The next year was a completely different story. I was a freshman, and me and the rest of my class served as the tackling dummies for a team that would go undefeated until the state championship, where at the Carrier Dome, our team hit a road block named Mike Hart, the current running back and heisman hopeful for the Michigan Wolverines. He was a sophomore at the time, but age did not matter. He was as impressive on that field that day as he is presently, running over and around defenders just like he does every Saturday on national television for the Wolverines.
2002 was a storybook year of sorts. We came into the season with high hopes, as we were ranked among the top teams in the state. After starting off the season 2-0, we were feeling pretty good about where we were headed, until a unsuspected event ended my season, and side tracked a few others as well. A bunch of us ate out at our pre-game dinner at a Westchester hot spot called Candlelight, known for the wings. After the meal, we all packed into whatever car we could fit in, and headed home. You see, after taking a hit on the football field, you can usually pop right back up to your feet and get ready for the next play. But when your car, going 40 miles per hour, slams head on into a telephone pole, well, thats just an impact one cannot put into words. This car accident was a life changing event for me. Although I was sitting behind the passenger seat of a four door Honda accord with my seat belt on, I took the brunt of the injuries. I ended up spending a week in the intensive care unit at Westchester Medical center, and spent a total of 15 days in the hospital. I sustained a ruptured spleen, a punctured lung, and had a good amount of internal bleeding from other injuries. I was able to rejoin my team after not even being on the sidelines for week 3 and 4. We were 4-0, and we were rolling through opponents. We cruised all the way to the state championship for the second straight year, although there were a couple of exciting finishes with last second victories along the way. In this years state championship, we would be playing the Dolgeville Blue Devils, an undefeated team from the Middle-of-Nowhere, New York. They were a bunch of giant farm boys, but they were good. They were ranked #1 in the state, and we were right behind them at #2. I could only watch from the sideline of the carrier dome, but I watched my team come out flying. We had a commanding lead all game, and had controlled the pace of the game well, but Dolgeville never gave up. They came back to tie the game in the fourth quarter, 35-35. We drove down the field on that last possession, and got into field goal range for a kicker. It was almost a forty yarder, but our guy booted it through the uprights. Dolgeville could not connect on their final desperation play, and the little guys from Dobbs Ferry won it all, and ended the season at a perfect 12-0.
It was tough for me to have to sit out my sophomore year, but I think the whole experience with the car accident has helped put me where I am today, and helped me gain the success on the athletic fields, as well as off, that I have had in recent years. I could not play another sport for the rest of the year, but in that off season, me and the rest of my teammates worked harder than ever to help our chances of repeat championships for my junior and senior year. Did it happen? We'll see in the last part of the Dobbs Ferry Football Trilogy.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Monday, October 22, 2007
Not your average Packer
A story that caught my eye this past week was the death of a super bowl legend, Max McGee. Although his death, which happened after he fell from the roof of his home in Minnesota last Saturday while clearing away leaves, was a tragedy, the interesting part of this story was his career as a football player, on and off the field.
McGee's most famous on field moments occurred in the first super bowl, when he caught two touchdown passes from Bart Starr on a day in which he was not even supposed to be playing. Although McGee put up stellar numbers in his 12 year career (345 receptions with an 18.2-yard average per catch and 50 touchdowns), he had caught only 4 passes that year. McGee was thrown into the starting lineup after the second drive of super bowl I after Boyd Dowler got hurt and could not play due to a shoulder injury. "I was just sitting there, dozing in the sun, and Lombardi yelled 'McGee get the hell in there!' " McGee told Lee Remmel, the team's historian and a local newspaper reporter in those days.
McGee was said to have told Dowler before the game not to get hurt because he "was'nt in very good shape." He was referring to breaking team curfue the night before by having a night on the town. At first, McGee could not even go in the game because he did not have a helmet, he left his in the locker room, so he had to borrow someone else's. The interesting thing about McGee, along with many other players in that day and age, was they way they lived their celebrity status lives off the field. Back then players would not only indulge themselves in nightlife festivities after the game to celebrate, it seemed that these festivities carried on throughout the week, all the way up until the morning before the game. McGee, along with guys like Joe Namath, Bobby Layne, Paul Hornung, and many others, had a knack for the "good life", indulging themselves in liqour, ladies, and late nights. McGee was once quoted, ""When it's third-and-10, you can take the milk drinkers, and I'll take the whiskey drinkers every time." This was just a testament to the way he lived and looked at life. He was known as a guy who would relieve the tension of a Packer team, under the stiff laws of Coach Lombardi, with his timely sense of humor. He was also known for his stubborn streak, which made it not so surprising that at 75 years old, he was trying to clear leaves of his roof. "It's hard to admit and distinguish the fact that you're no longer what you were, and you're no longer capable of certain activities," Jerry Kramer, who played with McGee for 11 seasons, said. "And I think we push the limit a little bit."
Players these days could not live the lives that many past players in that age did. With the physical and athletic abilities that the players have today, it is so important for guys to keep their body's in top shape not only in the off-season, but also in the regular season. I can attest to that myself, being a football player. I cant even imagine having to play a football game hungover, and McGee performed at an outstanding level after a night that probably included a couple to many shots of Jack. There is also the fact that the league under Roger Goodell has much stricter player conduct codes. As we have seen in the last year, guys don't get away with very much at all. Players from McGee's era talk about how back in their playing days, if a guy got pulled over for a DUI, one officer would drive them home while the other drove their car to safety.
McGee was a great character in a interesting time for the league. "I just lost my best friend," former teammate Paul Hornung said upon hearing about his death. He is obviously a man who will be missed, and hopefully, his life will be talked about for years to come.
(quotes taken from nfl.com)
McGee's most famous on field moments occurred in the first super bowl, when he caught two touchdown passes from Bart Starr on a day in which he was not even supposed to be playing. Although McGee put up stellar numbers in his 12 year career (345 receptions with an 18.2-yard average per catch and 50 touchdowns), he had caught only 4 passes that year. McGee was thrown into the starting lineup after the second drive of super bowl I after Boyd Dowler got hurt and could not play due to a shoulder injury. "I was just sitting there, dozing in the sun, and Lombardi yelled 'McGee get the hell in there!' " McGee told Lee Remmel, the team's historian and a local newspaper reporter in those days.
McGee was said to have told Dowler before the game not to get hurt because he "was'nt in very good shape." He was referring to breaking team curfue the night before by having a night on the town. At first, McGee could not even go in the game because he did not have a helmet, he left his in the locker room, so he had to borrow someone else's. The interesting thing about McGee, along with many other players in that day and age, was they way they lived their celebrity status lives off the field. Back then players would not only indulge themselves in nightlife festivities after the game to celebrate, it seemed that these festivities carried on throughout the week, all the way up until the morning before the game. McGee, along with guys like Joe Namath, Bobby Layne, Paul Hornung, and many others, had a knack for the "good life", indulging themselves in liqour, ladies, and late nights. McGee was once quoted, ""When it's third-and-10, you can take the milk drinkers, and I'll take the whiskey drinkers every time." This was just a testament to the way he lived and looked at life. He was known as a guy who would relieve the tension of a Packer team, under the stiff laws of Coach Lombardi, with his timely sense of humor. He was also known for his stubborn streak, which made it not so surprising that at 75 years old, he was trying to clear leaves of his roof. "It's hard to admit and distinguish the fact that you're no longer what you were, and you're no longer capable of certain activities," Jerry Kramer, who played with McGee for 11 seasons, said. "And I think we push the limit a little bit."
Players these days could not live the lives that many past players in that age did. With the physical and athletic abilities that the players have today, it is so important for guys to keep their body's in top shape not only in the off-season, but also in the regular season. I can attest to that myself, being a football player. I cant even imagine having to play a football game hungover, and McGee performed at an outstanding level after a night that probably included a couple to many shots of Jack. There is also the fact that the league under Roger Goodell has much stricter player conduct codes. As we have seen in the last year, guys don't get away with very much at all. Players from McGee's era talk about how back in their playing days, if a guy got pulled over for a DUI, one officer would drive them home while the other drove their car to safety.
McGee was a great character in a interesting time for the league. "I just lost my best friend," former teammate Paul Hornung said upon hearing about his death. He is obviously a man who will be missed, and hopefully, his life will be talked about for years to come.
(quotes taken from nfl.com)
Monday, October 8, 2007
The Tale of Dobbs Ferry Football: Part One
There are countless happenings in the sports world that I could write about in this blog. The mets record breaking collapse, the Rockies in the NLCS, another NFL pothead running back. The list goes on and on. Any of these issues with professional athletes might have been a good topic to go into, but I decided to dedicate this blog to a story that is close to my heart. A tradition that I went through. A school that I played for, in a town that loves friday nights under the lights. It is a story that wont be on sportscenter tonight. Its the tale of a football dynasty that most people will never hear about.
The Dobbs Ferry High School football team has seen its share of ups and downs over the last few decades. In the 1980s, they were a powerhouse. Known as "the team of the decade", in a time before the state championship game, they were voted state champions four straight years by the New York State Sportswriters Association. From 1980-1989, Dobbs Ferry High School only lost eight games, and in that decade, there was a span in which they won over 50 straight games. Only about a decade early, from 1969-1973, Dobbs Ferry HS did not win a single game, and tallied a record of 0-40-2. The 1990s were a transitional period for the Dobbs Ferry HS football team, as they were forced to merge with the Hastings HS team. Hastings and Dobbs Ferry's are each others rivals, so you could see how these were not the best of times for either schools football squad. The merger lasted from 1993 to 1998, until a man named Jamie Block started a campaign to "wake the echoes" of Dobbs Ferry football. Coach Block, now the athletic director for Valhalla HS, another Westchester school, is very loved in the town of Dobbs Ferry. He was a phys ed teacher at the local elementary school, but Coach had a passion for football, and he knew that Dobbs Ferry needed to have its own team back up and running, dominating the county like it should be. He got legendary coach Frank "Skip" Violante, to return to Dobbs in 2000, after leaving when the team merged with Hastings to coach his sons at another Westchester HS named Somers High. Skip was the coach of the 70s, the 80s, and early in the 90s, and was known for his hard nose coaching. He was a very intense guy, and the faint hearted players usually would not survive on his roster for very long.
In 2000, the year before my class entered High School, Dobbs Ferry did not return to its form that most people thought it would. With a group of promising, but unexperienced young players, the Screaming Eagles went 2-6, and had the coaches and people of the town thinking that maybe trying to "wake the echoes" of Dobbs Ferry football wasn't such a good idea after all.
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