Their spring and summer workouts were supplemented by trips to board meetings and heated discussions over who would coach the team come fall. For the Horace Greeley players, enough was enough.
“During the whole summer, the politics made me sick,” junior captain Billy Marino said. “To be able to just play football again was really great.”
The Quakers returned to normalcy for the first day of practice, albeit without longtime Bill Tribou, who has been suspended from school for an undisclosed violation. Tim Sullivan, Tribou’s assistant for 17 seasons, stepped in as the interim coach and nearly two weeks since the start of camp, has kept the program humming by changing little.
“We’re on track,” Sullivan said.
Of course, Greeley camp was decidedly quieter without Tribou around Tuesday afternoon. But the team will remain remarkably similar under Sullivan. He’ll stick to the same general offensive and defensive schemes of his predecessor.
“I’d be stupid if I didn’t do a lot of the things he did,” Sullivan said. “He was my mentor. I learned a lot from him.”
Even if Tribou had returned, Greeley would be in line for retooling. The team that reached the 2010 Class A championship game is almost all gone. Key linemen graduated following that season; now, the Quakers must replace three-year QB Justin Ciero, a two-time Super 11 selection.
Ciero’s replacement is junior QB Brett Mester, who Sullivan said was smart, focused and capable of running and passing. He’ll be joined in the backfield by two returning starters in senior captains Cory Ekstrom and Teddy Graves.
(Ciero’s younger brother, Cameron, who was a freshman backup QB on the varsity last season, is now on the JV.)
When I asked Sullivan how the Greeley would counteract the loss of Ciero’s production, the answer was simple: “We’re going to use the whole offense,” he said.
Translation? Just be more balanced.
“We have a lot of offensive weapons,” Graves said. “Teams are going to have to pick their poison against us. You can’t just focus on one player.”
Luckily, the team’s strength might be its offensive line. What proved to be a young group last year is now an experienced one. Marino, in his third year of varsity, has been able to shift from C to TE. Fellow captain Brent Lobien is back at T, and Nick Paleo and Tim Bloom anchor the middle of a senior-heavy line.
Marino, Lobien and Paleo should all start at LB. DBs Graves and Ekstrom will join them as two-way starers. Sophomore Will Rothchild, who Sullivan deemed “an animal,” will head the rotation up front on defense.
The players on Greeley know they aren’t known throughout the section. Take that for what it’s worth, but they hope to use that anonymity and lowered expectations to their advantage.
“Everyone’s counting us out,” Marino said. “Everyone’s wondering, who are they going to be without Tribou? Who are they going to be without Justin?”
“We’re going to surprise a lot of teams,” Graves said.
10 Comments
Why would a kid who played varsity as a 9th grader play JV as a 10th grader?
Bill Tribou is now an assistant at Peekskill high School. Bil Tribou is a good man god bless him and hopefully he is successful at Peekskill.
JJ CR,
You are correct. That makes absolutely no sense. Why would he play down? I didn’t even know that was an option. Must be some political problems there.
i am also surprised that younger ciero isnt playing varsity after backing up his brother last year. watching him at the columbia recruiting camp last month with my son, he sure didn’t look like a kid that would be playing jv. i can tell you he was one of the better qb’s out there.
The rumors that the youngest Ciero didn’t want to play for Tribou started right after last season. Now that Tribou is gone, I guess he just doesn’t want to play Varsity Football. It probably was too much for him. He might be as talented as his older brother, but he is not as hard of a worker.
This Greeley team is not going to be very good this year. They wont be one of the worst teams in the section, but they probably not a playoff team. They just don’t have the firepower to replace Justin Ciero this year, this was always going to be a rebuilding year for Greeley.
Rumor has it that he handled it pretty easily last year as a freshmen and was looking to transfer, so obviously that’s not it. it ridiculous to say it’s hard work and if that is the rumor perhaps that’s part of the problem. let’s promote the kids and not bash them after all going to recruiting camps as a sophomore and then playing jv ?
I believe that Section One rules prohibit an individual player from being on varsity one year and then dropping back down to JV the following season.
gym: Thats just what I heard. He was all set on playing for the Greeley JV team this year when Tribou was still the coach and that hasn’t changed. I am not saying that he wants to have an easier year by playing JV but he doesn’t have the Tribou excuse anymore.
I think Greeley made the correct choice distancing themselves from Tribou. He is an overrated coach and his style was not very well received by the Athletic Department at Greeley.
Overrated… Maybe a little harsh with his long & successful career. But the fact is that Greeley’s previous successes also belonged to the players AND the rest of the staff, most of who remain on staff. Coach Sullivan and the boys will carry on our proud tradition, and our school will rally around all of them.
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