Darby-Colwyn sports community mourning death of legend Naimoli
Ralph Naimoli coached the 1972-73 Darby-Colwyn High boys basketball team to the Class B state championship. He also was DC’s head coach in track and field and baseball and served as an assistant coach in football.
He was inducted into the Delco Athletes Hall of Fame as well as by the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame’s Delaware County Chapter.
In addition to his coaching accomplishments, Naimoli, who died last week at the age of 88, left his mark on the many students he encountered in his more than 35 years of teaching.
“He was a good guy,” said Larry Foster, a former Darby-Colwyn football and baseball player who has officiated a pair of PIAA football championship games as well as an NCAA Division III semifinal contest. “A better influence on youth you’ll never find, and he was a second father to so many.”
Many of Darby-Colwyn’s finest athletes and a number of individuals who never participated in varsity sports were at St. Joseph’s Church in Collingdale for Naimoli’s funeral.
“A lot of us first got to know him when he ran the summer recreation programs,” Frank Marro, a former D-C baseball player, said.
When Naimoli’s obituary appeared online, the number of messages of condolence grew daily.
“You were so much more than my (basketball) coach,” wrote Jim Childs, a member of the 1972 state championship basketball team. “You were a person I could go to after basketball. You were someone I always looked up to, and for that I thank you.”
Frank Ridpath was one of Childs’ basketball teammates at Darby-Colwyn and has had a successful career as the boys hoops coach at Penn Wood High and the girls coach at Sun Valley.
“I was just one of the role players on that championship team,” Ridpath said. “We won because Arnold Coleman was directing things out on the court, Jimmy Childs was such a force inside, and Ralph Naimoli was our coach.”
Debbie (Bechta) Capotrio was the floor leader for the 1975-76 Darby-Colwyn girls basketball team, which went 25-0 in winning the PIAA Class B title.
“Judy (Dougherty, a 1,000-point scorer) and I could never beat Mr. Naimoli shooting foul shots,” said Capotrio, a Purdue University standout in field hockey and basketball who has been a high school and college basketball coach. “Judy could keep up with him for a while, but I never could.”
Marty Milligan, an AllDelco on the last D-C basketball team Naimoli coached, recalled one situation in which his coach used the psychological approach to get his players going.
“We’re playing Swarthmore High, a team we should have been beating easily,” Milligan said. “(Naimoli) wasn’t feeling very well and shouldn’t even have been at the game.
“We fall behind 18-4 in the first half and he calls a timeout. He pulls these vials of pills out of his coat pocket and says something like ‘I have to take these to try to help me feel better, but the way you’re playing is making me sicker.’ That helped calm us down and woke us up, and we went back out on the court and won easily.”
Barb Yuknick of Lansdowne summed up the feelings of all of Naimoli’s former students, players and co-workers when she wrote “he was Darby-Colwyn.”
Michala Maciolek of Agnes Irwin and Ronnie Marie Falasco of Delco Christian were summer softball teammates. Both were all-league catchers this spring, and both were among the studentathletes honored last month by the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame’s Delaware County Chapter.
Others honored were track athletes Brian Barker of Interboro and Terri Turner of Penn Wood; baseball players Cameron Mathes of Marple Newtown, Thomas Toal of Haverford School, Springfield’s Andrew Todaro and Kyle Virbitsky of Episcopal Academy; and lacrosse player Beth Hofmann of Garnet Valley.
Maciolek will play collegiately at Syracuse University while Falasco will play at Amherst College. Barker and Virbitsky are headed to Penn State, Turner will attend Columbia University, Mathes and Todaro will be at Villanova in August, Toal is going to La Salle University, and Hofmann will attend The United States Military Academy.
Kevin Crane, a retired United States Government special agent who is a martial arts instructor and nationally certified coach and referee, addressed the student-athletes at the Delco Chapter luncheon.
“Allow yourself to be coached,” he said. “Don’t be late for anything, and work hard to achieve the goals you set for yourself. And always be a great teammate.”
The Sports Legends of Delaware County Museum in Radnor is featuring one of the cards from its newest collection of top county sports figures each week on the museum’s website at www.sportslegendsofdelawarecounty. com.
The featured card this week is that of Kim McKee, a Sun Valley graduate who competed in rodeo as a collegian.
McKee represented the University of Tennessee at Martin in barrel racing at the National Collegiate Finals, earning the championship. She also competed professionally and was inducted into Tennessee at Martin’s Athletics Hall of Fame.
The Sports Legends Museum, which is located at 301 Iven Avenue in Radnor, is continuing its drive to raise funds to have a statue erected of Radnor High graduate Emlen Tunnell, a World War II hero and the first AfricanAmerican elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Museum curator Jim Vankoski is seeking sponsors for individual cards in an Emlen Tunnell card set. Sponsorships cost $200 and will be tax-deductible.
For additional information, contact Vankoski at 610-909-4919 or visit www.sportslegendsofdelawarecounty.com or www. emlentunnell.com.
Saturday, June 17 marked the 25th anniversary of the passing of legendary St. James football coach and art teacher Francis “Bean” Brennan.
Over the years, many men who played under Brennan and his successor, the late Joe Logue, turned to teaching and coaching and credited those two — as well as a number of other St. James teachers and coaches — with inspiring them to follow in their footsteps.