Retired legend returns to meet new challenge
Dakosty hopes to revive Colts’ ailing program with back-to-basics approach
Legendary football coach Stan Dakosty, who retired after leading the Marian Catholic program to decades of greatness, returns to the sidelines to rebuild a crumbling team.
Stan Dakosty had a heart-to-heart with his 37-year-old son, Stan Jr., on a Friday night last October in a Worcester, Massachusetts, hotel room.
Dakosty was a volunteer football coach and his son the associate head coach at Colgate, which was playing at Holy Cross the next day.
“It was very emotional,” Dakosty said.
The 67-year-old was distraught because Marian Catholic High School, the program he spent four decades through 2016 building and maintaining as a steady small-school contender, forfeited its last two games of the 2019 season because it did not have enough healthy players.
It ended a 1-9 season and cast doubt on the program’s future.
Dakosty, who remained at Marian as athletic director and history teacher through the end of the 2019-20 school year, contemplated
what he should do to help the Colts program.
His son knew where he was headed.
“Canceling those games last year was as hard on my dad as anything,” Dakosty Jr. said. “Growing up, my dad was my hero. I was on the sideline with him since second grade. I know how much the school means to him.
“He gave 40 years of his life to that program. It was either cross his fingers and hope it stays afloat or take it back over and make sure it gets back to where it was.”
Dakosty officially returned as Marian’s head coach a couple of weeks later and has nearly 40 players in camp. The Colts’ 2020 season, like every other one in Pennsylvania, was delayed two weeks by the PIAA as it seeks discussion with Gov. Tom Wolf about the feasibility of having fall sports amid the coronavirus pandemic. Wolf made a recommendation last week to not have youth or high school sports until at least Jan. 2.
If there is a program that
needs to play this fall, it is Marian Catholic.
“It’s so important,” Dakosty said.” Obviously, everyone’s health is first, but we want to reestablish the program with a good number of underclassmen.
“We want to get back to the point where we are playing in big games, when the stadium is filled and the pep rallies and all that. I want these kids to experience that.”
Dakosty took over Marian Catholic in 1977 after three seasons as an assistant coach. Memories began to pile up three years after Marian lost to Mount Carmel — Pennsylvania’s winningest program — in his debut.
On the same day, the Colts won an Eastern Conference playoff game, Mike Tracy became the state’s career rushing leader and Dakosty’s daughter Kathy was born.
The Colts program had arrived, too.
In the mid-1980s, they had a 27-game winning streak. By 1990, they were Class A state champions. They won seven District 11, six conference crowns and 310 games during his tenure.
Opponents knew that a game against Marian meant a 48minute battle. Dakosty never accepted anything less from his players.
After getting family approval to return to coaching — which included stipulations from his wife, Mary — Dakosty’s demands of his players remained the same.
“It was a difficult but not a hard decision to make,” Dakosty said. “I knew the school, knew the kids. But no promises were made. There is no magic wand. They have to work hard.”
Dakosty faced many challenges when he returned in November. A roster needed replenishment after 12 seniors graduated from a program that had a numbers problem. A coaching staff also needed to be assembled.
But there were other program-related issues that could not be addressed by simply working the halls for prospective players.
During a late-January Zoom call with more than two dozen Marian alums, Dakosty said the program needed new helmets, jerseys, a weight room (for all students to use) and a practice field.
Two days later, money for the helmets was secured. The jerseys, the weight room and practice field followed thanks to alumni, the Men of Marian booster club and other friends of the program.
“Having him back leading us means so much,” senior lineman Robert Sunder said. “It’s real uplifting. He’s a big motivation for all of us.”
When equipment was handed out last week, several players did not know if the shoulder pads or helmet fit properly because they had no point of reference.
Dakosty is teaching what he calls Football 101: getting kids into a proper stance, basic blocking technique and footwork.
Julian Cerullo is Marian’s starting quarterback, a senior who has not played since his Valley Chiefs mini football days in seventh grade. Corey Rehnert, another first-year player, is projected to start at fullback.
Sunder, who missed all but two games last season because of a broken rib, was among the returning players who recruited friends to come out for the team.
If there ever was a team in need of spring workouts, it was the Colts. But the pandemic kept players and coaches off the field and on their computers.
Every Friday night in the spring Cerullo moved his living room furniture and got on a Zoom call with Dakosty, who critiqued his quarterback’s footwork.
The back-to-the-basics approach continued when in-person workouts resumed in the summer.
“Every day is something new; I’m on Chapter 125 of my book,” Dakosty joked. “The biggest thing is the unknown. What happens when we go live? Most of these guys haven’t been in that situation.
“We talk about rep, repeat and retain. It took a while for that to happen. There were years when we were green. We lost guys but had JV kids coming up who were ready. You look at the kids now and think they are ready. I have total confidence in them. But there is no reference point.”
Dakosty always preached discipline and effort. This team is no different, and he is following his own creed.
He makes the 3.8-mile trek at 6 a.m. every day from his Tamaqua home to the track surrounding the field named after him to walk 1.5 miles. He has lost 24 pounds and had his best stress test in seven years. He is doing that out of respect for his players and family, including his three grandchildren.
Dakosty enjoyed living with his son’s family for a month each of the previous three years while he volunteered at Colgate. It was a great time to be with his grandchildren and still have a hand in a football program.
It is why his wife made sure that mandatory vacations were part of the return-to-Marian plan.
Dakosty also will be in the school part-time as a study hall and cafeteria monitor because he wants to be around the players as much as possible.
“He’s still tough as nails,” Dakosty Jr. said of his father. “Whatever he does, he going to go full tilt. He can push through anything.
“This may have added more stress, but him watching from the outside added more stress too.”
Marian had only five losing seasons in Dakosty’s previous 40-year tenure. The Colts had three consecutive sub-.500 years in his three-year absence, none harder than 2019.
“It was difficult watching teammates get hurt and the loss of pride at the school and the struggles every game,” senior Owen Brady said. “The day in school they announced Coach’s return, everyone was so excited. It brought kids back into the program.”
Dakosty makes no promises about this season — except that the players who put on the Marian jersey will have earned the opportunity to represent the proud program and school.
They will run onto the field as prepared as they can be.
“Colgate’s first game at CalPoly in 2017,” Dakosty Jr. recalled, “was a huge game for that program. It was my dad’s first weekend in 40 years not coaching at Marian.
“[Raiders head coach Dan] Hunt goes up to him after the final practice that Friday to tell him that he can address the team after dinner. [My dad] got emotional. The team, coaches, alumni and administrators left that dinner like they were ready to run through a wall. It was awesome to see.”
Dakosty Jr.’s list of memories playing for his father are many; so is the number of people he’s met in his adult life who know and respect his father’s passion and dedication to Marian’s program.
He has learned a lot from his father about the coaching profession, and already enjoyed a few significant moments while at Colgate.
A last-second field goal in the 2018 Football Bowl Subdivision playoffs gave Colgate a win over James Madison.
“Everyone on the field was going nuts,” Dakosty Jr. recalled. “The first person I hugged was my dad. That was not by accident. It was an awesome moment to share with him.
“He’s done so much for me and Marian. I have so much respect for what he’s done for so many who played in that program.”
It is why Dakosty Jr. knew there was only one way that hotel room conversation was ending.
Morning Call reporter Tom Housenick can be reached at 610-820-6651 or at thousenick@mcall.com.