McCabe part of team once again
Kevin McCabe bounced around as his football career came to a close. After transferring from the University of Virginia to California University of Pennsylvania for the 2008 season, McCabe had a twomonth stint with the Steelers in 2009 before playing for Cleveland and Pittsburgh in the Arena Football League the following two years.
Now a 35-year-old father of two young girls and very much done playing football, McCabe, a former Pine-Richland star, is starting to feel like he’s part of a team again. A couple of them, actually.
McCabe spent this past season as an offensive assistant at Duquesne University, where he helped one of his best friends in Dukes offensive coordinator Anthony Doria. In the real world, McCabe works for another former WPIAL standout; since November 2016, McCabe has been a regional sales manager for Pat Cavanaugh’s Come Ready Nutrition, a rapidly growing company based out of Wexford that’s geared toward fueling athletes of all ages.
“What I’m most excited about is trying to invest in people, and Pat is a motivating guy,” McCabe said. “I’m excited to see where he takes us. Ultimately, you just want to be around good people who get the most out of you.”
McCabe graduated from PineRichland in 2003. As a senior, he completed 123 of 196 passes for 2,179 yards and 30 touchdowns, leading the Rams to the Class 3A final. In his career, McCabe had 4,347 passing yards and 51 touchdowns, picking the Cavaliers over Notre Dame, Georgia Tech, LSU and Michigan.
Looking back, McCabe laughed about the Gatorade shakes he and his teammates were given; even though Pine-Richland was on the cutting edge of most things, sports nutrition was not yet a mainstream concern.
“They didn’t taste bad, but they had like 50 grams of sugar,” McCabe said. “That wasn’t that long ago, but it feels like it was centuries ago. That’s how far sports nutrition has come.”
As McCabe’s playing career took him from Charlottesville, Va., and back to Western Pennsylvania, where he amassed 3,214 yards and 32 touchdowns during his lone season for John Luckhardt’s Vulcans, McCabe started to think more about nutrition and training, trying to find any advantage he could.
In that sense, McCabe said he isn’t surprised by what he does now, especially when he talks about the team-like atmosphere that Cavanaugh, a former walk-on to the men’s basketball team at Pitt who wound up becoming a two-time team captain, has created.
“He’s a mindset guy,” McCabe said of Cavanaugh. “He’s about culture. The most attractive thing working with Pat is getting to be around a guy like that who’s just so driven and motivated. No matter what he was pushing, when I met him and had an opportunity to work for him, I was like, ‘This is going to be a really good step into the next phase of my life, the transition away from sports.’ He builds a culture like you’re on a team.”
Cavanaugh, who previously founded the Crons Brand (“Come Ready Or Never Start”) in 2007, has Come Ready Nutrition riding a wave of excitement. Recently the company partnered with Penn Hills/Pitt product Aaron Donald, making the Rams defensive tackle a national voice endorsing the products.
The company has also become the official sports drink of AAU basketball.
Donald, who joined the company as an investor and co-owner, has been endorsing Ready Water, an allnatural, premium sports hydration drink featuring 15 grams of protein, no sugar and five natural electrolytes.
While Donald is off dominating the NFL, McCabe holds a slightly more low-key role, often bridging the gap between the company and WPIAL schools such as North Allegheny and Upper St. Clair, which have both done business with Come Ready Nutrition. McCabe said the company also holds mobile training seminars for any interested WPIAL school, where they inform athletic directors and coaches of best practices and how to improve nutrition on a program-wide scale.
“Obviously sales will come in on the back end, but we’re trying to promote our brand and message through the nutritional services and those types of offerings,” McCabe said.
McCabe was actually working in sales for Groff Tractor & Equipment, based out of Mechanicsburg, when he saw Cavanaugh one Sunday morning at St. Alphonsus in Wexford.
They started looking across the street at an old barn, which Cavanaugh had repurposed into office space, where 25-30 people now work for Come Ready Nutrition, in addition to other brand ambassadors across the country.
“When I found out what he did, it was kind of a natural fit,” McCabe said.
This fall brought another crazy experience, one that McCabe absolutely loved but also one that caused a few schedule crunches. For the first time since his playing days ended, McCabe was back on the football field, though his role was somewhat limited.
McCabe watched a lot of film, breaking it down for Doria, head coach Jerry Schmitt and Duquesne’s staff, and on Saturdays he was kind of a liaison between Doria in the press box and the quarterbacks and skill position players on the field.
“It was really cool to learn where football is at nowadays,” McCabe said. “They’re also fantastic guys, fantastic football minds.”
Does McCabe plan on doing it again?
“Yeah, if I don’t get fired,” he said jokingly. “I would intend to, just keeping my responsibilities with Pat and the operation first and foremost. We missed the playoffs this past year. I’m just happy that coach Schmitt would even want me to come back.”
There’s a neat connection between Doria and McCabe; both played for North Allegheny product and former Notre Dame star Paul Failla, McCabe at Pine-Richland and Doria at Saint Francis University in Loretto.
“He knew where my information would be coming from,” McCabe said.
The job isn’t the easiest on McCabe and his wife — high school sweetheart Stephanie and their daughters: Quinn, 6, and Anna Faye, 4. But it also scratched a pretty serious itch for McCabe, who was thrilled to get back out on the football field and then nerd out on Sunday mornings, watching more film on one of his only days off from his full-time job.
“I just wanted to be back involved in a football environment,” McCabe said. “Then the more I was there and was given some responsibilities, I realized, ‘Hey, this is unbelievable. I love this.’ Plus, they’ve been good recently. Coach Schmitt has done such a good job with recruiting and building the culture.
“It was almost like I was touring with a band for the summer. That’s kind of what it felt like at the end of the year.
“It was a really cool thing. I’m just happy they asked me to come back.”