FORWARD PASS
Champion GHS linebacker repeats dad’s undefeated feats
GREENWICH — The storybook ending in sports is a goal so often sought and so rarely achieved.
The soon to be graduating seniors on the Greenwich High School football team got a taste of one last week with their 34-0 trouncing of New Canaan, which capped an undefeated season, captured the Class LL Championship and earned them the number one ranking in the state.
For the DeLuca family of Cos Cob, the story was even more perfect than that. As Larry DeLuca Jr., more commonly
team’s accomplishment, the father said the excitement he remembers feeling then does not match what he felt watching his son and his teammates become undefeated champs.
“When they did it, I didn’t know where to turn,” he said. “I was so excited for them. I ran down onto the field as fast as I could to be with them. It was a picture-perfect moment, the entire day. It was like a fantasy. I didn’t think I’d ever see it, especially with my own son.”
L.J. DeLuca had his own way of expressing how the moment felt, coming after four years of hard work and intense focus on winning a championship.
“Pretty sweet,” he said. “To actually do it means a lot, and we’re very excited about it.”
That his Cardinals team reached perfection 35 years after his father’s did made the accomplishment all the more special, but repeating history was not first on the minds of L.J. and his teammates. Throughout the season, they knew if they were going to reach their goal, they would have to continually work as a collective force on the football field.
“It’s blind loyalty,” L.J. said. “That’s what we call it. It’s knowing the man beside you is going to do his job. I knew my brothers had my back and I had their back all the time.”
On his team, Larry DeLuca was a defensive tackle. L.J. was a linebacker for the 2018 team. But the son said it wasn’t intentional that he followed in his father’s footsteps to the defensive side of the ball. He just gravitated there.
“I just love hitting people,” L.J. said. “I love running full speed into people.”
His love of the game goes back to childhood, when he played in the Greenwich Youth Football League as a member of the BANC Raiders.
“I knew since I was little I was going to be a Cardinal, and I remember walking out to the stadium and crossing the bridge with my dad and watching my older cousins play,” L.J. said. “It was really cool, and I could not wait until I got to that point. I made a commitment to that program because I wanted to be there. We all did, at every moment.”
Larry DeLuca said he never felt his son had to play football. He wanted him to make his own choices that were best for himself.
“I believe that everyone should take their own path, whatever route they want to do,” he said. “If they want to be a professional needlepointer or a golfer or a football player or whatever. If you work your hardest, you will get there. That’s what I saw when he was in the GYFL little league teams. I knew how dedicated he was. He never gave up and I knew he was going to be a Cardinal. But I didn’t know he was going to do all this.”
Both teams had dream seasons — Larry’s went 12-0, L.J.’s 13-0 — but when comparing them head to head, Larry DeLuca had no doubt which team was superior, and immediately pointed to his son, saying the game had become faster and harder hitting in the last 35 years, necessitating more intense training and better preparation.
“I think his team was better than ours,” Larry DeLuca said. “If you were to compare the size of our team to theirs, it would be like comparing college to the pro level. It’s very similar, but their workouts have increased their speed and their flexibility. A lot of people used to get hurt on our squad, and, while they had a few bumps or bruises along the way, I don’t think this team had anything major along the way. We’d just lift iron and stretching and they’re doing yoga fitness. They have such speed and fitness and, after 35 years, things have changed in the game.”
Some members of the 1983 team were hoping their record would stand, but Larry DeLuca said he was pulling hard for the 2018 Cardinals, charting the improvement since Coach John Marinelli took over four years ago and watching them come back stronger this year after losing the 2017 championship game to Darien.
“I just had a feeling it was going to happen because of the talent they had on that team and the way they were coached,” Larry DeLuca said. “I loved the program the coaching staff put in.”
Larry DeLuca credited the hard work his son and his teammates put in throughout the four years they were Cardinals. He recalled 100-degree days when all the other kids his son’s age were at the beach enjoying their summer, while L.J. and his team were practicing two or three times a day, studying films and videos, spending their nights training.
It was a full seven-day-aweek commitment and one L.J. said he was happy to make.
“You’ve got to want it,” L.J. said. “The whole team has got to want it. It’s got to be the number one thing on your mind. You always have to think about the one thing and getting that championship win. That’s the extra that you need.”
Now the team has made history, something L.J. said is still hard to fully comprehend. While Larry has a scrapbook of his clippings from the 1983 undefeated season, something his late aunt Patricia put together for him, L.J. has favored more of an online, digital remembrance of his season. Nevertheless, his father is working to put together a similar scrapbook to give to his son.
“This is something that is so valuable to me and I want him to have his own,” Larry DeLuca said as he looked through the collected clips of his team and noted how many of his former teammates, several of whom still live in town, he keeps in touch with.
L.J. said he’s heard the stories from his father about the 1983 team and he learned from them to cherish the memories he’s made.
As he looks ahead, and waits to hear back on his college applications, he knows that the New Canaan win was not only a huge game, it also was his last.
“I’m never going to play football again,” he said. “My career is done and now I can say that my team did this.”