Tribute to a coach

It always seemed a bit annoying.

Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t.

Whatever was going on inside him, it commanded respect. Fear, it seems, trumps all other motivators … and I think it’s fair to say that coach Gerard Leone intimidated us all a bit.

For example, even today, even after his recent death from cancer at the age of 72, I am reluctant to call him “Jerry,” as he once warned us never to do after our football careers are over. That’s because I’ve seen him furious before … and I don’t totally trust the line between life and death as something that can effectively contain him.

Coach Leone was the most successful high school coach in Franklin, Massachusetts. At least to the best of my knowledge and belief. I don’t know of any other FHS coach who can boast a 32-game winning streak. It was impressively long in an extremely competitive high school soccer league. In fact, historically long, at that time, he set a Massachusetts school record. One of the Attleboros, be it Red Rocketeers or Blue Bombardiers, finally broke it, I think.

He left FHS for a while after the streak, but came back to win an in-state Super Bowl for Franklin in 1983, proving he hadn’t lost his touch. Too bad they didn’t have those Super Bowls when we played.

The guy was tough, and it wasn’t an act. He grew up in the Whiskey Point section of Brookline … not in a quiet Massachusetts suburb somewhere. I remember walking up to him one fall day after one of the math classes he was teaching. We were in an empty classroom, and he was dressed in a coat and tie, looking perfectly civilized. Having no idea what he was about to do, I proceeded to ask him for the day off under the mistaken belief that having a baseball-sized boil on my knee qualified me to miss practice. Unfortunately, he saw this as another lame excuse and blew up. “You can’t afford to skip practice today,” he informed me in his ominous “I’m disturbed” tone, “but if you do, go ahead and skip the rest of the season as well.”

It was a real turning point for me.

There didn’t seem to be any good reason to stay on the team. Practice was tough enough as it was, but now here was the coach literally inviting me to quit … something that would have been too easy to do that day. They were treating me unfairly. That was clear. The guy had to be crazy. That’s what I thought, at least.

Fortunately for me, I went ahead and practiced that day. I did not quit. I wasn’t “all the way in” for a week or so, but I didn’t give up.

That junior year (1968) was difficult for us and for the country. First Martin Luther King was assassinated in April and then Robert Kennedy was assassinated in June; there were race riots and war protests; The number of Vietnam KIA, WIA, MIA and POW continued to increase; And, perhaps as another dark omen (albeit of lesser magnitude), one of America’s most beloved sports heroes, Mickey Mantle, played his final season. The atmosphere of the nation was dark and doubtful.

We lost every game except the last two that sad year; We tied the next with the last contest and then beat neighboring King Felipe in a Thanksgiving Day thriller to mercifully keep us out of the basement.

I remember getting injured for much of the season – sprained ankle masking a fracture – and going from one miserable loss to another. But none of us gave up. And Coach Leone didn’t spoil us either. He didn’t say, “It’s not about whether you win or lose, it’s about how you play.” He would never have said such nonsense. It made us realize that if we really wanted to win, we would have to. i love him much more and work much harder than the other boys, a lesson that, it turns out, applies to all of life’s important goals.

And he wouldn’t let us chase him just because we were depressed. I think it was during that tough 1968 season that near the end of practice, during sprints, I saw a blur out of the corner of my eye. I turned around: it looked like a Bigfoot was flying by an MX missile. It was actually Coach Leone running down the field, tackling a clumsy lineman who was in the middle of a sprint, a teammate much bigger than him who must have thought he could get away with running those sprints unless of maximum speed. It was a beautiful entrance, I had to admit.

For me, it was Coach Leone’s trademark stuff.

In any case, the incident only helped motivate us to work harder. Next season, with that 1968 build of character behind us, we pick up where we left off. The year seemed more hopeful: the man landed on the moon in July, and I was lucky enough to be elected one of the captains, which confirmed my decision not to resign. As usual, Coach Leone’s practices were legendary: some players decided not to continue.

We went through the first game with Case (I still don’t know where that place is). Unfortunately, the next game, Ipswich, was one that should never have been scheduled. At least this early in the season. As good as we were, and we were good, Ipswich was so much better at the time. I can still see his star back galloping away from me.

Someone said they saw Coach Leone crying afterwards. I do not know.

I know that the practice that followed that devastating loss was “memorable.” Pure wildness. Gladiator training school stuff. The coaches weren’t happy. I remember the poor, helmet-framed face of my good friend, Mike Gilmore, just before planting my studs directly into him (on his face mask, actually). But he survived. We all survive. And no one called the ACLU.

Or the ASPCA.

The rest of the season could have been written in Hollywood. We just didn’t lose again. A week later, we faced a tough North Attleboro team and our character was tested again … this time we were up to the task. We rallied two positions on the goal line on our way to an 8-0 win and, five wins later, the Thanksgiving Day championship between Franklin and King Philip, both unbeaten, the two worst teams from the previous year, representing the first seven wins in that historic 32-game winning streak, as well as the first of those three consecutive championships.

We have the ball rolling.

In fact, I saw Coach Leone smiling on that victorious Thanksgiving day. Several times, in fact.

He had this creepy knack of knowing if you were “giving 100 percent” or not. He just wouldn’t settle for less, often using the Three Stooges expression, belly punch, to describe a mediocre effort. As famous UCLA basketball coach John Wooden said, “Don’t confuse activity with achievement“- something that Coach Leone believed with all his heart.

And the coach could cheer us on. At least he could cheer me up before a game. I remember being in an altered state on Saturday mornings before playing (that’s right … we play on Saturday, not Friday nights). It was intense. I would not speak or do anything but look out the door expecting him to take me to school. I had my favorite psychology songs, of course, but there were no Walkmans or Ipods to play them. Albums only.

Still, I didn’t need the music to motivate me.

He wasn’t one of the excessive praise either, and that was fine. People get praise for very little these days. By today’s standards, almost everyone deserves to be a hero. But a simple nod of your head could feel like a million dollars. And he had a good (if not somewhat hidden) sense of humor. I remember after soccer season I raced the quarter mile on the track and accidentally knocked the runner in front of me out of his rhythm. Now, traditionally, athletics is a non-violent, non-contact sport. In this case, though, my version of the quarter mile roller derby just ruined the coach – I remember how much he laughed.

It wasn’t perfect. None of us can claim that. And he and Scott Hayden have had to deal with a monstrous tragedy after the life-changing spinal cord injury of Scott on the football field. Scott still manages it heroically. But the point is, when coach Leone is remembered, it will probably be because of the great contributions he has made to the lives of hundreds of boys.

I’m sure I’m a much better man for not leaving his football team that fall day in that empty classroom at Franklin High in 1968. Sometimes I wonder. Certainly quitting would have been easy to do that day … but what would it have done to me later in life? “The coach made me tougher,” admitted Mike Gilmore after I told him about his passing. “It gave me confidence.”

Coach Leone’s brand of unexcused competition made everyone on his teams tougher and better prepared for life. I can’t imagine facing life any other way.

Thanks, coach.

Yes, I think it’s safe to say that we were all a bit intimidated by Coach Leone … but more importantly, we love the man and we wouldn’t have loved him any other way.