Hamilton’s football factory
St. Thomas More hasn’t lost a game since 2016. The senior high school football team has been ranked No. 1 in the country for two years, and provincial champions for three. On Monday, they’re going for a fourth straight OFSAA win. The Spectator’s Teri Peco
HERE’S
SOMETHING ANY TEAM or athlete or coach can agree upon unequivocally: Losing is awful.
It sucks.
That said, it does have an upside, which is that you learn from losing. In fact, it often takes a loss for a team or athlete or coach to understand how to win and improve. Claudio Silvestri knows this.
“We believe as a coaching staff you learn more from your losses. You really do,” he says.
Silvestri, though, is speaking from memory. Because it’s been a long time since St. Thomas More has lost under his watch.
Early this week, Silvestri’s Knights — the No. 1 ranked high school football program in the country for two years running — beat Cardinal Newman to earn a third straight regional championship and a trip to Ottawa Monday to play for a provincial bowl.
If it comes out on top of London’s Catholic Central, the Upper Paradise Road institution will have its fourth OFSAA title in as many seasons. It will also extend its winning streak, which, at this point, is best measured in years.
St. Thomas More hasn’t lost since 2016. But it’s still learning, still continuing to improve.
Silvestri is standing in the red and white bubble at Redeemer — one of the local fields the team inhabits when the mercury plummets — as it did on Thursday — and it’s too cold to practise outside on its own turf.
He’s clad in black and enveloped in an oversized coat. A lanyard dangles from the whistle still clutched in his right hand.
“I don’t think there’s a single answer,” he says when asked how the Knights evolved from a competitive team to a high school football powerhouse. “It’s not one person.”
The truth is, it’s not even a few. Talk to just about anyone in the local football community about More’s rise to the top of the gridiron food chain and they will say it starts with Silvestri and his cadre of coaches and volunteers. Some, like him, are teachers. Others are graduates, friends, former players.
“They break down the game film and they put together great practice plans,” says senior quarterback Evan Hillock. “So, the foundation is built. We just come in every day and want to work hard and get better and it pays off on Fridays” — game day, that is, in the city’s Catholic school loop.
At the helm, though, is 52-year-old Silvestri, who has coached at More since he arrived in 1999. Since then, he has amassed 10 league championships, including four in the past five years, and five OFSAA bowls. In 19 years, the former McMaster running back has only missed the league final three times.
“Any time you get to championship games at the high school level, it’s usually quite obvious to see that a team has made it that far because they are really well-coached,” says Ben Chapdelaine, a local football official and Hec Crighton winner who quarterbacked the Marauders to their first Yates Cup.
“Of course, they have to have the right student athletes to make the plays, but there’s often a difference in consistency in terms of teams performing at a high level based on coaching.”
That’s not specific to More or even high school teams, he adds. It’s the reality of the game at any level — even the NFL. Take the New England Patriots. They’re pretty good, says Chapdelaine, “but it’s not just because they have Tom Brady.”
And, much like Bill Belichick, Silvestri doesn’t do it alone.
On top of his own crew of helpers, including defensive co-ordinator Joe Burke and Rob Fuciarelli, who oversees the offence, Silvestri benefits from the work of coaches like Chris DeStephanis and Peter Luvisa, who have played a huge role in developing a thriving junior team at More. On Tuesday, it won its sixth league title in seven years.
Jamie Barresi is a Dundas native who used to work as offensive coordinator for the Tiger-Cats and as a supply teacher in Hamilton’s Catholic school board. Now head coach for the Ottawa Gee-Gees, he says you can’t talk about senior success at More without talking about success at the junior level.
“There’s been a consistency there,” he says. “It stems from the junior system and obviously Claudio has done a great job of maintaining that staff and keeping the interest of the kids.
“It’s just snowballing now.” While much of the senior squad’s success can be attributed to coaching and other internal factors (more on this later), the calibre of football in Hamilton as a whole has also helped push things along. The city’s Catholic league, for example, has a reputation of being among the strongest in the province, if not the country.
“We don’t have any ‘gimme games,’ ” says Anthony Macaluso, who coached the senior team at Cardinal Newman — More’s chief rival — for more than a decade. “Every game you have to push and develop.”
Now vice-principal and junior coach at Bishop Tonnos, Macaluso also says this is nothing new. Long before the More and Newman programs took off, the city had other football dynasties — at Barton, Westdale and, his alma mater, Cathedral.
Even then, in the 1990s, local coaches were leading the way when it came to game preparation, Macaluso says. Silvestri, who was coaching at Tonnos at the time, agrees, saying he was gathering film years before it was given the OK at local schools.
Fast forward to today, and Silvestri is still at it. On Monday, before More had punched its ticket to OFSAA, he sent three members of his staff to London to collect tape and intel of Catholic Central’s regional title bout.
That’s just one thing he does to give his team the upper hand.
Unlike many coaches at the high school level, Silvestri has his players training almost year round. What that means at More is the season starts in February with weekly strength and conditioning sessions. That goes until June when it runs a weeklong camp in full equipment that culminates with an exhibition game against another school.
After that, many of his players — especially the younger ones or those at the skill positions — play in either touch or rep leagues. More’s training camp starts at the end of August.
Before the season begins, Silvestri puts the team on a bus and heads south of the border, where they face off against a top American team in a Friday night game under the lights.
“We’ve gone to Pennsylvania, we’ve gone to Ohio, we’ve gone to Michigan,” he says. “Our goal every year is getting better and there’s nothing like going down there and playing top-notch, high-level high school football.
“It’s an eye-opener for a lot of the kids, and they know if they want to play at that level the work that has to be done.”
Joe Cirelli, the recruiting co-ordinator at Western, believes preparation coupled with experiences like this help explain why More attracts university scouts — no less than a handful of which were on hand for the league final against Newman two weeks ago. It helps the players understand the commitment and work it takes to win.
If he has two equally skilled players, one with individual success and one with collective success, “who was on a team where all 45 guys committed and bought in and competed with each other to reach the pinnacle,” Cirelli will almost always recruit the latter.
“Those are the intangible skills — knowing what it takes to win and being a winner.”
The players, meanwhile, thrive on being under the microscope. Just ask senior linebacker Kobi Ofuokwo, who was a standout with two gamealtering interceptions in More’s regional championship win over Newman. When he sees guys such as Cirelli in the press box or on the sidelines he says it makes him want to “put on a show.”
“I know the 11 guys beside me are thinking the same thing,” he adds. “We all have the same goal. We’re all trying to get to the next level.”
A lot of them do. A quick glance at university rosters across Ontario reveals a spattering of More graduates, and Silvestri says around a half a dozen players on his team this year are being heavily recruited.
While coaching, competition and preparation are all key to More’s success, another crucial ingredient is the players. And the school has had more than its fair share of talent in recent years.
It’s partly a product of the numbers.
According to Ontario’s education ministry, More was the most pop- ulous Catholic high school in the city last year with 1,966 students — nearly twice as many as other schools in their league, such as St. Mary (1,000), Cathedral (1,250) and Bishop Tonnos (1,137). So, it automatically has a larger pool of prospective players to choose from.
On top of that, though, its football program is a draw.
While some schools in the city struggle to find a single coach, let alone enough students to field a team, More has a history of attracting upwards of 100 hopefuls to its junior tryouts. At the senior level, they carry a roster of 50 players — seven more than the Catholic board average and 12 more than the average team in the public board.
Some of them come from outside the school’s catchment area, although no one — not Silvestri nor principal Sara Cannon — will put a number on how many outsiders wind up on the football team. Silvestri is also adamant about one thing.
“Recruiting is not allowed and we don’t recruit,” he says. “We usually don’t even meet these kids until they get up to the Grade 11 level.
“We hope that our school attracts them. We’re very proud of our school. We get the numbers because I’m assuming kids believe in our education system.”
Barresi, the Ottawa coach, expects that is the case, and if it is, there’s no need for recruitment.
“They have a standard of excellence, and the thing about that is it attracts kids from other areas of the city,” he says. “I went to Cathedral and the thing they would say there is ‘we don’t recruit, we attract,’ and that’s probably what’s happening there now.”
In addition to sheer numbers, More has and fosters talent. In recent years, some of the best high school players in the country have passed through the program, including Michael Chris-Ike, who in April became the first football player from More to earn a full scholarship to an NCAA Division I school.
The star tailback scored an average of three touchdowns and rushed for 220 yards per game last fall. His stats in the playoffs were even more outrageous — 275 yards rushing per game and an average of five touchdowns.
Silvestri admits losing Chris-Ike to Delaware State this season shifted the team dynamic — how couldn’t it? — but it wasn’t necessarily for the worse.
“Our defence is the core of our team,” he says. “It always has been. They’re so much fun to watch and so athletic and energetic and they always hold things together until the offence gets going.”
That’s not all, he adds. “Those kids who had to sit behind Michael and are great athletes — there are probably four running backs — we can give the ball to them now with all the confidence in the world.”
Macaluso, the former Newman coach, says the running game has been a staple of More’s success.But Chris-Ike’s graduation made their attack no less dangerous.
“This year they can throw the ball and run the ball to anybody,” he says. “They have four or five receivers who would start on any team and they have great linemen. So, on offence, they’re making that checklist of things you want.”
While it might not get the same level of publicity, he adds, “they’re great on defence, too.”
It helps that they get along, that they truly seem to like one another. Ofuokwo, the linebacker, says he thinks the secret to the team’s success is simple chemistry — something plainly visible in the hugs, low fives and helmet taps at practice on Thursday. Everyone contributes, everyone hangs out.
“We trust each other on the field, and off the field we’re looking out for each other,” he says.
Add in a school culture and administration that “rallies around sports and rallies around the football team,” says Circelli, the Western recruiter, and you have a winning ticket.
Still, Silvestri insists, “there is no magic formula.”
So be it.
It’s just another thing, like losing, that More seems to be doing fine without.
Fast forward to today, and Silvestri is still at it. Before St. Thomas More had even advanced to OFSAA, he sent three of his staffers to London to gather intel.