Megliola: One coach in it for the long haul

Jim Powers

Coach Vito Capizzo celebrates with Mark Dwyer in 2006.

By Lenny Megliola, Daily News columnist

GHS

Posted Sep 27, 2008 @ 11:02 PM

Forty-five.

"Nobody," Chris Maury was thinking out loud, "does anything for 45 years." Maury says this, and knows he's wrong. Got living proof right where he's at, Nantucket High School, where he's the athletic director.

Since 1964 - yes, you Britney-luvin' kiddies surgically attached to I-pods, there was a 1964 - Vito Capizzo has been the head football coach of the Nantucket Whalers. Forty-five years without interruption, although Father Time has been messin' with him lately.

"Last year was a season from hell," says Capizzo's wife of 44 years, Barbara. "He was very sick last summer."

Where to start? The gout had Vito on crutches. Shingles ravaged him, starting at his head and slicing down to his face. His thyroid was acting up. He was on so many meds an ulcer kicked in.

Did you see what happened on the sidelines last week to Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis? Pretty much the same thing that happened to Capizzo in the final game last season, against archrival Martha's Vineyard, a player smashed into and leveled Vito when he was looking the other way. Knocked Vito cold. "I was gonzo," he admits.

He woke up in an ambulance. Where we going, he asked. The hospital, of course. "I said 'whoa!' I'm getting out of here."' Luckily, his personal physician was with him. He told the EMTs that he'd be responsible for Vito. Besides, he'd be one miserable son-of-a-gun if he wasn't allowed to return to the field and finish coaching the game. And so he did.

What else could happen though?

How about when Vito's kid brother, Frank, a cardiologist, lowered the boom. Vito suffered two heart attacks in 2004. Frank made Vito take a stress test before every football season. A few weeks ago he looked at Vito's tests and told him another heart attack was coming if he didn't have a third stent put in. Vito growled. When he cooled off, he understood the magnitude of 90 percent blockage. He had the surgery, grabbed his clipboard and whistle and went back to coach his kids.

"I get tired quickly," says Vito, "but I don't miss practice." Or games. And he doesn't miss out on the good things in life either. He has a winter retreat in Florida, a splendid Nantucket home, and two other houses he owns and rents out on the island. Retired except for coaching, Vito, 68, has a free pass at the local golf course where he does a little work to keep busy. He's been playing there since he arrived, '64.

How's his golf game? "Like my football team. Sometimes it shows up."

Vito's taken Nantucket High to the Super Bowl nine times. OK, he's only 3-6, but there's something to be said for getting there, right? His team was usually the smallest, in numbers. And it's getting worse. Last week the Whalers lost to Dover-Sherborn, 38-12. Vito had 18 players; D-S had 65. The Raiders had had four scrimmages, says Capizzo, to none for his team "because of the storm. They were ready to play, we weren't."

The last three years Nantucket's gone 3-6, 6-5 and 1-9. The Whalers have moved from the Mayflower Large conference, which they used to dominate (12 titles), to Mayflower Small. When Vito got to Nantucket, there were just three sports, football, basketball and track. Vito coached them all, and was the athletic director too. "Now, we've got 17 varsity sports and 15 JV and only 359 boys and girls. Our (football) program is hurting."

But he's not backing off. He could walk away any time. He's already a legend with his 293 wins (overall: 293-129-8). He was inducted in the Massachusetts High School Football Coaches Hall of Fame in 1992, the same year he went into the Natick High and Dean College halls of fame.

It might take a miracle for Vito to get his 300th win this season. Maybe next year. "If I don't die first," he says. But it's not really the 300, it's the thousands of kids he's coached, that's what keeps him going. Some have become doctors and lawyers, successes on many levels. They come back and tell their old coach they might not have climbed so high if he hadn't taught them more than the playbook, that life after high school didn't give handouts.

One of Vito's captains in 1981, Joe Hallett, did two tours of duty in Iraq. He stopped by the field one day and asked Vito if he could talk to the team. Pride ran through the choked-up coach.

So how'd he get to Nantucket? Well, it wasn't as simple as taking Route 3 aiming for Wood's Hole where a ferry would take him to the island. It really starts in Sicily, where the Capizzos, mom, dad and three sons, lived. Communism was spreading throughout Italy. Vincent Capizzo was determined to get his family out of there. They landed in Natick. Vito was 10, Gus 8 and little Frankie 6. All three starred in football and hockey at Natick High.

After high school, and two years at Dean College, Vito applied to Connecticut and Northeastern. Both turned him down. "Alabama was the only school that accepted me." The family didn't have any money. His parents' English was limited. Vito had to grow up fast, learn to deal with banks and check books and bill collectors. And how to apply to college.

"It was time for me to break away," he says.

He went to Alabama, and walked right into the early '60s segregation. Whites at this fountain, blacks at that one. Blacks on that side of the street, whites on this one. "It was a shock," says Vito. "Another culture."

He wanted to play football for "Bear" Bryant, but wasn't good enough to make the team. The coaching god asked Vito what he wanted do after he graduated. Teacher-coach. The Bear lined him up a job in Florida. It's where he met Barbara.

Then it was time to get closer to home. Vito started looking for jobs in Massachusetts, and figured he'd found one. A school with a funny name. "I thought it was Nantasket," says Vito. Great! A high school on the beach. "Instead, it was Nantucket." He'd never heard of it.

He taught phys ed, was the AD and coached football. He had 17 players that first season. They lost seven and tied one. "The first year was a disaster," says Vito. It got better ... and better. For nearly three decades Nantucket was a dominate team.

"Someone around here says Vito Capizzo, what comes to mind is football," says Maury. "Football wasn't too spectacular when he got here. He built a good program. He got the community behind it. He was hard-nosed. Demanding. He did a good job of teaching the game, and making us take pride in what we do."

The island became more than a resort town after Capizzo arrived. "It became a football town," says Maury. "That's changed the last 10 years. There's a lot more diversification at the high school, a lot more sports."

Now Vito's job is to get more boys out for football. Not even the Bear could win with 19-20 players.

In the Whalers' heyday, Capizzo became the island's unofficial mayor. He came, he stayed, he coached everything. And everybody. For generations. "I played for him, my two kids played for him and Vito hired me in 1992 to coach softball," says Maury. Vito even served a stint as interim principal.

Dick Herman left Cambridge for the island, arriving a couple of years after Vito. He did some scouting for Vito, then became one of his assistant coaches. Herman recalls the first time he met Capizzo. "He was riding a moped while drinking a coffee and had his dog, Pirate, with him." You don't forget a vision like that.

Herman works for a local cable station that airs all the Whalers' games. Same thing for the radio station. What the Buckeyes are to Columbus and the Fighting Irish to Sound Bend, the Whalers are to Nantucket. The only game in town.

Vito, in his early years, wasn't shy about whacking a player on the side of the helmet to make his point. "You can't do that any more," says Herman. "You have to change with the kids. As far as getting a team ready for a game, he's always done that."

When Herman coached for Vito, after a Saturday game he'd stop by Herman's house early on a Sunday morning. "He'd say, 'let's go to the dump, and we can talk football on the way,"' says Herman. "I'd say, 'let's take a couple days off.' There was nothing on his mind but football. He was intense."

He's mellowed. Well, mellowing. Vito and Barbara have a son, Scott, who is working on a documentary on Nantucket sports.

Vito wants to know how things are in Natick "I have great memories," he says, and asks a reporter if he sees the terrific athletes of that time around any more. He shoots off a few names. "Gerry Hall. Pete Smith. Artie Williams. Walt Hriniak. Dickie Wells. Dick Corbin. Ron Chisholm." He could've gone on for 10 minutes.

"We had great athletes, great teams. We played two or three sports."

All of them have put sports aside, but Vito is still rolling. He's not kidding anyone. Three-hundred wins would mean a lot to him. Only a few coaches have won 300. It's just that this game is in his blood. He's almost afraid to walk away, yet the inevitability runs a deep shadow. "If my health holds up, I'll coach as long as I can," he says.

Capizzo and the Whalers have been written up in Sports Illustrated, Yankee Magazine, Life, and Boston Magazine. A football team that had to take a ferry on the Atlantic to all its road games made for a good story.

And all the while, he was there "It's the love of the sport," Vito says. And the kids, the island, autumn Saturdays, the boat rides, the shabby motels, the wins, the losses, the trips to the dump. All of it. The guy wouldn't change a thing.

Yep, some people really do something for 45 years, and counting.

(Lenny Megliola is a Daily News columnist. His e-mail is lennymegs@aol.com)