MK coach meets MK grad

 on the JV basketball court

    Posted Monday, Feb. 8:  It all started with an e-mail sent out by the Kinnelon High School athletic department seeking an opponent for its junior varsity girls basketball team.
    "We answered it right away," says Morris Knolls JV girls coach Rob Moore. "Of course, we wanted to play them."
     It wasn’t that Moore & Co. needed another game, it was because the Kinnelon JVs were coached by Morris Knolls 2003 grad Jess Garrabrant, a Denville resident who went on to play four years at Montclair State University.
     Although Moore was the Knolls JV coach and assistant varsity coach when Garrabrant played for the Lady Eagles, she never played on his JV team because Garrabrant played varsity all four years she was there, finishing with "... more than 900 points and 700 rebounds while starting at point guard all four years," Moore recalls.
    "Her talent and her work ethic made her a huge asset to the program," Moore continues. "Her game and her confidence improved each year.
      "I remember her senior year when she took us to the county semifinals where we lost to Roxbury at Madison-FDU. We were playing Parsippany Hills in the quarterfinals and Par Hills was unbeaten at the time and our game was close.

     "During a timeout, I really got on Jess and challenged her. She looked tired and seemed frazzled, but I told her that she was the one who had to step up and take us to FDU.
    "She was annoyed with me for a week ... but she did the job and got us to FDU, which was awesome for us."
     Moore and Garrabrant faced each other as coaches on Friday, Feb. 5, at Kinnelon and Moore came out the winner this time as the Lady Eagle JVs won the game, 41-17.
     Moore says he still saw the spark that Garrabrant had as a player, and  "... she’s getting her players to play the same way.
     "Jess' passion for the sport and for teaching is obvious in her kids' effort and in their improvement during the season," Moore adds. "She is such a positive influence on her team and she is doing a great job.
    "“It was a lot of fun to play against her and to watch her coach ... but, knowing how much of a competitor she was and still is, she may not agree with the 'fun' part."

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(Bob Decker can be reached at deckbob@optonline.net)

'Homecoming' for Gallagher, too

     Posted Wednesday, Oct. 7: Gerry Gallagher knew it was going to be "Homecoming Day" at Morris Hills High School long before he led his Montville team up the hill to Gifford Field for last Saturday's game between the two schools.
     After all, it was kind of a "homecoming" for Gallagher, too.
     Gallagher has lived in Rockaway Township the past 12 years. As a youngster, he and his family lived in Rockaway Borough and he and his father would climb that same hill he climbed Saturday to watch Morris Hills teams play football.
     Later, he attended Morris Catholic High School where he played football. Even later, he returned to Morris Catholic as an assistant coach for four years before taking over the head coaching job for seven years.
      Eventually, after a stint as a successful college coach at William Paterson, he came to Montville, where he is now in his 13th season.
      Even with all that moving around, there is still a lot of Rockaway left in Gallagher ... and he'll be the first to tell you about it.
      "The last thing I wanted to have to do is to go down to Quick Chek for my morning coffee after losing to Morris Hills," Gallagher was saying from his office at Montville High three days after Montville beat Morris Hills, 29-17. "I see kids from Morris Hills, Morris Knolls and Morris Catholic all the time ... no way I wanted to have to face them after getting our butts kicked."
      Gallagher also sees Tony Lusardi in Quick Check "... maybe two-three mornings a week."  Lusardi is the Morris Hills assistant coach in charge of strength and conditioning at the school who also runs Lusardi's Health & Training Center in the middle of town. The two coaches will have a quick football conversation before moving on with their mornings.
     "I've known Tony a long time and I know how he works with kids to get them in shape -- good shape," Gallagher said. "I told my kids all week we'd be facing some tough, hard-nosed kids who would be ready to play four quarters of football and who would not quit."
      This is why Gallagher admits he couldn't relax during the game in spite of the big leads Montville gave him.
      "We were winning 20-3 at halftime and I wasn't comfortable," Gallagher said. "We were ahead but I felt as if we were struggling.
      "We go up  27-3 and I'm still not letting anybody feel too good about themselves because we still had a lot of football left.
      "Then they score a TD early in the fourth quarter and then recover an onsides kick that made us look as if we had never even seen one before. That leads to a quick TD and all of a sudden they are only 10 points behind with about five minutes to play."
      Again, Gallagher reminded his troops that Morris Hills wasn't about to quit. He also reminded his players they had lost a 17-10 game to Pope John the previous week when Pope John scored a TD and 2-point conversion with 1:41 to play.
      After Morris Hills' second TD, Montville went on a long drive only to fumble on the Morris Hills 1-yard line. And, with a little less than two minutes to play, Montville sacked the Morris Hills quarterback in the endzone for a safety and Gallagher suddenly had a 12-point lead, the ball, and a clock that was running toward zero.
     "That's when I started to feel better about the game," Gallagher said. "We got the four quarters of football we expected and we got the win, too."
      Gallagher had coached at Gifford Field one other time, a 1998 consolation game 26-18 loss to Morris Hills and head coach Pat Bobo.
     "That was a lot like this game," Gallagher said. "We came back at them at the end of the game ... our kids didn't quit then just as their kids didn't quit this time."
      So how was coffee at Quick Chek Monday morning?
      "Their morning guy, Mike, was there and he congratulated me," Gallagher said with a laugh. "But then he reminded me that he had to stay neutral about the outcome.
     "Tony hadn't come in for his coffee yet."

  (Bob Decker can be reached at deckbob@optonline.net)

     Posted Thursday, Sept. 24 - On Saturday, Sept. 26, Morris Knolls and Delbarton School will meet on the high school football field in a regular-season game for the first time.
     The game is scheduled to start at 1 p.m. and will be played on William O. Regan Field, a field named in honor of Knolls coach Bill Regan's late father who coached at Delbarton from 1944 to 1985 and compiled a record of 236-83-10.
      Bill Regan Sr. was one of the main reasons that Monday football luncheons sponsored by the Daily Record newspaper back in the mid-60s were so popular and so well-attended by the county's head football coaches of the day.
     Bill Regan Sr. and John Bauer Sr. would hold court before the luncheons and the other coaches (and young writers) would sit and listen - not talk, just listen.
     Forget the lunch itself and forget the few paragraphs about each team that appeared in the paper the next day. The real attraction was Mr. Regan and Mr. Bauer.
     The other coaches listened ... they learned ... and they laughed, too. There were always a lot of laughs.
      Bill Regan Jr. practically grew up at Delbarton School, where he would attend his father's football practices and games  "... as soon as I learned how to walk." 
      The coaching was there, too. The father not only taught the son the game of football; he instilled his love for the game in him, too.
     This Saturday's visit to Delbarton - where Regan played quarterback for his father before graduating in 1963 - has already stirred the memory banks of the Morris Knolls coach.
     Regan tells of his brothers - Brian, Steve and Terry - and his cousin Jack treating Delbarton "... as our own personal playground.
     "There were 400 acres there and we used every one of them," Regan was saying over the phone the other night. I remember running around the field as a kid during my father's practices ... and when I was in grade school, I'd go on scouting trips with my father."
     When they got older, they all played for Regan Sr., too.
    "There was a 10-year span where one of us - and sometimes two - was always in my father's backfield," Regan says. "Steve's team was unbeaten in his senior year and one of Brian's teams was unbeaten, too.
    "My teams? Oh, they were OK ... we played some decent football."
     Regan's thoughts this week will be on Morris Knolls vs. Delbarton, on preparing his Morris Knolls football players the best that he knows how so they will play the best that they know how.
     It's going to be a tough game for the players and the coach.
     In more ways than one.
     "There are a lot of wonderful things that will be coming back to me this week ... that was a very special time for me," Regan says. "It's going to be difficult for me being on the other sideline."

        Somehow, it got to the point where an interview with a coach (any coach, any sport, any level) about his team's next game could not be concluded without the coach saying: "... and they are well coached." 
        It became a throw-away line ... almost a cliche, in fact.
        Sometimes the other team would be "very well coached," or "extremely well coached," but there was always a "well coached" in there somewhere.
        And you can "throw out the record books" in these interviews, too, because you know the 8-0 coach will always say the 0-8 team he is facing next is "... well coached."
        Makes you wonder how any pre-game stories ever make the opposing team's bulletin board these days. Or how all these well-coached teams out there ever lose.
        The other day, however, Morris Knolls High School football coach Bill Regan had some kind words to say about the coaching staff at Morris Hills and you had to listen to them because he was in the middle of talking about a game that didn't leave him very happy about his team - Morris Hills' 20-0 victory over Morris Knolls the day before.
        "They were coached well and they played well," Regan said the day after the game. "They put together a good game plan and the kids executed it ... they obviously had a very good summer."
        Sabo acknowledged that Regan had said basically the same thing when the two met at mid-field for a quick handshake after the game.
        The compliments were not considered 'throw-away lines" or "cliches" by Sabo, however.
        "Any time you go up against a Bill Regan-coached team and win, it's quite an accomplishment," Sabo said the afternoon after the game. "And when Bill Regan pays compliments like that, we as a coaching staff appreciate it. It's an honor, coming from him.
       "As a young coach, you look up to the veteran coaches in the area and you see where Bill Regan has won 200 games in the big-school division of the Iron Hills Conference. That's not an easy task and I respect that."
        Last Saturday, the coach going into his sixth season as a head coach beat the coach who is going into his 35th season.
        What they each did and said before, during and after the game speaks well of them both.
         Win or lose.

The Captain & The Writer
   Posted Sunday, August 2, 2009: Today is the 30th anniversary of the tragic death of Thurman Munson, the Yankee catcher and captain who was killed when his light plane crashed while he was practicing takeoffs and landings near his Ohio home.
   I was working at the Daily News in New York City at the time and you can only imagine the coverage the tragedy commanded in the Times, News and Post the next day.
  Longtime Daily News baseball writer Phil Pepe was called at his home in Jersey when the news moved on the wires because the editors wanted a column from him to be included in the coverage.
  Now, you have your favorites and I have mine, but Pepe to me was the best baseball game reporter I ever met or read. His coverage of a World Series game, a playoff game - any game, in fact - was always spot on. If Pepe left anything out of a game story, it wasn't worth knowing.
  But this day, Pepe was asked to write a column - a commentary or opinionated piece - on Munson's death. We had a brand new sports editor in charge at the time and I had mentioned to him that a column from Pepe would enhance our coverage because of Pepe's long-time association with the Yankees as a writer.
  Also, Pepe and Munson had a history - one that didn't start out all that well, as I learned later.
  A few years ealier, Pepe had written something that had not sat well with Munson. Munson didn't hold anything back in letting Pepe know about it in the locker room the next day and Pepe defended himself with the same vigor.
  Later, on a Yankee road trip, Pepe was coming back to the hotel after filing his story when he spotted Munson alone in the lobby.
  "How about a burger?" Pepe told me he said when recounting the story years later.
   Over the burger, after the two had agreed to disagree on what Pepe had written earlier, they both discovered they both had a lot in common outside of their love for the game of baseball.
   More road-trip burgers and long conversations later, the two had become close friends.
   So it was with heavy heart that Phil Pepe came into the Daily News' office on 42nd Street that August 2nd 30 years ago and sat down to write a farewell to his friend.
   The new sports editor hovered over Pepe with pages of wire copy in his hands, reading out bits of information he felt Pepe should have in his column. Pepe was thinking about how he was going to start his story about his friend and was clearly agitated at the barrage of facts (type of plane ... time of crash ... weather conditions, runway conditions, etc.) being tossed his way by our well-meaning boss.
   Finally, after seeing Pepe's obvious discomfort, I went over to Pepe to say hello and sort of kind of got myself between the sports editor and Pepe and told Pepe: "Phil ... write what you feel." And then I turned and asked the sports editor if I could see the stories he had in his hand while I was sort of kind of gently moving him away from Pepe.
   Pepe's piece was excellent, of course. It included a lot of the things about Munson that made him the person he was, off-field things that put The Captain in a more gentle light than his brusque, unshaven, dirty-uniform baseball demeanor.
   Years later, I ran into Pepe and, in catching up, one of us happened to mention Munson's death and how different the coverage would have been today what with 24-hour sports and news TV stations as well as the Internet.
   I kiddingly chided Pepe for never thanking me for keeping the sports editor off his back while he was in the office writing his Munson column.
   "I wasn't in the office, was I, Deck?" he asked. "I thought I wrote that from home."