Wilczynski, Overbrook seek return to glory days
Frank Wilczynski still remembers making those handoffs to Frank Hales and feathering those passes to Justin Stippick. "Like it was yesterday," Wilczynski said of the 2003 football season.
Frank Wilczynski still remembers making those handoffs to Frank Hales and feathering those passes to Justin Stippick.
"Like it was yesterday," Wilczynski said of the 2003 football season.
In those days, Wilczynski was Overbrook's star senior quarterback.
Now, he's the Rams' head coach.
As a player, Wilczynski was part of Overbrook's last run of football glory.
He led his last high school team to the South Jersey Group 2 final. The Rams lost, 17-12, to a West Deptford team led by Boston College-bound Tom Walls and featuring Penn State-bound Anthony Scirrotto and Rutgers-bound Kordell Young.
"That was a great team," Wilczynski said of the West Deptford team that finished 12-0 and No. 3 in The Inquirer's South Jersey rankings.
Overbrook went toe-to-toe with teams of that caliber during Wilczynski's playing days, and for a long time before that as well.
In 1998, Overbrook was 12-0, won the South Jersey Group 4 title, and was the consensus No. 1 team in South Jersey.
In 1990, Overbrook won the South Jersey Group 3 title.
But that was a long time ago, before the breakup of the old Lower Camden County district and the opening of Lindenwold High School, which seriously slashed Overbrook's enrollment and hindered the Rams' ability to compete at the highest level in some sports.
"We have to try to break the mind-set that, 'If you go here, you're set up for failure [in football],' " Wilczynski said Monday during practice in Pine Hill. "You can succeed coming from here.
"We have guys on our staff who have come through these same hallways, grew up in the same neighborhoods as these guys [his players].
"We need our guys to see that, understand that."
Two veteran players say Wilczynski and his assistants have brought a new excitement to the program.
"It just feels different," said senior linebacker Mitch Baraldi, who led the Rams last season with 108 tackles. "He [Wilczynski] has brought us together. He pushes us every day."
Senior quarterback Tommy Wyatt said the change around the team is best reflected by the new offensive system - a no-huddle, spread attack out of the pistol, with heavy emphasis on a fast pace.
"Tempo, tempo, tempo," said the 6-foot-4, 210-pound Wyatt, who has a scholarship offer from Army. "Before, when something went wrong, we would hang our heads. Now, we don't have time. We have to run to the line and snap the ball.
"We put every play behind us and focus on the next one."
Wilczynski wants his players to look forward and focus on the future. He knows Overbrook has a rich history in the sport, but the recent past has been difficult for the Rams in the won-loss department.
Wilczynski's senior season marked the last time Overbrook was above .500. In fact, the Rams have managed just one four-win season since 2003, with eight seasons of one or two victories.
"It's been frustrating," Baraldi said of a program that has gone 2-8 in each of the last four seasons.
Wilczynski doesn't expect to turn things around in one season. The Rams still might be a bit overmatched physically against some of the stronger squads on their schedule, such as Colonial Liberty rivals Haddonfield and West Deptford.
But the new coach likes what he's seen. Overbrook has been competitive in its scrimmages, Wilczynski said, and the players seem to be receptive to the new offensive system.
"We don't have a lot of big guys up front," Wilczynski said. "But we have some athletes, and we want to try to get them in space. We want to play fast. These kids like that."
Wilczynski said the team's upbeat camp has been a continuation of a positive off-season program.
"I'm really happy with the commitment we've gotten from 95 percent of our kids through the summer," said Wilczynski, a health/physical education teacher at Overbrook. "We had them out here two to three times a week, and for high school kids who have so much going on, to have that kind commitment, it's nice to know that they want to get better."
In that 2003 title game, Wilczynski threw a 6-yard touchdown pass to Stippick and handed the football off to Hales for another 6-yard touchdown.
Wilczynski also unleashed a 58-yard punt that pinned West Deptford at its own 7-yard line midway through the second half.
He knows it's unrealistic to expect this year's team to return the program to former glory.
But that doesn't mean the players in 2015 can't make a few special memories of their own.