Our first year we weren't very good, I think we won 3 games and lost 5, even though I wasn't aware of it, this was the year I grew up as a man. I felt that the people I respected, my coaches, counted on me to do a job and help our team to win games. When we won it seemed to please the coaches immensely, but when we lost, it was like someone died. The games were on Saturday and the feeling of loss would last until Wednesday. If you had a good game some of the Brothers would tell you good game and some of the guys that came to the game would give you a pat on the back. That would hold you over until the following Saturday. Kevin (QB) and I clicked we would score a least one touchdown per game and sometimes two but we still had a losing record. We played hard, real hard but couldn't it done. The first season was disappointing but it was building personality and character that I would need later in life. The Mount was a tough school. Academically we were right there with the best, some of our Alumni have gone on to do great things. In my graduating class we had the Director of the Mayo Clinic, Dr. Robert Ficalora, President of Universal Studio's Louis Feola, lawyers, doctors, civil servants were the norm. The school produced , for the most part, quality individuals. But a few students ,of the graduating class, are no longer with us, Pete Denti, Bobby DeCaro, Stephen Rossback, who I tried to help when I was a police officer, but succumbed to drugs. Time continues and some of us live long lives and some of us don't, but what is important is what you did with the time when you are here. It's 1968 many of the graduating class went on to fight in the Vietnam war, the Jets were about to become a contender and the Yankees were terrible. When you are 13 a day seemed like an eternity in school, the brothers were tough but I had a few regular teachers who I remember. One of which was Mr. Frank Burke. Mr. Burke was my freshman year history teacher, he was a former police officer, who at times still thought he was a cop. He took a boring subject, and always made it interesting with stories from his days in the N.Y.P.D. If you had his class after lunch, and were secluding candy in your sport jacket, he would put you against the wall and search you for the contraband (candy) and then he would eat it in front of you. You didn't want to fall asleep in his class because he was deadly with the board eraser. He would throw that eraser and hit you dead on, no mater where you sat you were a target for Mr. Burke. The chalk would get all over your sport jacket and everyone in the school would know you fell asleep in Mr. Burke's class. Later in my life I would work with both his sons in the N.Y.P.D, Kevin and Tim Burke. He was a good teacher and was always around after school when we would practice. He may have had an influence on me becoming a N.Y.P.D. police officer. Al Joseph was another teacher who was a bulldog looking guy, he also doubled as the bus monitor for the 3:30 Club, of which I was never a member of. I remember that Al Joseph was a tough guy who didn't take any crap from any of us. I remember that we couldn't talk to each other between periods he would wait until we were all in our classrooms and everything would be nice and quiet and he would pull out his snot rag and blow into it, the sound he made was similar to a fog horn, it was one of the funniest sounds that could come out of a human being, but remember we couldn't laugh or we would get a beating or worse JUG and miss football practice. Freshman year would go by without a hitch, 1 year down three to go.

Over the summer I received a letter from the Mount. It read, "If you want to play football you must attend the practices on the dates designated". Oh Boy!! Here we go. I was on my way to my dream. As I said in the previous blog. These practices were brutal. The first week passed and I started to notice that we had some kids that had some talent. It was going to take a lot of work to be able to make this team. I had to get noticed, I didn't just want to make this team , I wanted to be a starter. I distinctly remember the first time I was noticed by our coaches. We were running this drill where the quarterbacks would throw to the receivers as we stood in two lines. We were running a pattern called a post, it was already evident that a kid named Kevin O'Neill was emerging as our starting quarterback. As I ran down the field , under the watchful eye of my coaches, I was coming out of my break and the ball was thrown, Kevin was usually a accurate QB, but this time the ball was going to be high. I leaped in the air and snatched the ball out of the air with one hand. As my feet hit the ground I over heard my head coach tell the other coach, "See what I mean." Those words were my confirmation that I was going in the right direction. I was going to make the team. Now I had to start. Each day Kevin and I would work on our pass patterns and we began to click. The day came when we had to cut some of the people on the team. The day the cut list was posted my heart was in my mouth. As we gathered around the board in the locker room, I searched for my name. I was relieved when I noticed my name was not on the list. I was still in the running to make the team. Finally, after 3 weeks of practice with no equipment, we were assigned to get our pads and helmet. Our QB Kevin O'Neill's name was called, next was our tight end, Aldo Nastasi, next was Robert Tunney our guard, and then after all that work all that sweat all that pain my name was called. It was as if I won the lottery. Getting our equipment first could only mean one thing. I was going to start. I was the opening day wide receive for our team. As our first year in high school began we all amassed in the (quadrangle) school yard. I noticed many faces I didn't recognize. We instantly formed clicks, all the kids that attended the Mount St. Michael's grammar school huddled together, the others were mulling about. Some of the people who survived the football practices were also bonding together. We weren't a team yet but it was starting to happen. At the Mount we had to carry all our books in a school bag, sort of a large bowling bag looking contraption, the bag weighed about 20 lbs. On this particular day Mike Schlitte decide to prank Joe Capalbo. This was an ongoing feud that started way back in their grammar school and would continue, apparently, throughout high school. So every morning one would dump the others books all over the ground and force the other to be late for class. One problem, if you were late back then, you would get JUG. That means you would have to stay after school and sit in a room for a designated amount of time. This would be problematic for our team because if you got JUG you would miss a part of the after school practice. One day the pranking got to a breaking point when Schlitte dumped a can of creamed corn in Capalbo's school bag. The fight was on, somehow we broke it up before the brothers had to, because that infraction would get you a beating from one of them and jug on top of that. After this incident we started to tone down our before school activities. Football as the one thing that kept me and everyone on the team straight. We never wanted to failed any of our academic courses because we wanted to play football, this was our driving force.