D’Esposito will have Interboro defense ready for rematch
Mike D’Esposito has been here before. Friday night, Interboro’s defensive coordinator will send his unit onto Knight Park in Sharon Hill with the task of slowing down Jerry Lanier and an Academy Park offense that has been racking up yards and points all season. Just two weeks ago, the Knights put up a 49 spot. Against Interboro. It seems preposterous to think the Bucs of Nov. 16 can be so different from the Bucs of Nov. 2, that 14 days could cut deeply enough into seven touchdowns’ worth of damage to send Interboro into the District One Class AAA championship game.
But Mike D’Esposito has been here before. Two years ago the Bucs had a rematch against an Upper Moreland team that beat them 28- 20 in the regular season, tightened the defensive screws and beat that team weeks later in the playoffs, 7- 6.
That’s recent enough for Interboro’s present- day players to remember. Then there was that time D’Esposito turned the trick twice on the same weekend.
First, a personal testimony. In 1983, as a 12- year- old kid playing football for the first time for the 85- pound Prospect Park Termites, I was clueless and overwhelmed when early in the season we were steamrolled by a wildly superior Downingtown team. The final score was 35- 12, and the Whippets had a running back named Steve Anderson who years later would play in the Big 33 Game as one of the top players in Pennsylvania.
It was the only game our team lost that season, which meant a rematch with Downingtown in the Bert Bell championship game at Widener.
The week leading into the game, D’Esposito prepared us as if we were a high school team. There was film, there were new defensive schemes and responsibilities. He wanted to give these 12- year- old kids a fighting chance, and somehow we won that rematch, 12- 6.
It was the best coaching performance I’ve ever been a part of.
“It’s funny you bring that up,” D’Esposito said as we chatted on the phone, “because that was the same weekend ( St. James) beat O’Hara.”
D’Esposito was in his third season as the Bulldogs’ defensive coordinator at the time, and three weeks earlier Cardinal O’Hara rolled the Jimmies, 26- 7. In a rematch in the opening round of the Catholic League playoffs, St. James beat the 10- 0 Lions, 26- 13, on a Saturday night at Villanova Stadium.
The next morning, he coached the Termites to their upset.
“That was an amazing weekend,” D’Esposito said. “I definitely think the kids have to believe. You guys believed. I remember that Downingtown team after the game was over just standing on the sidelines. They didn’t know what had just happened.”
It speaks to the man affectionately called “Coach D” by his players that he relished a youth football victory as much as a monumental upset at the height of Catholic League popularity. It speaks to a man who had to be cajoled to apply for the assistant coach opening at St. James in 1981 because he wasn’t sure he was qualified, and has selflessly been a defensive coordinator for more than 30 years, never attempting to network his way to higherprofile positions.
He loves what he does, loves the challenge. And just as he did two years ago, just as he did 29 years ago, Mike D’Esposito will give his defense a crash course this week.
“Academy Park is good because they spread you out and have a lot of talent,” he said. “You always try to get your kids to believe that they have a shot of doing it, and as long as they have that attitude, they have that shot. I feel we have a good shot at them.”
He feels that way because he has been there before. He has seen what preparation and execution can accomplish.
Familiarity will help Academy Park. Knights coach Jason Vosheski played against D’Esposito’s defenses as a player at Ridley, and prior to this year’s regular- season win never had beaten the Bucs. He’d use paint stripper to remove that win two weeks ago from his players’ collective ego if he could. And make no mistake about it, if Interboro beats Academy Park, it will be an upset.
But it won’t be a shocker. Because Mike D’Esposito has been here before.