Vince McAneney: One of the kind

It didn't matter whether it was a hot September afternoon or a cold day in December.

Vince McAneney wore the same thing on the Pennsauken sideline - burgundy sports jacket over a short-sleeved, powder-blue shirt with a tie and gray slacks.

The coldest days were the best, because that meant Pennsauken was playing a state tournament game, and the home stands were filled with folks wrapped in blankets and heavy coats, and the man known far and wide as "Coach Mac" was dressed as if he was chaperoning the prom.

After the games was even better, sitting in a warm locker room while McAneney cupped a cigarette and explained the game - and told a dozen stories only indirectly related to what just happened on the field - and sent his son Timmy, now the Lenape head coach, down the hall to the pay phone to call the newspaper and get some other scores.

McAneney died Wednesday at 86. That was heartbreaking not just because he was one of the best football coaches ever to walk the sidelines in South Jersey and an even better guy, although that certainly was a big part of it.

What really stings when a guy such as McAneney dies - like for many music fans of the same generation, when a David Bowie or Glenn Frey dies - is that it makes you realize how much time has passed and how things used to be different, slower, simpler.

The "good old days" always are better for one reason: We were younger. We had plenty of plans and endless possibilities.

That's the thing about a man such as McAneney. He was such a colorful and unforgettable and beloved character that he evokes another time.

For West Deptford coach Clyde Folsom, it was recalling a couple of funny moments riding a horse on the field ahead of his Bishop Eustace team at Pennsauken on Thanksgiving Day in the 1980s.

"He told me he never laughed so hard," Folsom said of McAneney, and you could just see him on the sideline, embracing the moment when so many other coaches might have been tight-lipped and tense in the minutes before kickoff.

That was McAneney, a guy who somehow managed to be as competitive and demanding as any coach while maintaining balance and perspective and a wonderful sense of humor.

Some men of his stature grab life by the lapels. McAneney draped his arm around life, told it jokes, bought it a drink.

"He was one of those old-school coaches," Shawnee coach Tim Gushue said. "One of those guys who always seem to understand there was more to life than football."

Maybe it was growing up in a vibrant, loving family in Philadelphia in the Great Depression in the 1930s.

"I asked my mom one time, 'Mom, are we rich?' " McAneney once said, telling another story on the day they named the field at Pennsauken after him. "She told me, 'Yes, son, and some day we'll have money.' "

Maybe it was coming of age in the 1940s, during World War II, and understanding the sacrifices and commitment of the people rightly recalled as the "Greatest Generation."

Maybe it was playing football in the Philadelphia Catholic League and attending West Chester State and coaching West Catholic in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when John F. Kennedy was the president and McAneney used to dream of becoming the coach at Notre Dame.

Serendipitously, McAneney came to South Jersey and coached the best team in Cherry Hill West history - 9-0 in 1967 - and took over at Pennsauken and created one of the most remarkable programs in any sport in South Jersey history.

Some coaches puff their chests at the knowledge they had two future NFL players in their program. Or three.

McAneney helped eight Pennsauken players to the NFL. Eight. That group included Dwight Hicks, who was instrumental in Bill Walsh's formation of the San Francisco 49ers dynasty - Remember "Dwight Hicks and the Hot Licks," with a young Ronnie Lott in the secondary? - and John Taylor, who caught the second-most famous pass of Joe Montana's career to win a Super Bowl against Cincinnati.

His teams won 244 games at three schools over 36 years. It wasn't just with great players. It also was with 5-foot-10 linemen and lumbering fullbacks and all manner of tough kids who revered the man in the burgundy sports jacket.

Holly McAneney, Vince's widow, said she and her husband were talking one night, and she asked him to pick one word to describe himself.

"Can't I have two?" McAneney asked, in typical fashion.

She insisted on one. She wrote down her choice on a piece of paper.

"I wrote down motivator, and Vince thought about it and said motivator, " Holly McAneney said.

That was McAneney. He made everybody want to do better - his sons, his players, other coaches, students in his driver's education classes, even wide-eyed young reporters.

He was one of a kind.

I know that because his death took me right back to those great teams and those great games and the way he walked on the sideline in that outfit on the coldest of days and the magic in the air in the locker room when he was telling stories after another Pennsauken victory and Timmy was running back down the hall from the pay phone.

panastasia@phillynews.com

@PhilAnastasia

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