By Tim Parry
When you start at quarterback as a sophomore, there’s going to be a lot of pressure.
When you start at quarterback as a sophomore and get your team off to a 4-0 start and your father is the head coach, the pressure intensifies.
So far, so good thought for Joe DellaVecchia of St. Joseph.
Through four games, the son of head coach Joe DellaVecchia, DellaVecchia has 37 completions in 63 attempts for 817 yards and 12 touchdowns. He’s been picked off just once.
“He’s really doing a great job,” the senior DellaVecchia said. “He’s very composed. He’s under a lot of pressure with his dad as the coach, and he’s handling it great.”
The DellaVecchia’s won’t be the last father-son head coach-quarterback combination, and he’s not the first. This decade there has been Tony and Maxx Catapano at Warde, Bobby Maffei and Bobby III at Trumbull, and Lou and John Marinelli at New Canaan.
John Marinelli, a senior safety at Trinity, understands what the younger DellaVecchia is going through now, and will for the next two seasons.
And Marinelli understood that playing under center wasn’t a privilege because of the blood lines.
“A lot of people think that we only play because of our situation but that’s just not the case,” Marinelli said. “The one thing a lot of people don’t realize is that our fathers, Bobby’s, Joe’s and mine, their profession is a football coach. It’s not youth football, where your dad gets home from work to go right to football. This is their job, this is their work.”
But like youth football, the fathers and sons need to remember that there’s a time to turn the coach-quarterback relationship.
Coach DellaVecchia understands there’s a line that needs to be drawn, when to be the football coach, and when to be the father. He said he tries to avoid the subject with his son once he’s in the house.
“We talk a little at home, but we do most of that on the field and on the car ride home,” DellaVecchia said. “Once in a while we’ll talk about it, but I really don’t want to get into it. We spent most of this past summer talking about it.”
John Marinelli says the football conversation rarely stopped, and that he was the one that initiated it at home.
“My dad has this unique ability, like I know Bobby’s dad does, to turn off being a coach and turn on being a father,” Marinelli said. “After a loss, he was never upset with me or his players, and it was usually him or I to pick each other up.”
The younger Maffei, who is a student manager in his second year at University of Nebraska, said he and his father talked a lot about non-football related things, but was just as comfortable talking about Trumbull football.
“Which was fine because I grew up watching film with the coaches at the Sunday night meetings,” Maffei said. “I grew up going to summer conditioning when my Mom was working as a nurse. I grew up going to games that my dad was scouting and helping him watch the plays. It made me who I am today.”
Marinelli said high school football was part of his lifestyle, too, and that like Maffei, grew up idolizing players like Chris Silvestri, a past Gatorade state player of the year, on the sidelines. And long-time assistant coaches like Bo Hickey and Joe Ditolla became additional father figures.
“I know that it was the best experience I will ever have as a player,” Marinelli said. “My dad is my role model and my best friend. It was never easy playing for him, but it was why I am the person I am today.”
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By Tim Parry
