Taking the Pirates to the playoffs this season has won Pasco High's new football coach, Dale Caparaso, many new admirers.
By GREG AUMAN
Published November 14, 2003
DADE CITY - Dale Caparaso had stayed up until 2 a.m., watching game tapes of his next opponent, and 15 minutes before the start of school Thursday, he realized he'd forgotten his medicine.
His house is less than a mile from Pasco High School, so the first-year Pirates football coach hurried to make a quick trip home. Seconds later, he found himself pulled over in front of the school, and a police officer was walking up to his window.
"Here, I'm thinking I was going too fast, and all the kids were watching," Caparaso said. "But he just wanted to talk about Pasco football. Very nice gentleman, he said, "Hey, coach, great season, just want to congratulate you. We'd really like to see you beat Jefferson."
Winning eight games in your first season will go a long way toward helping a community - would-be citation-writers and others - embrace the new football coach. Caparaso, 47, is ahead of his usual schedule, having never guided any of his previous schools into the playoffs before his third season as coach.
Tonight, Caparaso and his Pirates travel to Tampa to play Jefferson, which played in the state championship game last year and is ranked eighth in the state.
Dade City is a world away from Bellingham, Mass., where Caparaso won three state titles in five years before taking a leap and moving to Florida. Temperatures are still in the 80s, and when he called his father two nights ago, the temperature back in Rhode Island was 24 degrees. It takes five playoff wins to earn a state title in Florida, but only two in Massachusetts. The reason?
"You ever play football in New England in December?" he said with a laugh.
Caparaso has shown himself to be fiery and confident, and fiercely competitive. He's from the Jon Gruden School of Sideline Scowling, but the same players he'll shout at from the sidelines are the ones he'll kid with the next day. His staff matches his long hours, staying until after 9 each night this week and even then, taking game tapes home for further scrutiny.
"I'm the kind of person that has this compulsion that the job is never done," Caparaso said. "I'm that way with the kids in practice too, always wanting to get five or six more plays in. This time of year, you drag a little bit, you're tired more as opposed to earlier in the season."
He's also a man of superstition. He won't change a pregame meal as long as his team wins, which explains why tonight's fare will be pizza for the fourth week. His coaches bought five different polo shirts to wear on the sidelines for games, knowing they wouldn't wear one color again after losing in it. When his Pirates beat rivals Zephyrhills three weeks ago to clinch a playoff spot, the black jacket he wore on the sidelines said "Blackhawks Football," a nod to his Bellingham days, simply because it's his lucky jacket, and you don't mess with new luck with playoff berths on the line.
Caparaso came to Dade City last spring with a reputation for football success but also for discipline. He inherited a program in need of both, and his commitment to the latter has been equally impressive. Lester White, a starting linebacker, was kicked off the team in spring and has been suspended twice this fall. Last week, Caparaso suspended the team's star receiver, Johnny Peyton, from his final home game. The suspensions were for violations of team rules.
"I think people in the community are really high on the fact that he's a disciplinarian," assistant principal Norm Brown said Thursday. "He's really an intense kind of guy, and you see that at the games. With maybe one exception, we never thought we didn't have a chance to pull it out every week. I like the direction the team's going in."
Peyton and White are both out of the doghouse and in the starting lineup tonight. Caparaso said he believes in meting out punishments and then putting problems in the past. He also believes that multiple punishments should put a player in the past.
"I've always had a policy where you do the crime, you do the time and then you come back," Caparaso said. "We don't hold grudges against a kid. If I'm to the point where I might hold a grudge against someone, there's no need to hold a grudge. Son, you're gone."
The salt-and-pepper stubble of Caparaso's preseason is now a full black beard, and Pasco's football team has grown from a county unknown to a well-groomed threat to advance in the playoffs. If Pasco can upset Jefferson in Tampa tonight, it would be the Pirates' first playoff victory in five years.
Caparaso is settling in to his new home. His son, Zachary, earned a spot on his middle school basketball team. The phone has been ringing more than ever this week with well-wishers and messages of support.
The school will hold a pep rally this morning, and his players will meet for pizza after school, and his coaches will don black, white and red striped shirts, the current official lucky road-game attire of Pirates football. Caparaso will head down Interstate 75 for his playoff debut, knowing he has support from his fans, but just the same, promises the bus will obey all speed limits on the way to Tampa.
