By Vincent Landolfi, Jr.
With their convincing win over No. 1-seed Delbarton, the Red Bank Catholic High School football team exorcised 38 years worth of demons, and captured its first State Group Title since 1976. Some of the more emotional and vociferous Caseys’ supporters at Met-Life Stadium last Sunday evening were several members of that iconic team, literally bridging the gap between yesteryear and today.
“Our group (of players) is still pretty close,” former defensive back Tim Skinner (Class of ’77) said, in the lobby of the Courtyard Marriott-Lincroft, where “the group” was meeting up to travel to the game together. “We still keep in touch, and go to the games and follow the current (RBC) teams.”
Soon after our initial conversation, we were joined in no specific order by brothers, former running back and defensive back Jerry and Bob Bruno, Ron Mangarelli, flanker, defensive tackle Brian Freehan, tight end Rich Kelly, All-Shore RB Lonnie Burgess, and two-way tackle Wally Case, who became an assistant football coach at his alma mater from 1985-1990.
“Don’t listen to anything they say!” laughed the effervescent Burgess, as he made his way to the group slowly, with a cane, needed as a result as a result of a recent serious bout with Lyme disease. “They don’t remember nothin’!” Later, a parting remark from the behemoth Case was a payback to the speedy runner he used to open holes for: “Make sure you write how he was overrated!”
The men, who share an unbreakable bond, formed as boys for three hours a day after school and on Saturday afternoons in the fall, were anything but mere former teammates or casual acquaintances. They are friends. The kind that become family over time by sharing holidays and christening each others children who call them “uncle,” and mean it.
“When the team (this year’s Caseys’ football) made the finals, we said ‘Hey, let’s go together,’” Kelly said. “But I can’t wear my ’76 championship jacket to the game,” the lanky receiver said, to a ripple of laughter. “Lonnie borrowed it one night in college, and left it at a bar!”
“It was some game!” the Burgess, the Caseys former No. 44, said Monday morning when everyone was still basking in the afterglow of victory. “And some night! I got to go on the field afterwards, and took pictures with my friend Don Brown who gave me his son’s (Donald Brown, RBC Class of 2005) Chargers hat to keep my head warm. And the boys (some of whom got to meet Burgess last week at RBC during his visit to the school) were chanting my name!”
Fast-forward 38 years to the incomprehensible year 2052, and maybe it’s this season’s standout wide receiver Nicky Lubischer (Class of 2015), kidding tough-as-nails running back Mike Cordova about losing his soon-to-be-ordered championship jacket. Maybe brothers Mike and Dan Wilen, who like the Bruno boys, will look like they, with a few weeks of conditioning, could still strap it up for a few more games. Maybe it will be one of this team’s All-Shore players who will be standing on the field, almost four decades from now, with the players from the Class of 2053 chanting ***ITALhis***END name. But more importantly, and more likely than just maybe, some of this year’s championship teammates will become like family, and stand by each other over the years through good times and bad.
“It’s what Caseys do,” Burgess said.
