THE PERFECT SEASON

It has been a pleasure to read in these pages opinions about which team was Chaminade’s best or most talented or greatest. Of course, it was my good fortune to be a member of a team, the ’61 squad, that must be a part of any such discussion. If Bill Parcells was right that every team is “what your record says you are,” then certainly the ’61 squad is right up there with any in the history of Chaminade football. For myself, I have never cared too much about the answers to those questions, but I do think Parcells had it about right. Rather, I have recently begun to consider two underlying reasons Chaminade had such tremendous football success for such a long period of time under the tutelage of Joe Thomas. Several reasons have been proposed herein and those writers have illuminated them in great and accurate detail. Nevertheless, I suggest here two reasons sometimes overlooked: Our Raw Material: Mental and Physical Toughness Coach Thomas, for most of his coaching career, had the good fortune to be provided with a steady supply of tough, smart kids to mold into the consistently hard-hitting, best-conditioned team in the League. Like an ancient alchemist, he added a coaching intensity, a love of precision and an unequaled ability to break the game down into its component parts, turning what we provided into football gold. At Chaminade in those long ago days big-time talent was to be found only now and then among linemen and even less often among the skill positions. An exciting passing and receiving game was rarely if ever at the center of Coach Thomas’s coaching success. For example, in ’61 our ends recorded a grand total of one TD catch. Ours was a running game and a rush defense oriented team, first, last and always. On offense we were a lineman-dominated bunch, behind whom ran arguably the greatest fullback in Chaminade football history. Five yards and a cloud of dust sum it up pretty well. I suspect this was true of most Joe Thomas teams through the years. Ron Riescher, quarterback of the championship ’58 team, recently told me that he started every game with a 44 or 23 dive just to see what kind of day it was likely to be in the trenches. He knew that would be the key to victory. In ’61 we opened the first and second half against Mount Saint Michael with the same 44 dive. Both resulted in long touchdown runs, which keyed an offensive explosion and victory against the previously undefeated Mounties. Where this constant supply of toughness came from remains a bit of a mystery. Certainly, it was not geographical, as our players came from everywhere on Long Island. Tough South Shore towns like Elmont, Freeport and Hempstead supplied hard-nosed youths who joined equally tough young men from tonier climes like Garden City, Munsey Park and Sands Point. As for me, my grandfather had been a professional club fighter in Brooklyn and my father a Willoughby Settlement House boxing champ in his own right. He taught me very explicitly from an early age never to back up in the face of a bully or adversary. Perhaps a little of that had rubbed off on me by the time I met a ball carrier coming through the hole at Chaminade. In sentimental moments, I like to consider the degree of hostility our defensive front seven brought to bear against any back trying to make positive yardage against us. And should our opponent try to strike through the air, we blitzed, rushed and otherwise harassed their QB, generally nullifying his passing game. Of course our guys had to be shaped over the course of four years by the extraordinary Coach Thomas and his coaching staff, as indeed we were. Curiously, he was a slight man, very neat and very precise. He had been a scholarship quarterback in college, but he would take the innate toughness we provided and mold it into a well-oiled hitting machine. Line play and tough linemen became his specialty. Perhaps we did not realize it back then, but after the ball was handed to an opposing back, we let loose with all the innate hostility that muscle memory can supply. For us this was the culmination of all our hours of sled work, tackling drills, Oklahomas and Chaminade Specials, fighting fatigue all the while. When an opposing back came through the hole in ’61, he was likely to be met by a group of cranky, hostile athletes who were unwilling to give up even one positive play in ten. We just didn’t like ball carriers very much that year and thought the best way to keep them out of our end zone was to keep them on their collective asses. This we did in a way and at a rate that must have alarmed our opponents. We played for keeps on every play, and the way four or five of us went to gang tackling an unlucky halfback was an indication of just how irritated we could become at the mere sight of an opposing ball carrier. As Tennessee Coach Bowden Wyatt once put it, “My advice to defensive players: Take the shortest route to the ball and arrive in a bad humor.” School Spirit/Respect for Those Who Came Before A second and perhaps less obvious secret of Chaminade’s football success was the admiration that underclassmen had for their varsity counterparts and the esprit de corps that developed in us Sunday after Sunday as we watched the varsity play. This in turn bred a comradeship and school spirit that have lasted for nearly 60 years. A desire and willingness to “fight the foe for dear ol’ Chaminade” became our one desire, other than girls, of course! Moreover, we had great respect for those ballplayers who came before us, and we sought to emulate them.