Phil Anastasia: Glassboro bounces back from season opener

He made them watch the film.

He made them watch every lost fumble, every missed tackle, every blown assignment.

Then he marched them out on the field, held up the DVD of the worst game most of them ever played, and broke it in half.

"I wanted them to know it was over," Glassboro coach Mark Maccarone said about the season opener at Penns Grove, a 54-0 loss low-lighted by five lost fumbles and a month's worth of mental mistakes.

Think about where Maccarone was at that point. He's a first-year coach. He's guiding a program that has won three of the last four South Jersey Group 1 titles. He's got a team that has championship aspirations of its own.

And in his first game as a head coach - his first game in charge of one of South Jersey's premier small-school programs - his team loses by more-than-half-a-hundred to zero.

Now what?

"I'm sitting in the bus after the game and the thing that's going through my mind is 'Never again,' " Maccarone said. "It was a long 40-minute ride home. I'm trying to think of bright spots, and there weren't any."

"So where do you go from there? What do you do? You tell yourself, 'Never again. Never, ever, ever, ever again.'

"Then you challenge your players to get their pride back."

Six weeks later, Glassboro is 5-1. The Bulldogs will host Pennsville (6-0) Friday night in a game that likely will determine the No. 1 seed in the South Jersey Group 1 tournament.

That's a long way from a 54-0 loss.

That's a credit to Maccarone, his coaches, and the leaders on the football team.

"We usually don't get beat like that," senior center/defensive tackle Tom Rementer said. "We never get beat like that. We had to put it behind us."

That was easier said than done. This is Glassboro, a perennial power. This is Glassboro, a program with eight South Jersey titles and eight other appearances in championship games.

And that was Penns Grove, a traditional rival both in conference and group play.

"It was definitely embarrassing," said senior guard/linebacker Dan Klaszky, the team's leading tackler. "I felt like we let down the fans, let down the town. But I knew we couldn't hang on to it for long. We had to let it go."

The Bulldogs have fought their way back into championship contention. They've won tough, gritty battles with Salem, Schalick, and Woodstown.

"We've played some lunch-pail games," Maccarone said. "That's what we challenged them to do. Make Glassboro viable again. Fight and battle to get yourself back in the picture."

Now the Bulldogs have the top seed within reach. That's amazing, based on the opener. But Penns Grove (4-2) has lost to Woodstown as well as Delaware power Red Lion Christian, and Glassboro has gradually built itself back into a Group 1 power.

Junior running back Corey Clement has led the way with 1,092 rushing yards and 16 touchdowns. But the Bulldogs have received improved play from junior quarterback Mike Gillespie, a big lift from senior wide receiver/defensive back Jihad Corbin, and good work from the guys in the trenches.

And it all started on that Monday after the opener, when the new coach held up video evidence of a 54-0 loss in the first game of his career and smashed it into pieces.

"It's a good thing he did that," Klaszky said. "One of us would have grabbed it and thrown it in the woods."