Unfortunately at this time, my martial arts training abruptly ended. At least I still had a father I could play catch with, but this didn't sit well with me so I sought other outlets. In 1969 my high school football career was taking off at Mount St. Michael Academy in the Bronx. We had a bad freshman team 3Wins 5Losses if my memory serves me well, but I felt there was some light at the end of the tunnel. In August of 1969, on a dusty field, on the campus of Mt. St. Michael, I met a man who would become my football coach for the next two years, his name was Hugh Glassey. Coach Glassey was a stocky guy, fullback type who played for the Mount in the late 60's. When he graduated he went on to play for American University. When his playing days were done he came back to his high school Alma mater, to coach a bunch of kids from all walks of life. Unknowingly this man would become my mentor throughout high school and to this day I speak about him in glowing terms. These were my formative years. I needed encouragement, motivation, and direction to become the best football player I could become. Coach Glassey became that man. The first day of practice the temperature was over 90 degrees and the field was a dust bowl. Back in those days, all coaches had a thing about giving you water breaks, somehow they thought if they withheld water from you it was going to make you tougher. No one back then knew anything about heat stroke, or maybe it just didn't exist? We used to practice 3 hours in the morning and three hours in the afternoon. The first day 150 freshman tried out for the team. The sessions were brutal; we were constantly running up and down the field, and if the coach blew the whistle we were to hit the ground and get back up as fast as possible. By the end of the first session we were covered with dirt and sweat from head to toe. The heat was brutal, and the coaches were relentless calling us pigs and cry babies and other names that I can't say since this blog is rated PG-13. I would guess, after the morning session, we lost about 15 freshmen of the 150 that started. We took showers and ate a packed lunch usually peanut butter and jelly, and prepared for the afternoon session. The temperature must have risen 10 degrees. It was probably close to 100 degrees by noon. The second session began. More running, more up downs, more push-ups, we didn't even see a football that day. As I was standing there , covered with sweat and dirt , I thought no one is going to show up tomorrow, we're not going to have a team. What idiot, other than myself of course, would show up tomorrow to get abused like this all over again. Nobody could be that stupid . I envisioned my dreams of playing professional football would be doomed just like my karate career. I just knew no one would be crazy enough to go through this abuse two days in a row, would they? I seriously thought that these coaches were trying to kill us on that first day. I dragged my 120 lbs. body into the locker room, took a shower, dressed and waited for the 16 bus to take me home. Hey! All you kids out there, "mommy" or "daddy" didn't drive you anywhere back then since there was only one car in the family and Dad had to use that for work. The next day my 13 year old body was aching, I got up to experience this torture all over again. I met some of the guys in the locker room as I dressed for practice. To my astonishment 80 kids of the 150 kids that stared with us, showed up the next day. The punishment on this day was triple compared to the first day. Maybe these coaches thought more people would quit the second day , I don't know but these coaches wanted you to quit. They didn't want to cut anyone; we would be cut through attrition. My academic life at the Mount actually started 2 years prior to this in 7th grade. We had a club football team and we played the other 7th grade team. They were the "smart" 7th grade class, but as I found , when we hit the field, we had the athletes, not that we were dumb but they took classes like French and advanced Math, big deal, we wanted to crush these smart guys. The game wasn't played until some time in December and game day was freezing. I remember waiting in the lobby of the building waiting for everyone to show up because it was just to freakin' cold outside. I was sick that week and I had to beg my father to take me to the game, I couldn't let my teammates down. My best friend to this day, Sammy DePaolo, played linebacker and guard, Peter Denti, played linebacker and running back ( he is also responsible for one of my nine concussions, more on that later). Kevin Clarke, who later became an Inspector in the NYPD and later the Police Commissioner in Baltimore was one of our speed guys, George Ennis plugged up the middle on defense, Randy Rifelli was one of our cornerbacks, and others Frank Palese, Tommy Vaccariello, Sammy Tomanelli, Guy Alaimo, Frank Cara was our quarterback, all played in that first game. The score was something like 77-0 in our favor. I think at one point during the game they wanted to quit, but we wouldn't let them. When school resumed on Monday we "thought" we had bragging rights, but little did we know, some of the Brothers got wind of the beating we gave the other 7th grade and they weren't happy. Especially when half the grade didn't show up, on Monday, because of the pain they were in from the beating on Saturady. When a Marist Brother isn't happy with something someones getting a beating. Oh I forgot to tell you....back then, in 1967 they could beat the crap out of in school. They would use such dangerous instruments as a 300 page text book, a college ring turned backwards so that the stone would protrude when they "whacked" you in the back of the head, (that little trick would intensify the strike.) They would whip that belt, they had wrapped around their waist, under their Brotherly garb, and put that belt, better know as "the strap", places you don't even want to know about. They would wield that little torture device like a cowboy trying to rope a calf at the rodeo. Getting back to the story, our class "7-1" would get a punishment assignment, for beating we gave class 7-2. This was the second insidious way the Brothers would torture you, psychological warfare. They made us write the entire Declaration of Independence. Does anyone know how long the Declaration of Independence is ? Well it took the next entire weekend to do and when we turned the report in on Monday, the brothers didn't even look at it. They threw it in the garbage , right in front of us! What made the situation worse is that they told us we couldn't play the other grade ever again. Another obstacle in my quest to become a professional football player. Attending an all boys school in 67' was a interesting experience, we had a bunch of kids who knew how to think on our feet, unlike today. It was like having 30 brothers talking to you everyday. So after our hands got uncramped from all that writing we did , we decided that we could combine the kids from each class to make a super team and play other schools in the area. We had tryouts for our super team the following weekend. The Brothers' thought it was a good idea for us to have some sort supervision. That way no one would be killed, so Brother Dominic was assigned to "watch" us. This wasn't a big deal for the Brothers since they lived on campus. We knew Brother Dominic didn'y know anything about football but we didn't care. So we held our first tryout, this didn't go well because class 7-1 didn't want any of class 7-2 on the team so we started to systematically destroy anyone on class 7-2 if anyone survived we would accept them on our team. The survivors were ,Victor Minei, our center, Randy Ciciola, Vinny Bocchino and a few others that escape my memory. We finally had a team, now we had to practice. I think in my first or second practice, I received my second concussion of my career. The first was when I was about 9 when I was pretending to be a soldier and I decided to climb on my grandmothers clothes line. You guys remember those things , right? Well, I was transversing this line which was about 20 feet long. I had my arms and legs wrapped around this line and I was going to make it all the way across line until ....UTT OHH ! I felt the clothes line snapping and the next thing I knew I was headed for the concrete. If anybody has ever experienced falling on concrete from a height of about 4 feet you know what came next. All my air was pushed out through my mouth and for the first time in my life I could not get any air back in. I thought this was odd, I'm drowning and I'm not in any water ? What the hell were those little birds and twinkling stars that I was seeing in front of my eye balls. I though my 9 year old life was over. I laid there on this summer day, in the back of my grandmothers garden apartment in Yonkers, thinking I was dying. What else could it be I couldn't breath, couldn't see straight and I couldn't move. As I rolled on my side some of my bodily functions started to work again. Thank you God for saving my little life. I promised that I would never do that again...... yeah right! Getting back to the second concussion. Like I said.... we were having these practices and we were playing against each other. I remember catching a ball and someone wrapping my legs but I was still standing trying to break free, when all of a sudden I was struck like a bolt of lightning. My teammate, buddy, friend, and classmate Peter Denti hit me like I was his mortal enemy. When I came to I saw the sky spinning and some of my teammates and Brother Dominic over me, I though he was giving me my last rites, what did I know he wasn't authorized to perform this priestly duty. I was just glad he was there. Now I was in a predicament! If I didn't get up I would instantly become a wimp, which in 7th grade, in a all boys school, was a death sentence. Or I would rise to my feet and walk it off, like Dick Butkus would do, and continue to practice. So I did the later, not knowing what effects it would have in my later life. But who cared about that I wanted to play football and be known as the guy who took Peter Denti's hardest hit and lived to tell about it. We had a good team, we would play other schools from the area and crowned ourselves the best 7th grade team in the Bronx. This would continue through the 8th Grade and became the nucleus of our freshmen football team.