Chance for the job to be finished
Cardinal Gibbons, state runner-up in ’90, finally back in title game
His phone is full of messages about a game few of his Cardinal Gibbons players know.
The team bus broke down that trip. The opening kickoff was returned against them. The magic that had worked all year deserted them that night.
“And I remember it rained like crazy,’’ coach Matt DuBuc said.
This was 1990. Cardinal Gibbons lost that state title game to Live Oak Suwannee by a score DuBuc also remembers: 44-14. He was the running back on a night he didn’t run much, a night filed among middle-aged memories until Cardinal Gibbons advanced to its second state championship game Friday with DuBuc as boss.
And so the calls and texts have come from the likes of Drew Kemp, the quarterback on that 1990 team, and Jack Seiler, the former Fort Lauderdale mayor and Gibbons alum. Everyone
sends regards and good luck. They also deliver one theme, as DuBuc notes.
“Finish the job.” This is what high schools still can bring us. Neighborhood stories that don’t just link generations, but link lives at their different stops. At St. Thomas Aquinas High, 1995 graduate Roger Harriott also takes a team he once played on into a title game. It would be a record-tying 11th state title for St. Thomas.
This would be Cardinal Gibbons’ first title in a season that says anything can happen in sports. Anything at all. It started 0-2 against heavyweight competition. It then began a win streak that now stands at 12, the longest in school history.
The season changed dramatically, yet not at all, when starting quarterback Nik Scalzo tore his knee in the second half of a regional playoff win against Orlando Jones. Scalzo led the winning drive after being injured, so DuBuc didn’t expect the call he got from the doctor the next week: “His season’s done. He tore his ACL.”
Scalzo threw 70 touchdowns in three years. He’s off to the University of Kentucky next year. But even that doesn’t tell the full impact of his loss.
That’s only understood by telling DuBuc’s story, beginning when he was an all-state baseball player for Cardinal Gibbons but loved the idea of football and proving wrong everyone who claimed he was too small.
He took his lone Division I football offer from Texas Tech. He was Wes Welker before Wes Welker at that school, Danny Amendola before Danny Amendola. DuBuc did well enough as an elusive receiver in a spread offense to later win a Grey Cup with Doug Flutie in the Canadian Football League.
After four years in the CFL, DuBuc went to West Texas A&M as an assistant. There, he crossed paths with Mike Leach, the thenTexas Tech and now Washington State coach. Leach’s “Air Raid” offense made an impression on the young DuBuc. He studied it and loved it. He still does – and still texts Leach.
“I just love throwing the ball,’’ DuBuc said. “I think it’s fun.”
DuBuc returned to Gibbons and was promoted to offensive coordinator in 2010 by then-coach Mike Morrill. He wanted to install Leach’s offense. Morrill ran a more conventional, two-back, tightend offense, but he encouraged DuBuc.
“Go learn more about it,” Morrill said.
Morrill also had the solid foundation of a winning program built when DuBuc took over three years ago. Scalzo was his first quarterback as head coach. Without Scalzo, sophomore Brody Palhegyi stepped in and the defense stepped up to beat rival American Heritage and Tampa Jesuit.
Now it’s 1990 again for Cardinal Gibbons. It’s funny how the years link up at some schools. That season had a linebacker named Joe Brooks; his son, Joey, is a defensive lineman this year. The old running back too is getting texts and calls from teammates and alums who remember that great season with the unwanted end.
“Everyone’s saying the same thing,” DuBuc said. “They want us to finish the job. Our theme this year was ‘#1815.’ That’s for the year it is and the number of wins we wanted. ... We’ve just got to put a period on the season.”