Going home for a high school football game

I’ve spent a lot of time over the years watching football.

I got interested in the sport at age 10.

Football is omnipresent on television now from the preseason in August through the Super Bowl in February.

When I was young, only a handful of games, college and pro, were televised each week. There was no cable TV, no Monday Night Football.

In the early-1960s, I was a student at Mamaroneck High School — a public school in the suburbs of New York. I went to almost every MHS home game, but the NFL mattered more to me at that time in my life. Then I enrolled at Columbia, and the hapless Lions captured my heart. I still go to a Columbia football game each year. I’ve been to a few big-time college encounters and a handful of NFL contests. Mostly, I watch football on television. I don’t sit through many games in their entirely but enjoy watching bits and pieces of them.

At a guess, I’d say that, over the years, I’ve watched an average of three hours of football a week on television when the game is in season.

“That’s not a lot,” you say?

Do the math.

I’m 73 years old, so I’ve been watching football for 63 years times 22 weeks a year times three hours a week. That comes to 4,000 hours of my life spent watching football on television. One hundred work weeks. Two years of a full-time job.

Sometimes I say to myself, “Football is a very stupid game.” Young men push each other around and knock each other down while someone runs around with a funny-shaped ball. They inflict physical damage on each other ranging from broken bones and torn muscles that will cause chronic pain and hobbled movement later in life to long-term brain damage.

So why do we celebrate high school football?

For starters, it’s a unifying force. Rooting for the team makes students part of a group and brings disparate elements of a community together.

For the players, there’s pleasure in playing and lessons to be learned. Lessons about hard work, lines of authority, trusting co-workers, and being part of a team. Football is a great team sport. The plays work because 11 young men coordinate their efforts on each play to make them work. Players are dependent on their teammates to make things happen.

Also, it’s pretty cool to be a high school football hero.

Jerry Izenberg knows football. He’s the dean of American sportswriters and one of two journalists who has been credentialed to cover every Super Bowl ever. He’s also the author of “Rozelle” (the definitive biography of the commissioner who remade pro football) and “No Medals for Trying” (an inside look at the 1989 Giants under coach Bill Parcells).

“I love high school football,” Izenberg says. “I love watching the players play.” He pauses. “I said ‘play.’ They’re working hard. They’re busting their butts. But they understand that it’s a game, and they have the game in perspective.”

Earlier this month, I decided to go home for a Mamaroneck High School football game for the first time in more than 50 years.

We’re not talking Pennsylvania coal country or “Friday Night Lights.” Some of the teams that Mamaroneck plays each year have an impressive roster of NFL alumni. Eleven White Plains High School graduates suited up in the pros, most notably Hall of Fame receiver Art Monk. Nine New Rochelle High School graduates played in the NFL, including George Starke (“head hog” for the 1983 Super Bowl champion Washington Redskins) and the infamous Ray Rice.

One Mamaroneck Tiger made it to the big time.

Billy Van Heusen graduated from MHS in 1964 (one year after I did). Between 1968 and 1976, he played 109 games with the Denver Broncos. He was a punter in the pros, averaging 41.7 yards per kick on 574 punts during his career. He also saw time as a wide receiver (82 receptions for 1,684 yards and 11 touchdowns), rushed for 171 yards and a touchdown on 13 carries, and completed two of five passes for 71 yards. In 1974, he was chosen as a second-team All-Pro by the Pro Football Writers Association.

Van Heusen turned 74 this summer. I tracked him down in Denver where he oversees a residential real estate brokerage company called the Billy Van Heusen Team. We didn’t know each other well when we were young, but we grew up with the same teachers and peers in the same surroundings.

“I learned to punt in elementary school,” Van Heusen told me. “Jim Smith [the gym teacher] taught me. I never thought punting would take me anywhere in life, but that was what got me to the pros. It’s been a long time since I went to a Mamaroneck game, but my memories of Mamaroneck are all good.”

A growth spurt and summer of working out with weights pushed Van Heusen to 6 feet tall and close to 200 pounds before his senior year of high school.

“I got big enough that year to be good,” Billy reminisced. “We had good players who were great guys. Coach [Roy] O’Neill put discipline in the program, but he made it fun. I had pretty good stats and learned what it meant to be part of a team. Football was an important part of that growing-up time in my life when I became more serious and more responsible.”

Those “pretty good stats” included a season average of 15.2 yards per carry and a game against Scarsdale when Van Heusen scored three touchdowns on runs of 60 yards or more.

Then came The Game.

Mamaroneck had won its first six outings in 1963 by a combined score of 180-to-14. The season finale was against Port Chester, a rivalry that dated back to 1920 and continues to this day.

“Port Chester was our biggest rival,” Billy recalls. “We were up 21-0 at the half. Then we got complacent. We knew what we had to do. Port Chester just executed better.”

A missed extra point left Mamaroneck clinging to a precarious 21-20 edge as the clock ticked down. But it didn’t click fast enough. Port Chester scored with 33 seconds left in the game for a 27-21 triumph.

“It was the worst thing that ever happened to me in football,” Van Heusen says. “The hardest loss on the football field I ever had.”

That brings us to Mamaroneck High School football today.

High school football has changed radically over the years. Some high school programs are geared toward producing Division I college football players. Signing days are huge. Students host their own press conferences to announce where they’ll be playing ball in the fall.

Mamaroneck football is a throwback to an earlier era when amateur sports were more innocent than they are now and high school football certainly was. At MHS, the gridiron values are pretty much the same today as they were 50 years ago. Four players from last year’s 7-and-2 squad are now in college football programs — at Amherst, Hamilton, St. Lawrence and Macalester. It’s rare that an MHS graduate plays big-time college football. Going back five years, Alex Parkinson (MHS ’14), who went on to play wide receiver at Princeton, comes the closest.

But there have been changes.

When I was in high school, sports was a male-dominated world. Mamaroneck had a full complement of boys varsity teams but no girls varsity sports. That’s different now. And Bari Suman (a graduate of SUNY Courtland) is in her 16th year as the school’s athletic director.

Fifty years ago, the student body was almost uniformly white with a few students of color sprinkled in. Poor Italian-American kids — many of whom lived near the railroad tracks — were the “minority” students. The student body today is classified as 70 percent white, 20 percent Hispanic, 5 percent Asian, 4 percent black, and 1 percent other.

Anthony Vitti is Mamaroneck’s current football coach. Both of his parents graduated from MHS. He grew up in Mamaroneck, played football for the Tigers, and earned an undergraduate degree at the University of Albany followed by a master’s degree from Iona. He joined the MHS coaching staff in 2000 and was named head coach before the start of the 2010 season. He also teaches biology.

Vitti is in his early-40s, outgoing, articulate, and a good coach.

“We want our kids to understand that they’re part of something that’s larger than themselves,” he says. “They’re part of a team. And the team is part of a larger community. Our program is motivated by five core values. Be honest; be accountable; be tough, mentally and physically; compete; and finish. I tell our kids that we have a 20-year plan. Learn your lessons on the field and apply them later in life. Wins and losses come and go. Your character and values will stay with you forever.”

A recent study by the National Federation of State High School Associations revealed that, although the population has grown by 7.5 percent over the past decade, participation in high school football has dropped by 9.5 percent, largely because of parental concern regarding head injuries.

“An awareness of head injuries is at the forefront of everything we do,” Vitti says when the issue is raised. “Everything from how we block and tackle to how we practice.”

A half-century ago, Mamaroneck football games were played on Saturday afternoon. Now most games are scheduled for 7 o’clock on Friday evening, a better fit with student and administrator schedules.

On Sept. 6, I boarded a 4:51 p.m. train from Grand Central Station in New York and arrived in Larchmont (adjacent to Mamaroneck) at 5:27 p.m. I’d planned to walk the mile to the high school and hoped to write about a warm September evening with a gentle breeze. But there had been gray skies with intermittent showers during the day, and it was raining when the train pulled in, so I took a taxi.

Most of the places that anchored my high school years are now off limits or long gone. My father died in 1994, and the house that I grew up in was sold. The local pizza hangout and once familiar stores exist only in memory.

Memorial Field, where MHS plays its home games, now has lights and artificial turf. But sitting on the Mamaroneck side, the view is pretty much the same as it was a half-century ago. Seven rows of aluminum bleachers stretch between the 20-yard lines. There’s seating for about 60 people on the opposite side of the field and a small electronic scoreboard behind the east end zone.

There was no “Twilight Zone” time warp when I walked to the edge of the field. I wasn’t transported back decades in time.

About 40 minutes before kickoff, a hard rain began to fall and I sought sanctuary in a corridor outside the gym.

Eight minutes before the 7 o’clock kick-off, Coach Vitti addressed the team. He told them the game was “our little slice of heaven,” that their classmates and people who live in the community want to be “part of the pomp and glitz of football. But you guys,” he reminded them, “get to live it.” He closed with the reminder, “You are all one.”

Mercifully, the rain stopped shortly before kick-off. But there was a sharp damp wind for most of the game and it was unseasonably cold for early September. I had come up from the city with a very light jacket. Most of the locals were wearing parkas.

No ticket was necessary for admission. There were only a few hundred spectators on hand when the game began, but the stands filled up nicely as the first quarter progressed. A lot of the fans appeared to be between the ages of 25 and 40. There were fewer students than I’d expected. Those who were there looked very young to me. And I’m sure I looked old to them. Many of them have grandparents who are my age.

It was the opening game of the season for both teams.

Four 12-minute quarters.       

Mamaroneck, as befitting Tigers, wore black uniforms with orange trim. The North Rockland Red Raiders wore red and white.

North Rockland had eight players who weighed 240 pounds or more. That would be decisive as the game wore on.

Mamaroneck went three-and-out on its first possession, and a fumbled snap led to a 7-yard punt which gave North Rockland the ball on the Mamaroneck 44 yard line. The Red Raiders immediately marched in for a score with less resistance from the defense than Tiger fans would have liked. The extra point attempt was low and to the left, leaving the score 6-0 North Rockland.

Mamaroneck went three-and-out again on its next possession and was forced to punt. This time, the Tiger defense held. And a snap over the North Rockland punter’s head gave MHS the ball on the Red Raider 5 yard line. Three plays from scrimmage resulted in a loss of four yards. Mamaroneck settled for a 26-yard field goal to pull within 6-3.

On the next series, the Tiger defense held yet again. And the crowd came to its feet when Jack Betton, an MHS junior, returned a punt 60 yards for an apparent touchdown. But the return was nullified by an illegal block.

A punt left North Rockland with the ball on its own 2-yard line, pinned against its own end zone. Again, the Tiger defense held. After a poor punt, the Tigers had the ball on the North Rockland 32 but the drive ended with an interception.

Near the end of the half, the North Rockland kicking game (which was abysmal) came up short once more when a Mamaroneck punt was fumbled and recovered by the Tigers on the Red Raider 5-yard line. But again, Mamaroneck was forced to settle for a field goal making the score 6-6 at the half.

Coach Vitti addressed the defense at halftime outside the gym.

“Defense! Great job! We’re okay with what we’re doing.”

Speaking to the offense, an assistant coach was less complimentary to his charges.

“Can we stop messing around? Can we go out and run the offense?”

The third quarter was scoreless. Again, Mamaroneck’s defense was heroic. But in the fourth quarter, North Rockland’s huge advantage in size began to tell.

Izaiah Battle, a 210-pound senior running back, began ripping off large chunks of yardage and scored on a 9-yard run with 9:39 left in the game. The Red Raiders missed the extra point. But two minutes later, North Rockland closed the show with another rushing touchdown. This time, the extra point was good, making the final score 19-6.

The kicking game (punts, field goals, extra points) had favored Mamaroneck. And North Rockland had zero yards passing. But the rest of the game belonged to the Red Raiders. They rushed for 290 yards while Mamaroneck gained only 23 yards on the ground and 117 yards through the air.

That said; Mamaroneck is a young team that will get better with the passage of time.

As for my own personal adventure; people sometimes use sports as a vehicle to journey back to an earlier time in their life. But I experienced no great epiphany or memorable flashback.

Although I was rooting for Mamaroneck, the loss didn’t hurt as much as it would have when I was 17. In fact, despite the wind and cold and final score, I rather enjoyed myself. It was nice to watch young men with no thought of a professional career playing football on a damp cold night for each other and themselves.

Thomas Hauser’s email address is [email protected]. His next book – A Dangerous Journey; Another Year Inside Boxing – will be published this autumn by the University of Arkansas Press. In 2004, the Boxing Writers Association of America honored Hauser with the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism.

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