and John Morrison, who less than a month later would bring home swimming gold in the 50-yard freestyle at Princeton University.
During the duel-meet regular season at the Toms River YMCA, South's home pool, South dominated in beating East, 98.5-73.5, so it was a foregone conclusion the Indians were going to claim their first Shore Conference meet title since the very first meet held in 1978. In between, North won the title four straight years from 1979-82 with East winning the next two titles.
The architect of the four North titles as coach was now South's mentor and one of swimming's positive forces, Bill Sorrentino. He knew he had the talent to win it all -- he's the first coach I ever heard in my career tell me, "You're only as good a coach as your talent."
The only way the overwhelming favorite Indians were not going to win it all was an unbelievable team effort by someone else. The only team in the field that could stand up to South was East, which now was guided by the senior leadership of veterans like Rich Siegler and Bill Rickert and with a ton of depth that could claim points here and there in a meet of this magnitude.
As had been proven in December, there was little chance that East could beat South if it was a straight-up dual meet. South's top swimmers were better than East's top swimmers, so Raider coach Mike Conlon's strategy was to get his guys in the right spots and gain points in events that South could not dominate in or better swimmers from other schools could get in and beat South's swimmers, limiting the amount of points the Indians could score.
All the teams of the Shore at the time competing in the meet -- the three Toms River schools, Middletowns North and South, Ocean Township, Shore Regional, Red Bank Regional, Rumson, Neptune and Long Branch -- converged on Ocean County College, the home pool for Toms Rivers East and North and the annual site for the Shore Conference Meet.
Days before the meet, I had done a ton of research on this one meet since this was my first year of covering swimming and gotten a lot of recollections from the coaches who were there watching their kids lead the way to victory -- Sorrentino, Conlon and South's coach in 1978 when the Indians won that title, Vince Heckel, who was now the meet announcer, working with former South girls coach Paul Lenzo, who was the coach of the first girls Shore Conference title team with the Indians in 1978. The affable and knowledgeable Lenzo was now the meet director.
I had an open seat next to Henkel at the table for the meet, thanks to Lenzo, who was bouncing around from place to place on the pool deck trying to make sure there were no hitches during the meet. The best part about having a seat next to Heckel was that I could pick his brain about strategies and what approximate times could win an event. Those three hours next to him were as worthy a three hours I have ever had in my career and I could never thank him enough. It was like getting a free education in the sport.
Meanwhile, East had wiped out the lead South had gained the night before in diving in the opening medley relay. While East's team of Craig Fenwick, Chris Anderson, Doug DeVincens and Scott McShaffery was swimming to a victory in the event, one of South's swimmers had gone into the pool before his teammate had touched the wall. That disqualified South, which finished third in the event and cost them 22 points.
This would be huge at the end of the meet.
Morrison won the 200-yard freestyle, but East's depth was already coming into play. At one point, East held a 31-point lead. When Siegler won the 500, East had a commanding 22-point lead with three events left, which seemed overwhelming for anyone, including South, to overcome.
But South's talent kicked in. The Indian studs weren't going to just roll over and sink in the OCC pool. The beginning of their comeback started with the 100-yard backstroke where Ansbro, a top junior, came from an outside lane to win the event and pick up 16 first-place points, helping cut East's lead to 13 points.
And Morrison still had the 100-yard breaststroke to swim. He swam his way to victory and suddenly, East was up by one single point -- 225-224 -- going into the last relay.
For the second straight year, East was going to have to be at its best in the 400-yard freestyle relay. This time, though, East was going to have to beat South's relay team, unlike the year before when East just needed to finish third to win the meet.
But the South relay team of Eric Grove, DeWitt, Ansbro and Donnelly was about five seconds faster than East's relay team of Joe Aromando, Andy Kraus, Rickert and Siegler during the regular season.
Moments, though, before that last relay, I looked at the corner of East's side of the pool. Conlon was giving a fired-up pep talk. The four swimmers broke the huddle to go to the starting block. And who do I see in the background behind Conlon? None other than Chris Marshall.
Arguably the best swimmer in East history, Marshall had time away from Lehigh University's swim team to make the meet. And with everything that was happening in his almost 19-year-old life at that point, starting with the tragic murder of his mother Maria off a Garden State Parkway rest stop the previous September and the whirlwind coverage of his father being arrested for the planning of her murder in December, the pool was his getaway, where he was still a part of the team even though he was no longer an official member.
Whether it was his inspiration of being there on that OCC deck or not, East had over-achieved a good amount of the night -- and had taken advantage of that DQ in the medley realy -- to hold this one-point lead going to the final event of the night.
South was the top seed of the event, East was No. 3, but both would swim right next to one another, South in lane four, East in lane three, so it was easy to follow both teams in eye level.
As the official announced, "On your marks ... set ... " then hit the buzzer to begin the event, the fans up behind our table were immediately on their feet. They were about to see an end like no other.
It didn't look good for East at the start. Grove and DeWitt had given South a good lead. But into the pool stepped Rickert. He trailed Ansbro, who had just jumped into the pool before him. But Rickert -- East's 6-foot-2 gentle giant -- began to make up the deficit in his 100 yards. By the time he reached the wall, he made the deficit up for Siegler.
Donnelly, a sophomore at the time, jumped in ahead of the East senior. Both 6-foot swimmers were churning through the water at maniacally fast paces. As the two hit the 50-yard mark, they were even. At that point, Lenzo saw my peaked interest in this event and said to me, "You can come to the side of the pool to watch."
It was the only time in my seven years of covering the sport that I ever did so. What I saw in those last 24 seconds, those final 100 yards, will stay with me until the day I no longer exist, the two battling it out stroke for stroke, one next to the other, the crowd literally drowning out the excited teammates cheering on the swimmers going after a Shore Conference title.
With 25 yards left, they were still even. Then something happened. Maybe for years it has been explained that Rich Siegler put it into another gear, just like I reported on the meet. Maybe again, it was Maria Marshall making it a little easier for her son's former teammate to get that little boost of help.
Divine intervention perhaps.
In those last 25 yards, Siegler pulled away. He got to the wall before Donnelly, still on his tail.
The East quartet had swum the 4x100 in a Shore Conference meet record 3:28.21, 10 seconds faster than its best time of the year. South's 3:28.97 would have won every other meet 4x100.
Just not this one.
One year later with Morrison and DeWitt as senior leaders, the Indians would dominate the Shore Conference Meet to win that elusive championship before East would surprise South again in the '87 meet for the first of four straight title, giving the Raiders seven championships in an eight-year period.
And in the end on this February night in 1985, Siegler splashed around furiously in the OCC pool in joy. He had just given East its third straight SC Meet title ... and its most unlikely title. East finished with 257 points to South's 250.
South swimmers and Sorrentino left the OCC pool deck like they were leaving a funeral. Their title had just been snagged away from them by an East team that took advantage of its talents and of the medley relay break it got nearly three hours earlier.
The East swimmers dedicated the victory to the hard work they put in that night. They also dedicated that title to the memory of Maria Marshall, a supportive swimming mom who had an effect on each of the East swimmers on that pool deck that night.
"Tonight we got a special lift from two of the most inspirational people I have known," said Conlon afterward. "We got a special lift in having Chris here with us and another inspirational lift from his mother. Everything she did for the team for four years really paid off tonight. Chris' mom was here helping us along in spirit."
Maria Marshall's spirit was felt that night. Where it was reported that Rich Siegler dug deep to pull away from Terence Donnelly in those last 25 yards to win that last relay for East, maybe he was getting some help.
Divine intervention, perhaps, if you believe.
Sometimes, though, you just have to believe.
On Friday night, February 15, 1985, that just might have been the case.
Toms River High School East's boys swimming team was the two-time defending Shore Conference Tournament champion, but was having to go in for the first time in this meet without its greatest swimmer, Chris Marshall, who had graduated the year before, and cross-town rival Toms River South was loaded.
Like, ridiculously loaded. They were the area's swimming version of Murderer's Row -- stroke specialists Kevin Ansbro and Keith DeWitt complementing freestyle mavens Terence Donnelly and John Morrison, who less than a month later would bring home swimming gold in the 50-yard freestyle at Princeton University.
During the duel-meet regular season at the Toms River YMCA, South's home pool, South dominated in beating East, 98.5-73.5, so it was a foregone conclusion the Indians were going to claim their first Shore Conference meet title since the very first meet held in 1978. In between, North won the title four straight years from 1979-82 with East winning the next two titles.
The architect of the four North titles as coach was now South's mentor and one of swimming's positive forces, Bill Sorrentino. He knew he had the talent to win it all -- he's the first coach I ever heard in my career tell me, "You're only as good a coach as your talent."
The only way the overwhelming favorite Indians were not going to win it all was an unbelievable team effort by someone else. The only team in the field that could stand up to South was East, which now was guided by the senior leadership of veterans like Rich Siegler and Bill Rickert and with a ton of depth that could claim points here and there in a meet of this magnitude.
As had been proven in December, there was little chance that East could beat South if it was a straight-up dual meet. South's top swimmers were better than East's top swimmers, so Raider coach Mike Conlon's strategy was to get his guys in the right spots and gain points in events that South could not dominate in or better swimmers from other schools could get in and beat South's swimmers, limiting the amount of points the Indians could score.
All the teams of the Shore at the time competing in the meet -- the three Toms River schools, Middletowns North and South, Ocean Township, Shore Regional, Red Bank Regional, Rumson, Neptune and Long Branch -- converged on Ocean County College, the home pool for Toms Rivers East and North and the annual site for the Shore Conference Meet.
Days before the meet, I had done a ton of research on this one meet since this was my first year of covering swimming and gotten a lot of recollections from the coaches who were there watching their kids lead the way to victory -- Sorrentino, Conlon and South's coach in 1978 when the Indians won that title, Vince Heckel, who was now the meet announcer, working with former South girls coach Paul Lenzo, who was the coach of the first girls Shore Conference title team with the Indians in 1978. The affable and knowledgeable Lenzo was now the meet director.
I had an open seat next to Henkel at the table for the meet, thanks to Lenzo, who was bouncing around from place to place on the pool deck trying to make sure there were no hitches during the meet. The best part about having a seat next to Heckel was that I could pick his brain about strategies and what approximate times could win an event. Those three hours next to him were as worthy a three hours I have ever had in my career and I could never thank him enough. It was like getting a free education in the sport.
Meanwhile, East had wiped out the lead South had gained the night before in diving in the opening medley relay. While East's team of Craig Fenwick, Chris Anderson, Doug DeVincens and Scott McShaffery was swimming to a victory in the event, one of South's swimmers had gone into the pool before his teammate had touched the wall. That disqualified South, which finished third in the event and cost them 22 points.
This would be huge at the end of the meet.
Morrison won the 200-yard freestyle, but East's depth was already coming into play. At one point, East held a 31-point lead. When Siegler won the 500, East had a commanding 22-point lead with three events left, which seemed overwhelming for anyone, including South, to overcome.
But South's talent kicked in. The Indian studs weren't going to just roll over and sink in the OCC pool. The beginning of their comeback started with the 100-yard backstroke where Ansbro, a top junior, came from an outside lane to win the event and pick up 16 first-place points, helping cut East's lead to 13 points.
And Morrison still had the 100-yard breaststroke to swim. He swam his way to victory and suddenly, East was up by one single point -- 225-224 -- going into the last relay.
For the second straight year, East was going to have to be at its best in the 400-yard freestyle relay. This time, though, East was going to have to beat South's relay team, unlike the year before when East just needed to finish third to win the meet.
But the South relay team of Eric Grove, DeWitt, Ansbro and Donnelly was about five seconds faster than East's relay team of Joe Aromando, Andy Kraus, Rickert and Siegler during the regular season.
Moments, though, before that last relay, I looked at the corner of East's side of the pool. Conlon was giving a fired-up pep talk. The four swimmers broke the huddle to go to the starting block. And who do I see in the background behind Conlon? None other than Chris Marshall.
Arguably the best swimmer in East history, Marshall had time away from Lehigh University's swim team to make the meet. And with everything that was happening in his almost 19-year-old life at that point, starting with the tragic murder of his mother Maria off a Garden State Parkway rest stop the previous September and the whirlwind coverage of his father being arrested for the planning of her murder in December, the pool was his getaway, where he was still a part of the team even though he was no longer an official member.
Whether it was his inspiration of being there on that OCC deck or not, East had over-achieved a good amount of the night -- and had taken advantage of that DQ in the medley realy -- to hold this one-point lead going to the final event of the night.
South was the top seed of the event, East was No. 3, but both would swim right next to one another, South in lane four, East in lane three, so it was easy to follow both teams in eye level.
As the official announced, "On your marks ... set ... " then hit the buzzer to begin the event, the fans up behind our table were immediately on their feet. They were about to see an end like no other.
It didn't look good for East at the start. Grove and DeWitt had given South a good lead. But into the pool stepped Rickert. He trailed Ansbro, who had just jumped into the pool before him. But Rickert -- East's 6-foot-2 gentle giant -- began to make up the deficit in his 100 yards. By the time he reached the wall, he made the deficit up for Siegler.
Donnelly, a sophomore at the time, jumped in ahead of the East senior. Both 6-foot swimmers were churning through the water at maniacally fast paces. As the two hit the 50-yard mark, they were even. At that point, Lenzo saw my peaked interest in this event and said to me, "You can come to the side of the pool to watch."
It was the only time in my seven years of covering the sport that I ever did so. What I saw in those last 24 seconds, those final 100 yards, will stay with me until the day I no longer exist, the two battling it out stroke for stroke, one next to the other, the crowd literally drowning out the excited teammates cheering on the swimmers going after a Shore Conference title.
With 25 yards left, they were still even. Then something happened. Maybe for years it has been explained that Rich Siegler put it into another gear, just like I reported on the meet. Maybe again, it was Maria Marshall making it a little easier for her son's former teammate to get that little boost of help.
Divine intervention perhaps.
In those last 25 yards, Siegler pulled away. He got to the wall before Donnelly, still on his tail.
The East quartet had swum the 4x100 in a Shore Conference meet record 3:28.21, 10 seconds faster than its best time of the year. South's 3:28.97 would have won every other meet 4x100.
Just not this one.
One year later with Morrison and DeWitt as senior leaders, the Indians would dominate the Shore Conference Meet to win that elusive championship before East would surprise South again in the '87 meet for the first of four straight title, giving the Raiders seven championships in an eight-year period.
And in the end on this February night in 1985, Siegler splashed around furiously in the OCC pool in joy. He had just given East its third straight SC Meet title ... and its most unlikely title. East finished with 257 points to South's 250.
South swimmers and Sorrentino left the OCC pool deck like they were leaving a funeral. Their title had just been snagged away from them by an East team that took advantage of its talents and of the medley relay break it got nearly three hours earlier.
The East swimmers dedicated the victory to the hard work they put in that night. They also dedicated that title to the memory of Maria Marshall, a supportive swimming mom who had an effect on each of the East swimmers on that pool deck that night.
"Tonight we got a special lift from two of the most inspirational people I have known," said Conlon afterward. "We got a special lift in having Chris here with us and another inspirational lift from his mother. Everything she did for the team for four years really paid off tonight. Chris' mom was here helping us along in spirit."
Maria Marshall's spirit was felt that night. Where it was reported that Rich Siegler dug deep to pull away from Terence Donnelly in those last 25 yards to win that last relay for East, maybe he was getting some help.
Divine intervention, perhaps, if you believe.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
The night Consuelo Lezcano dominated like no one else ever did
Recently, I came up with a list of my all-time best high school girls basketball team. It was not as easy as you would think, but I believe I came up with an elite list.
My guards would be rather easy, even if there were a ton of them to pick from -- Carol Walters of Lakewood (Class of 1987) and Kris Witfill of Monsignor Donovan (Class of 1989) would be my No. 1 and 2 guards, respectively. My swing player, the No. 3 spot, would be Lucie Fontanella of Toms River East (Class of '90). My power forward at No. 4 would be 1,800-point career scorer Candice McCallum of Southern Regional (Class of '97).
My center? That would be a no-brainer. Even if you never saw her play more than one game, the one game you needed to see Consuelo Lezcano play was on Thursday night, February 14, 2002.
It's the game legends are made and talked about for a lifetime.
Here's the setup going into that night at the Marathon High School gymnasium off of Mile Marker 50 in the Florida Keys -- the Dolphins had stunned a very good Westminster Christian team from Miami in the District 16-2A championship on February 9. Lezcano, the Dolphins' agile 6-foot-3 center with a large wingspan for arms, had 23 points and 13 rebounds in that game, while teammate and guard Veronica Doughman added 17.
It was a joyous time for the school, the young ladies who wore the Marathon High uniform and head coach Teresa Konrath, who had coached that program for a few years before finally winning a district title.
With that victory, Marathon got to host a first-round game in the state tournament that Valentine's Day against the District 15-2A runners-up. In this case, it was Miami's Archbishop Curley High School.
It also meant that I got to get away from my Key West Citizen office on a Thursday night and travel the 54 miles, including the famous Seven-Mile Bridge, into Marathon to see the young ladies host a state tournament game, the first time a state girls basketball game was hosted in the Keys in a while.
But all that week, my car, a Ford Thunderbird LX, was having trouble. It started to overheat and by the Thursday of the game, I couldn't drive it. I wound up having to take a rental at my Ford dealership on US-1 for $25 that night to get me up the Keys. They didn't have a regular car available, so I wound up having to take a pickup truck, which I was hardly familiar with since I've never driven anything that had a hatchback in my life.
Then again, I wasn't driving the car backwards to Marathon, either. And it had a CD player, so I was more than good to go.
A couple of days earlier, I had done the preview for our paper. Three years earlier, Marathon and Curley had played in the state tournament in Miami and the result wasn't even close -- Curley 73, Marathon 24. Coach Konrath didn't have to tell me what kind of a beatdown it was. And she didn't have to tell me the final score padding was unnecessary, either.
If there ever was a time when a sports team was out for blood, it was these young ladies from the Middle Keys, even if most of them didn't play in that game three years earlier.
The one thing I did know about this Curley team going in was they were athletic. Oh, another thing I knew about the Curley girls -- they were very small. Their tallest player was 5-foot-7, a mere eight inches shorter than Lezcano.
If the athleticism -- and the lack of putting the ball in the basket -- was not going to be a factor, figure that both Lezcano was going to have a huge night and that the Dolphins were going to win big.
When I got into the Marathon gym that night for the opening round of the Region 4-2A tournament, the place was starting to get packed. Apparently word got out to every corner of the town and surrounding Keys because the joint was jammed and jumpin'. Marathon athletic director Bill Sympson looked somewhere between overwhelmed and stunned.
Then I got to look at both teams warming up beforehand. Lezcano stood out like a sore thumb going through the layup drills for her team. Then I looked at the other end at the Lilliputians from Archbishop Curley warming up.
I just hoped Curley had this really awesome strategy to handle the big girl.
Well, needless to say, Lezcano didn't even have to leap far off the ground to win the opening jump ball, get it to teammate Stacey Poole, who got it to Doughman for the game's first basket.
Now it was the Knights' turn to do something. A long jump shot. No good. Lezcano comes down with the rebound. Marathon works the ball to Lezcano, who put it up and in to make it 4-0.
Next trip down, Lezcano alters a shot. Marathon rebounds. Doughman scores. Now it's 6-0. Timeout, Curley.
I find it hard to believe that Archbishop Curley's head coach and assistants had no gameplan going into this. It was totally amazing. I started wondering in that first couple of minutes of this potential blowout if Curley's plan was to just run around like chickens with loose heads and make the offense up as it went along.
I find it harder to believe they didn't know about this athletic 6-3 giant in the middle.
But I find it easy to believe that coach Konrath was telling her Dolphins to keep doing what they're doing because it looked like the Knight players had already soiled themselves.
Then somewhere in that timeout, the Curley coach told her players to go to the basket. Seems normal -- get the big girl in foul trouble and get her out of the game.
They soon found out that if they weren't taller than 5-7 and didn't have an up-and-under move or something that would draw contact on the arm or body, they were in huge trouble.
The first girl took her shot at the basket after beating the guards off the dribble. Up went the shot. Back the shot went toward the Marathon guards. Same thing on the next possession -- down the lane went the Curley guard, putting up her shot, only to get it swatted by Lezcano.
This trend went on for the rest of the half. Actually, it went on for the rest of the game, either that first description or they would have their shot altered by Lezcano putting it up, not have it blocked, but have Lezcano come down with an easy rebound. And in a couple of possessions, Knights players even put shots up that not only did Lezcano block, but also caught in mid-air.
And in one instance -- one that goes down on the all-time list of greatest memories -- one Knights player put a shot up that not only Lezcano stuffed her with, but took the ball out of her hands for the steal! It took me a while to pick my jaw back up from off the floor.
By the third quarter, my line for marking rebounds was already filled up next to Lezcano's number. And soon after that, the second line I had to make up to put more X's (defensive boards) and O's (offensive boards) was filling up.
The Knights were overmatched. Not by an entire team, but by one player.
Marathon went on to the easy 66-31 victory over Curley, which I still to this day find amazing that this team even scored 31 points. A third of those points, though, came after Konrath had taken Lezcano out in the fourth quarter for good.
The final line for the 6-3 Marathon High junior is the kind of line you have to read at least four or five times before it sinks in -- 26 points, 14 blocked shots, 35 rebounds.
Yes, you did read that right -- 35 rebounds, a number only Russell and Chamberlain easily attained back in the NBA day when they dominated their center positions. And she could have easily had 40 or more rebounds had she stayed in until the end.
I am left with that memory of the most dominant one-person performance in my 26-plus years in the business in any sport and having to explain what it was like to see it that night. There's sadly no videotape I know of to see that performance again, unless coach Konrath has something from it to show.
Realistically, the game was against kids not her own size. Yes, I get that. But if she wasn't getting college coaches' attentions before, she sure did after that.
Marathon's season would end with a loss at Westminster Academy in Fort Lauderdale in the next round, but Lezcano had already cemented her place as our Keys girls basketball player of the year at the Citizen for the third straight year.
And she cemented her place as one of the state's best, earning second-team all-state honors in 2A.
Unfortunately, I was not able to help her push her way to first-team all-state in the class in the 2002-03 season. The higher-ups at the Citizen felt the need to no longer want me two months later and the people they hired to take over were clueless -- and worse, they had no relationship with any of the people who ran the Florida Sports Writers Association.
Lezcano had another dominant season as a senior in 2002-03 and would have easily been put onto first team in 2A had those people who replaced me even taken one damn minute to pay attention to what was going on beyond Key West. They simply dropped the ball for this young lady getting any honors. And I'm not totally sure Konrath ever forgave the Citizen sports staff for that. If I were her, I sure as hell wouldn't have.
She was completely snubbed. Thankfully, UCLA thought enough of Lezcano to give her a full ride in 2003.
Unemployed the next winter, I decided to take a road trip to Florida where I actually had a job interview at a paper set up on the left side of the state. I got to the Keys and stayed with my good friend Penni and her kids at my old apartment complex on Duck Avenue. I could never thank Penni enough for the three days I was there.
I got to take her youngest daughter with me in my new car -- yes, the Thunderbird that I had trouble with soon died after finding out there were cracked blocks -- on the Thursday night I was there. The two of us headed back up the Keys to Marathon where I told her about how amazing Lezcano was.
The Dolphins had won another district title and this time, they were hosting a different District 15-2A runnnerup in Florida Christian of Miami. The smallish Patriots, unlike the Knights the year before, at least had a plan to combat Lezcano. What they did was to take their two best defenders and shadow her everywhere she went that night.
Great idea in hindsight, but bad execution, especially when Marathon's remaining four -- which included Doughman and Poole -- were tons better than the three defenders left to guard them. But it was amusing, almost hilarious to watch these two young ladies chase Lezcano all over the court when the Dolphins had the ball. I told Penni's daughter that the next step might be for the big girl to go out into the hallway of the gymnasium and take the two girls with her. She could have probably ordered something from the snack stand and the two girls would have been there to defend her from getting that snack.
Marathon won, 67-41, and Lezcano still put up 22 points, 26 rebounds and 11 blocked shots -- even with the double team a good amount of the night. And she, like the year before, was taken out of the game for good well when the game was in hand.
She never had the career anyone could wish for her in college, but I'm also sure she was happy to get out of the Keys. One thing this bright, bi-lingual young lady told me about was how she couldn't wait to see what was out there after leaving. I lost touch with her by early 2004, but her memory will always be there.
Especially with the memory of the most dominating performance I've ever witnessed, that would be a no-brainer.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
An amazing Super Bowl experience
One of my favorite sayings of all-time is "even a blind squirrel finds a nut on occasion."
For the greatest professional sports moment in my career, I consider myself that lucky.
In August 2003, I had taken the job as a sports writer and associate editor at the Palatka Daily News in northeastern Florida sight unseen. I had been out of a job for 16 months and, hey, they liked me enough after two phone interviews to come down and take the job.
One of the nice perks about the job was that we had press passes to cover the Jacksonville Jaguars' home game. The first fall I was there, I got to cover at least four games, including the Jaguars' exciting 28-23 victory over Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts.
The next fall, though, was interesting. I got to see the Jaguars play six home games. At that point, I would split my time at Alltel Stadium with my boss, who got to do most of the home games of the Florida Gators at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium.
But the 2004 season was the one that culminated with the Super Bowl being held at Alltel, so we were paying very close attention to who was going to be in the big game. When it was official on January 23, 2005 that the New England Patriots would be looking for the first Super Bowl repeat since the Denver Broncos in 1999, I thought that was great.
Then I saw the opponent ... the Philadelphia Eagles. After three miserable NFC Championship game failures against the St. Louis Rams, Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Carolina Panthers, in that order, they had finally made it to the Super Bowl for the first time in 24 years, slaying Michael Vick and the Atlanta Falcons.
Two teams of interest that I knew of growing up in New Jersey -- the Patriots and the Eagles. A northeastern Super Bowl down on the First Coast.
But I was going to be watching the game from a sports bar or at least the comfort of my apartment if my girlfriend at the time had it her way. More on that later.
It was agreed upon that my boss would cover the Super Bowl. Though I had covered 10 Jaguars games over the last two years, he would do the game. Believe it or not, I was all right with that because he was there when Jacksonville was given the big game years earlier, so he had something to look forward to.
He made the arrangements for himself and for Allison, our backup photographer who now works in advertising, to cover the game.
But as the week leading up to Super Bowl Media Hype Week wore on, I started sensing my boss not feeling well. His coughing got louder. It got longer and became more often. He was definitely coming down with something, but he wasn't going to complain about being sick.
The weekend before the Super Bowl, I was in touch with Richard, my best buddy in Florida. Richard and I had seen Super Bowl XXXVIII, played in Houston the year before, at his local Hooters right off of I-75 in Ocala. We had a great time that night, but truth be told, I went out to the nearby Publix supermarket to get something at halftime and missed Janet Jackson's infamous peep show.
So Richard and I bantered about what we should do for this year's game. We really had no plan, but staying as far away from Jacksonville was definitely part of that plan.
A year before, I was living by myself for that Super Bowl. Two weeks after that Super Bowl, I met my girlfriend and four months later, we moved in together next door to the apartment I was living in. So one of the new rules about living with someone is to not be selfish and to take your significant other's advice on occasion.
"You're not going out on Super Bowl Sunday with all the drunks and amateurs partying that night," was her decree. "If you want to have Richard come over, I'll buy all the stuff and you guys can hang out."
I got lock-jawed at that moment. Hey, at least she cared enough to keep me in one piece.
Anyway, Media Hype Week was under way. And on the Tuesday before the big game, it is the day where the players and coaches meet the media. Naturally, my boss went, but got there late because he had an issue with his truck. He got what he needed that day, and came back to do his column on the event.
And he was still coughing long, loud and even more often through Wednesday.
At just before 11 a.m. Thursday, I get a phone call. It's Allison.
"Can you get down to the paper?" she said.
"Yeah I can. What's up?" I said, thinking something horrible must have happened to one of our employees.
Turns out my boss was demanded by his doctor to stay far away from work until he got better with his diagnosed pneumonia. My first thought was how horrible the timing for him to have this happen. I knew he was really looking forward to doing Jacksonville's first Super Bowl, so I felt bad for him.
Now Allison and I were having to go up to Jacksonville that afternoon to pick up my press credentials. But before I headed to the paper, I had to make one phone call.
"Hey hon, how are you doing? How's work?"
"All's good, how about you?"
"I'm doing good, hon. By the way, just to let you know, I'm not going to be home Sunday night. I'm going to Jacksonville to cover the Super Bowl."
"What?! What happened?"
Then I explained to her my boss' illness and that I would be taking his spot. She was excited and on that Sunday we'd probably be two ships passing in the night at best at home.
Once Allison got me at work, we headed up US-17 to Jacksonville's Prime Osborne Convention Center to go through the motions of having to get press credentials and explain to media coordinators that I was taking my boss' place. There was no backup plan, I find out there, and for the next 5-10 minutes, the two of us had to explain that he wasn't coming and I was taking his place. Media coordinators of big events aren't very thrilled when you replace someone with someone else at the last second. They like everything scripted, like when Bill Walsh put those first 15 plays down on his offensive sheet for a game.
Nonetheless, I had to take pictures and fill out forms and finally, I had my press credential. For the next hour, I got to walk around the convention center while all the media bigwigs were either conversing with other stars of football and sports, or, right next to me, Jim Rome is doing his daily afternoon radio show.
It suddenly hit me at that moment ... I was covering the biggest sporting event in America for 2005.
But reality was about to hit. Without my boss doing layout at work, I was handling the job of putting a paper out all by myself, which is far from a fun task when you have to take phone calls from coaches on their high school and college games that night. The next night, a district championship soccer match I would normally be at 37 miles away from the office in Pierson was something I couldn't go to because of the volume of work.
Call it a combination of elation and frustration.
But our trips to Jacksonville were not over yet. Allison and I had to go back up on Friday morning to pick up some more credentials and information for the game. In the interim, the two of us got to go to the Florida Theater where a press conference was being held for the remake of the movie The Longest Yard. On stage were Adam Sandler, Michael Irvin, Sean Salisbury, Bill Romanowski and Burt Reynolds, the star of the original version in 1974.
I asked Burt what the biggest difference between making the original Longest Yard and this version was.
"About a million dollars," he dead-panned. Classic Burt Reynolds response.
At the luncheon after the press conference, we were given goody bags that included a T-shirt for the upcoming movie, which I gave to my girlfriend. Even to this day, I can almost jokingly hear her say, "The Super Bowl came to Jacksonville, and all I got from the experience was this T-shirt."
I ran into some of the Philly media that was there, including my longtime buddy Tripp from Toms River, who was working the coverage of the game for the Philly station he was working at. We had not seen each other in almost six years, but since that day, we have kept in touch and he remains a good friend and Facebook pal.
By the time Allison and I left, it was about 3:30 and I had to go through the same motions of getting in from a long day at Jacksonville and laying out the four-page section by my lonesome again, which included a Saturday column on the 39 greatest moments in Super Bowl history and a 59-inch feature story I did on the incomparable Steve Sabol of NFL Films, who was coming to Jacksonville for the big game. Even though he was pressed for time, he gave me a great half-hour interview.
Got through that Friday night at work and stayed at home Saturday knowing Sunday was a big day.
On the day of the game, Sunday, February 6, 2005, I did not leave until just before 1 p.m. When going to a Jaguars game, you come off of I-95 and you are almost immediately met by traffic at the bridge leading to Bay Street and to the stadium. That lasts about 10 minutes, but you ultimately park and walk to the stadium from there.
On this day, I had to drive to that convention center again just off of I-95 where I would be met by a media bus picking us up at 2:45 p.m. And when I got on the bus, I started calling people I know to tell them where I was going.
One was my longtime best friend of nearly 30 years, Ted, who my girlfriend and I had just seen a month and a half earlier outside of Washington, D.C. I had not talked to him much since then. Ever since we were journalists/editors in high school in the early-to-mid 1980s and then at OCC between 1984-86, we always had this goal of covering something big in our lifetimes. He never got that opportunity to do so and ultimately switched professions.
He notices my cell phone number and answers, "Hey buddy, what's up?"
"Not much."
"You at the game?"
"Yeah ... we made it. I'm here."
"Well that's wonderful! I'm glad. Hope you have a great time there."
Moments later, we got off the bus to this mass of hysteria there for the game. But to get to the stadium, you have to go through not one, but two checkpoints. The world was a much difference place after 9/11, and understandably so on the biggest sports stage. Then I staked out the sights and hear the sounds. Walking in front of me was this tall dude, walking his stuff into the stadium on luggage rollers. It was ESPN's Steven A. Smith. And as I was going into the stadium, I looked to the right and saw a band playing in the parking lot.
The song being played was "Point Of Know Return." Then I looked closer. This wasn't a cover band ... this was really Kansas. I spotted Rich Williams and his eye patch from a distance, so I knew it was Kansas.
As I was taking the stairs up, I realized we would not be in our usual weather-protected indoor press box like at Jaguars games. They had the media keep climbing and climbing up to the upper deck and to a covered area that we were going to watch the game from. I swore that if we climbed any higher that either A) I was going to get a nose bleed or B) God was going to be talking to me personally. Good thing the weather had warmed up to 67 degrees by game time.
They left us a goody bag for the media and inside were various trinkets, including a small Sirius digital radio (For FM listening purposes, I still to this day don't understand why a satellite radio network would sponsor this. They could have been nice and given us an XM-like Inno to walk around neighborhoods with.)
But there was a list of stations in the Jacksonville area that would be covering the Super Bowl on the radio. One station had the Eagles' broadcast with Merrill Reese and Mike Quick. Another had the Patriots' broadcast with Gil Santos and Geno Cappelletti. And there was the Westwood One broadcast with Marv Albert and Boomer Esiason that I was listening to on and off during the game.
As I walked out to go to the bathroom before the opening kickoff, all I had to do was take in the sounds to know who the major rooting interest was. I heard so much "Go Eagles" and cussing, I swore I thought I was back in South Philly. The opposition had become the "hated Patriots."
The only person sitting around me covering the game that I recognized from covering the Jaguars all season was my friend Ron, who worked for a Georgia-based paper. We sat next to each other in awe at what was going on around us. If I looked down a few seats away from press row, I can see ESPN's Shelly Smith and Sal Paolantonio in seats watching the game.
With a very good game tied at 7 at halftime, the rest of the media and I settled in for what was to be an entertaining halftime show with Sir Paul McCartney, who was brought in as a more popular and "safer" choice after the so-called "younger acts" over the previous years had ruined the show, Jackson's "Nipplegate" episode being the last straw. The best concert I have ever seen was McCartney at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia in 1990. This time, the show was four songs long, but ended in a rousing performance of "Hey Jude" that had everyone singing at the end.
He hadn't lost it in 15 years and still is great today.
Going into the final quarter, it was 14-all. Then the Patriots put a drive together and capped it with a Corey Dillon scoring run of 2 yards to make it 21-14. After the Eagles had to punt the ball away, the Patriots drove down the field with Tom Brady hitting eventual Super Bowl MVP Deion Branch with a 19-yard strike for a first down. A roughing-the-passer call on Corey Simon led to another first down and ultimately, Adam Vinatieri nailed a 22-yard field goal to make it 24-14 with 8:43 left.
Figured that was plenty of time for Donovan McNabb to do something. He started bringing the Eagles methodically down the field, but linebacker Tedy Bruschi intercepted him to end the threat. The Patriots had to punt it back, though, with 5:40 left in the game. And though they would pick up first downs, the clock kept running to the delight of Patriots fans and the disgust of the Eagles faithful.
It started dawning on me this wasn't looking or feeling right. I turned to Ron and asked him, "Does it feel like McNabb's taking forever to go down the field? There seems to be no urgency."
"It sure does," he answered back, mentioning the lack of a no-huddle offense.
The end of the drive came when McNabb hit Greg Lewis with a 30-yard post pattern to the back of the end zone with 1:55 to go to make it 24-21.
The Eagles went for the onside kick and failed to get it back, but stopped the Patriots on three runs, burning the remainder of their timeouts.
Then came a new hero -- punter Josh Miller, one of many people who could have been considered an MVP for the game. His punt was downed at the 4-yard line with 46 seconds to go. McNabb was going to need some breaks along the way for a David Akers field goal attempt to tie it.
But Rodney Harrison ended those thoughts by collecting his second interception of the game on the third play of the drive with 9 seconds left, sealing the Patriots' third Super Bowl in four years.
After the game, we didn't go into an immediate locker room. The coaches and players from both sides were set up at stations in chairs talking about the game. Terrell Owens, who caught eight passes and played the game despite fracturing his fibula a month earlier against the Dallas Cowboys, was answering questions, happy to have played in the game, but disappointed by the outcome ... and probably stewing over McNabb's clock management.
Eagles coach Andy Reid was having to answer questions afterward. But I got to ask questions to Patriots lineman Joe Andruzzi and Branch, basking in the afterglow of the win. I found Patriots offensive coordinator Charlie Weis, who was coaching his final game for Bill Belichick before moving on to take the Notre Dame coaching job. Weis was jovial and couldn't stop smiling. By the end of his session of questions, it was just me, him and ESPN's John Clayton doing Q&A.
A walk outside the tent where those interviews took place led to going back inside the stadium and to the Patriots locker room, where I had the chance to talk with the soon-to-be-retired Ted Johnson, Bruschi, Willie McGinnest, Harrison and Mike Vrabel, a linebacker who had the honor of catching a Brady touchdown pass.
In the midst of all these interviews, I ran into none other than Patriots owner Bob Kraft, a diehard Patriots fan who got the opportunity to own his favorite team and now bask in the glory of a third Super Bowl title.
"Nice to meet you Mr. Kraft."
"Nice to meet you," he answered back. Then he looked at my press credential. "Palatka? That's where the (Georgia-Pacific) plant is, right?"
"Yes, sir. About 45 minutes away from here."
I was very impressed. The man knows his business quite well.
I walked around the locker room and a swarm of reporters were around Brady. As I happen upon him, he's talking with President George W. Bush, smiling and joking with the man. Apparently that phone call never got old with Brady.
Not too far from Brady in the visiting locker room at Alltel (now EverBank Field) was Vinatieri, who was the hero of the two previous Super Bowl wins with game-winning kicks against the Rams and Panthers. Unlike the previous Super Bowls, he was alone, getting dressed to head out and celebrate the night with the team.
"Got a moment, Adam?"
"Sure," he said. Then he asks me, "Why don't you sit down?"
Journalists never get to sit in chairs to talk to athletes or coaches. We stand or kneel depending on the athlete standing or sitting at that point.
So I sat on the cubicle stand where Vinatieri was located just asking him questions. He was still happy to be a hero thanks to the field goal that made for the difference in the game. You could not ask for a much better gentleman than Vinatieri.
By the time all the hoopla and interviews were done, it was 11:50 p.m. It was a long night and it was just getting longer.
Back to the Prime Osborn Center to pick up some Super Bowl memorabilia, including weekend editions of the Boston Herald and Philadelphia Inquirer. I tore off a little bit of a banner that had the Super Bowl logo on it with the Roman numeral of the game and the bridge at the top that symbolized the city of Jacksonville. By the time I left Jacksonville, it was a quarter to 1 in the morning.
I called up my girlfriend to tell her about the whole experience. She said she was happy I got to go. She also told me she was working a 12-hour shift at her other job after finishing up her shift at her overnight job. I wouldn't see her until Tuesday.
I went home, jumped on the computer and typed out four stories on the game, doing two stories when I got home and two more when I woke up that late morning. Allison, who had some trouble getting her spot on photography row because of a press credential problem, ultimately did get in and snapped a shot that became our major front page art that night.
My boss, by the way, recovered from his illness later that week, and though understandably dejected over not doing the Super Bowl, he got to go to Arizona in 2007 and again to Miami in 2009 to cover the Florida Gators' two national championship football victories over Ohio State and Oklahoma, respectively.
Even though the Super Bowl fell into my lap just three days before the game and a lot of running around was required then, it was an experience I will never forget. I hope Jacksonville is lucky again to have another Super Bowl. They were great hosts.
And I hope I'm lucky to cover another Super Bowl sometime somewhere in the future.
Even if I play the role of that lucky, blind squirrel again.
For the greatest professional sports moment in my career, I consider myself that lucky.
In August 2003, I had taken the job as a sports writer and associate editor at the Palatka Daily News in northeastern Florida sight unseen. I had been out of a job for 16 months and, hey, they liked me enough after two phone interviews to come down and take the job.
One of the nice perks about the job was that we had press passes to cover the Jacksonville Jaguars' home game. The first fall I was there, I got to cover at least four games, including the Jaguars' exciting 28-23 victory over Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts.
The next fall, though, was interesting. I got to see the Jaguars play six home games. At that point, I would split my time at Alltel Stadium with my boss, who got to do most of the home games of the Florida Gators at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium.
But the 2004 season was the one that culminated with the Super Bowl being held at Alltel, so we were paying very close attention to who was going to be in the big game. When it was official on January 23, 2005 that the New England Patriots would be looking for the first Super Bowl repeat since the Denver Broncos in 1999, I thought that was great.
Then I saw the opponent ... the Philadelphia Eagles. After three miserable NFC Championship game failures against the St. Louis Rams, Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Carolina Panthers, in that order, they had finally made it to the Super Bowl for the first time in 24 years, slaying Michael Vick and the Atlanta Falcons.
Two teams of interest that I knew of growing up in New Jersey -- the Patriots and the Eagles. A northeastern Super Bowl down on the First Coast.
But I was going to be watching the game from a sports bar or at least the comfort of my apartment if my girlfriend at the time had it her way. More on that later.
It was agreed upon that my boss would cover the Super Bowl. Though I had covered 10 Jaguars games over the last two years, he would do the game. Believe it or not, I was all right with that because he was there when Jacksonville was given the big game years earlier, so he had something to look forward to.
He made the arrangements for himself and for Allison, our backup photographer who now works in advertising, to cover the game.
But as the week leading up to Super Bowl Media Hype Week wore on, I started sensing my boss not feeling well. His coughing got louder. It got longer and became more often. He was definitely coming down with something, but he wasn't going to complain about being sick.
The weekend before the Super Bowl, I was in touch with Richard, my best buddy in Florida. Richard and I had seen Super Bowl XXXVIII, played in Houston the year before, at his local Hooters right off of I-75 in Ocala. We had a great time that night, but truth be told, I went out to the nearby Publix supermarket to get something at halftime and missed Janet Jackson's infamous peep show.
So Richard and I bantered about what we should do for this year's game. We really had no plan, but staying as far away from Jacksonville was definitely part of that plan.
A year before, I was living by myself for that Super Bowl. Two weeks after that Super Bowl, I met my girlfriend and four months later, we moved in together next door to the apartment I was living in. So one of the new rules about living with someone is to not be selfish and to take your significant other's advice on occasion.
"You're not going out on Super Bowl Sunday with all the drunks and amateurs partying that night," was her decree. "If you want to have Richard come over, I'll buy all the stuff and you guys can hang out."
I got lock-jawed at that moment. Hey, at least she cared enough to keep me in one piece.
Anyway, Media Hype Week was under way. And on the Tuesday before the big game, it is the day where the players and coaches meet the media. Naturally, my boss went, but got there late because he had an issue with his truck. He got what he needed that day, and came back to do his column on the event.
And he was still coughing long, loud and even more often through Wednesday.
At just before 11 a.m. Thursday, I get a phone call. It's Allison.
"Can you get down to the paper?" she said.
"Yeah I can. What's up?" I said, thinking something horrible must have happened to one of our employees.
Turns out my boss was demanded by his doctor to stay far away from work until he got better with his diagnosed pneumonia. My first thought was how horrible the timing for him to have this happen. I knew he was really looking forward to doing Jacksonville's first Super Bowl, so I felt bad for him.
Now Allison and I were having to go up to Jacksonville that afternoon to pick up my press credentials. But before I headed to the paper, I had to make one phone call.
"Hey hon, how are you doing? How's work?"
"All's good, how about you?"
"I'm doing good, hon. By the way, just to let you know, I'm not going to be home Sunday night. I'm going to Jacksonville to cover the Super Bowl."
"What?! What happened?"
Then I explained to her my boss' illness and that I would be taking his spot. She was excited and on that Sunday we'd probably be two ships passing in the night at best at home.
Once Allison got me at work, we headed up US-17 to Jacksonville's Prime Osborne Convention Center to go through the motions of having to get press credentials and explain to media coordinators that I was taking my boss' place. There was no backup plan, I find out there, and for the next 5-10 minutes, the two of us had to explain that he wasn't coming and I was taking his place. Media coordinators of big events aren't very thrilled when you replace someone with someone else at the last second. They like everything scripted, like when Bill Walsh put those first 15 plays down on his offensive sheet for a game.
Nonetheless, I had to take pictures and fill out forms and finally, I had my press credential. For the next hour, I got to walk around the convention center while all the media bigwigs were either conversing with other stars of football and sports, or, right next to me, Jim Rome is doing his daily afternoon radio show.
It suddenly hit me at that moment ... I was covering the biggest sporting event in America for 2005.
But reality was about to hit. Without my boss doing layout at work, I was handling the job of putting a paper out all by myself, which is far from a fun task when you have to take phone calls from coaches on their high school and college games that night. The next night, a district championship soccer match I would normally be at 37 miles away from the office in Pierson was something I couldn't go to because of the volume of work.
Call it a combination of elation and frustration.
But our trips to Jacksonville were not over yet. Allison and I had to go back up on Friday morning to pick up some more credentials and information for the game. In the interim, the two of us got to go to the Florida Theater where a press conference was being held for the remake of the movie The Longest Yard. On stage were Adam Sandler, Michael Irvin, Sean Salisbury, Bill Romanowski and Burt Reynolds, the star of the original version in 1974.
I asked Burt what the biggest difference between making the original Longest Yard and this version was.
"About a million dollars," he dead-panned. Classic Burt Reynolds response.
At the luncheon after the press conference, we were given goody bags that included a T-shirt for the upcoming movie, which I gave to my girlfriend. Even to this day, I can almost jokingly hear her say, "The Super Bowl came to Jacksonville, and all I got from the experience was this T-shirt."
I ran into some of the Philly media that was there, including my longtime buddy Tripp from Toms River, who was working the coverage of the game for the Philly station he was working at. We had not seen each other in almost six years, but since that day, we have kept in touch and he remains a good friend and Facebook pal.
By the time Allison and I left, it was about 3:30 and I had to go through the same motions of getting in from a long day at Jacksonville and laying out the four-page section by my lonesome again, which included a Saturday column on the 39 greatest moments in Super Bowl history and a 59-inch feature story I did on the incomparable Steve Sabol of NFL Films, who was coming to Jacksonville for the big game. Even though he was pressed for time, he gave me a great half-hour interview.
Got through that Friday night at work and stayed at home Saturday knowing Sunday was a big day.
On the day of the game, Sunday, February 6, 2005, I did not leave until just before 1 p.m. When going to a Jaguars game, you come off of I-95 and you are almost immediately met by traffic at the bridge leading to Bay Street and to the stadium. That lasts about 10 minutes, but you ultimately park and walk to the stadium from there.
On this day, I had to drive to that convention center again just off of I-95 where I would be met by a media bus picking us up at 2:45 p.m. And when I got on the bus, I started calling people I know to tell them where I was going.
One was my longtime best friend of nearly 30 years, Ted, who my girlfriend and I had just seen a month and a half earlier outside of Washington, D.C. I had not talked to him much since then. Ever since we were journalists/editors in high school in the early-to-mid 1980s and then at OCC between 1984-86, we always had this goal of covering something big in our lifetimes. He never got that opportunity to do so and ultimately switched professions.
He notices my cell phone number and answers, "Hey buddy, what's up?"
"Not much."
"You at the game?"
"Yeah ... we made it. I'm here."
"Well that's wonderful! I'm glad. Hope you have a great time there."
Moments later, we got off the bus to this mass of hysteria there for the game. But to get to the stadium, you have to go through not one, but two checkpoints. The world was a much difference place after 9/11, and understandably so on the biggest sports stage. Then I staked out the sights and hear the sounds. Walking in front of me was this tall dude, walking his stuff into the stadium on luggage rollers. It was ESPN's Steven A. Smith. And as I was going into the stadium, I looked to the right and saw a band playing in the parking lot.
The song being played was "Point Of Know Return." Then I looked closer. This wasn't a cover band ... this was really Kansas. I spotted Rich Williams and his eye patch from a distance, so I knew it was Kansas.
As I was taking the stairs up, I realized we would not be in our usual weather-protected indoor press box like at Jaguars games. They had the media keep climbing and climbing up to the upper deck and to a covered area that we were going to watch the game from. I swore that if we climbed any higher that either A) I was going to get a nose bleed or B) God was going to be talking to me personally. Good thing the weather had warmed up to 67 degrees by game time.
They left us a goody bag for the media and inside were various trinkets, including a small Sirius digital radio (For FM listening purposes, I still to this day don't understand why a satellite radio network would sponsor this. They could have been nice and given us an XM-like Inno to walk around neighborhoods with.)
But there was a list of stations in the Jacksonville area that would be covering the Super Bowl on the radio. One station had the Eagles' broadcast with Merrill Reese and Mike Quick. Another had the Patriots' broadcast with Gil Santos and Geno Cappelletti. And there was the Westwood One broadcast with Marv Albert and Boomer Esiason that I was listening to on and off during the game.
As I walked out to go to the bathroom before the opening kickoff, all I had to do was take in the sounds to know who the major rooting interest was. I heard so much "Go Eagles" and cussing, I swore I thought I was back in South Philly. The opposition had become the "hated Patriots."
The only person sitting around me covering the game that I recognized from covering the Jaguars all season was my friend Ron, who worked for a Georgia-based paper. We sat next to each other in awe at what was going on around us. If I looked down a few seats away from press row, I can see ESPN's Shelly Smith and Sal Paolantonio in seats watching the game.
With a very good game tied at 7 at halftime, the rest of the media and I settled in for what was to be an entertaining halftime show with Sir Paul McCartney, who was brought in as a more popular and "safer" choice after the so-called "younger acts" over the previous years had ruined the show, Jackson's "Nipplegate" episode being the last straw. The best concert I have ever seen was McCartney at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia in 1990. This time, the show was four songs long, but ended in a rousing performance of "Hey Jude" that had everyone singing at the end.
He hadn't lost it in 15 years and still is great today.
Going into the final quarter, it was 14-all. Then the Patriots put a drive together and capped it with a Corey Dillon scoring run of 2 yards to make it 21-14. After the Eagles had to punt the ball away, the Patriots drove down the field with Tom Brady hitting eventual Super Bowl MVP Deion Branch with a 19-yard strike for a first down. A roughing-the-passer call on Corey Simon led to another first down and ultimately, Adam Vinatieri nailed a 22-yard field goal to make it 24-14 with 8:43 left.
Figured that was plenty of time for Donovan McNabb to do something. He started bringing the Eagles methodically down the field, but linebacker Tedy Bruschi intercepted him to end the threat. The Patriots had to punt it back, though, with 5:40 left in the game. And though they would pick up first downs, the clock kept running to the delight of Patriots fans and the disgust of the Eagles faithful.
It started dawning on me this wasn't looking or feeling right. I turned to Ron and asked him, "Does it feel like McNabb's taking forever to go down the field? There seems to be no urgency."
"It sure does," he answered back, mentioning the lack of a no-huddle offense.
The end of the drive came when McNabb hit Greg Lewis with a 30-yard post pattern to the back of the end zone with 1:55 to go to make it 24-21.
The Eagles went for the onside kick and failed to get it back, but stopped the Patriots on three runs, burning the remainder of their timeouts.
Then came a new hero -- punter Josh Miller, one of many people who could have been considered an MVP for the game. His punt was downed at the 4-yard line with 46 seconds to go. McNabb was going to need some breaks along the way for a David Akers field goal attempt to tie it.
But Rodney Harrison ended those thoughts by collecting his second interception of the game on the third play of the drive with 9 seconds left, sealing the Patriots' third Super Bowl in four years.
After the game, we didn't go into an immediate locker room. The coaches and players from both sides were set up at stations in chairs talking about the game. Terrell Owens, who caught eight passes and played the game despite fracturing his fibula a month earlier against the Dallas Cowboys, was answering questions, happy to have played in the game, but disappointed by the outcome ... and probably stewing over McNabb's clock management.
Eagles coach Andy Reid was having to answer questions afterward. But I got to ask questions to Patriots lineman Joe Andruzzi and Branch, basking in the afterglow of the win. I found Patriots offensive coordinator Charlie Weis, who was coaching his final game for Bill Belichick before moving on to take the Notre Dame coaching job. Weis was jovial and couldn't stop smiling. By the end of his session of questions, it was just me, him and ESPN's John Clayton doing Q&A.
A walk outside the tent where those interviews took place led to going back inside the stadium and to the Patriots locker room, where I had the chance to talk with the soon-to-be-retired Ted Johnson, Bruschi, Willie McGinnest, Harrison and Mike Vrabel, a linebacker who had the honor of catching a Brady touchdown pass.
In the midst of all these interviews, I ran into none other than Patriots owner Bob Kraft, a diehard Patriots fan who got the opportunity to own his favorite team and now bask in the glory of a third Super Bowl title.
"Nice to meet you Mr. Kraft."
"Nice to meet you," he answered back. Then he looked at my press credential. "Palatka? That's where the (Georgia-Pacific) plant is, right?"
"Yes, sir. About 45 minutes away from here."
I was very impressed. The man knows his business quite well.
I walked around the locker room and a swarm of reporters were around Brady. As I happen upon him, he's talking with President George W. Bush, smiling and joking with the man. Apparently that phone call never got old with Brady.
Not too far from Brady in the visiting locker room at Alltel (now EverBank Field) was Vinatieri, who was the hero of the two previous Super Bowl wins with game-winning kicks against the Rams and Panthers. Unlike the previous Super Bowls, he was alone, getting dressed to head out and celebrate the night with the team.
"Got a moment, Adam?"
"Sure," he said. Then he asks me, "Why don't you sit down?"
Journalists never get to sit in chairs to talk to athletes or coaches. We stand or kneel depending on the athlete standing or sitting at that point.
So I sat on the cubicle stand where Vinatieri was located just asking him questions. He was still happy to be a hero thanks to the field goal that made for the difference in the game. You could not ask for a much better gentleman than Vinatieri.
By the time all the hoopla and interviews were done, it was 11:50 p.m. It was a long night and it was just getting longer.
Back to the Prime Osborn Center to pick up some Super Bowl memorabilia, including weekend editions of the Boston Herald and Philadelphia Inquirer. I tore off a little bit of a banner that had the Super Bowl logo on it with the Roman numeral of the game and the bridge at the top that symbolized the city of Jacksonville. By the time I left Jacksonville, it was a quarter to 1 in the morning.
I called up my girlfriend to tell her about the whole experience. She said she was happy I got to go. She also told me she was working a 12-hour shift at her other job after finishing up her shift at her overnight job. I wouldn't see her until Tuesday.
I went home, jumped on the computer and typed out four stories on the game, doing two stories when I got home and two more when I woke up that late morning. Allison, who had some trouble getting her spot on photography row because of a press credential problem, ultimately did get in and snapped a shot that became our major front page art that night.
My boss, by the way, recovered from his illness later that week, and though understandably dejected over not doing the Super Bowl, he got to go to Arizona in 2007 and again to Miami in 2009 to cover the Florida Gators' two national championship football victories over Ohio State and Oklahoma, respectively.
Even though the Super Bowl fell into my lap just three days before the game and a lot of running around was required then, it was an experience I will never forget. I hope Jacksonville is lucky again to have another Super Bowl. They were great hosts.
And I hope I'm lucky to cover another Super Bowl sometime somewhere in the future.
Even if I play the role of that lucky, blind squirrel again.
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