Old Rams return & everything old becomes new again as new crop of student-athletes starts the spring season
March 6, 2024 at 11:35 p.m.
Coaching changes at Port Chester High School will give a new look to the spring sports season that starts Monday (3/11).
Everything old will become new again for the estimated 400 student-athletes who will compete in four varsity sports—baseball, softball, tennis and Track & Field (T&F).
As part of an emerging trend, old Rams will return to the playing fields of their youth as mentors looking to share their expertise with a new generation that includes a talented group of seniors readying for their high school athletic last hurrah, that group including track's Alexandra Cruz, John Delcid, Alejandro Salinas, Orhan Eski and Jonathan Abraham, baseball's John (Tommy) Tomassetti, Josh Virella, Ryan Gagnon and George Pagnotta and softball's Nataly Garcia and Samantha (Sam) Munoz.
The returning alums
Danny Alvarado (right) with his 2020-21 Lady Rams soccer players who won soccer scholarships to play in college. He was named League Coach of the Year in 2019 and 2020. The PCHS alumnus will return as the Lady Rams head Track & Field coach after a year in post-graduate study to become a sports administrator.By File Photo
The alumni returning to the coaching ranks include former Rams head football, wrestling and T&F coach Greg Domestico, a legendary former ex-Ram star on the gridiron as well as the mat and track who spent 16 years on the coaching sidelines at PCHS. He will return as the new Rams T&F coach after around a decade away coaching wrestling at Greenwich, Harrison, Rye and Eastchester, football at Rye and Harrison, and T&F at Sacred Heart and Rye.
One of Domestico's protégés, Danny Alvarado, a former All-League Lady Rams soccer Coach of the Year who wrestled and played football for Domestico as an ex-Ram and also coached under him after college, will also return. Alvarado will come back as the Lady Rams head T&F coach after a year's work in post-graduate study to become a sports administrator.
Other returning coaches include Craig Holcomb (tennis), who coached the last Rams basketball team to make it into the semi-finals of the Section 1 championships at the Westchester County Center in 2012 with pre-season All-American Anthony (Scooby) Ordonez leading the way.
The diamond duo
Other key returning mentors include Sean Burke (baseball), whose Rams are coming off winning their first Greater Hudson Valley Baseball League Fall Season Championship and are looking to win another Section 1 League Championship to go along with the one they won a few seasons back, the school's first in more than a quarter of a century.
Across the diamond will once again be Jeanine Maiolini (Lady Rams softball), a former athletic scholarship collegiate infielder at nationally-ranked Hofstra who has turned around the losing softball culture hereabouts while helping mold future college scholarship athletes like the Ostrowski sisters (Brooklyn and Madison, now playing for Villanova) and Kayleigh Heckel, the McDonald's All American point guard who has signed to play for the University of Southern California.
Ironically, Paul Santavicca, who replaced Domestico after a losing final football season and won a league championship a few seasons later, has stopped coaching football to spend more time with his family but is helping Port Chester build its LAX program, the sport he played in college at Marist after making the high school All-American lacrosse team at Yorktown.
Longest-serving coaches
Other returning Rams coaches include Nick Mancuso and Hank Birdsall, both former Rams who have become T&F coaches with the school's longest coaching track records. Mancuso, 26 years and counting as a coach, stepped aside as Rams head T&F coach so Domestico could be recruited back to Port Chester. Mancuso will be the assistant head T&F coach. And Birdsall, a retired teacher, ex-U.S. Army Green Beret, longtime distance running coach and cancer survivor, will be back as a volunteer distance running mentor going into his 36th year with a track record that includes developing Anthony Smith into a high school All America circa the mid 1980s with Smith arguably Port Chester's greatest distance runner ever.
In that time, Mancuso and Birdsall have been around the track coaching-wise and seen a lot of coaching tactical moves, including one made by Domestico that stands out.
Calls made & not made
The Rams were heading into the final event in a close race with the Valhalla Vikings for the league T&F championship a decade ago. Domestico did some quick mental calculations and saw that the Rams had to score in the discus finale to take home the title. But the Rams didn't have anyone entered in the event. So Domestico called one of the team's better athletes on his cell phone and told him to come out to the track quickly. He did. Domestico, a former field events standout, taught him some discus throwing spins, twists, turns and basics on the fly. And made the kid a late entry. He wound up scoring in the event and his points helped win that long ago title for Port Chester.
PCHS coaches worthy of the name
and the few shepherds who are not
There are Port Chester coaches worthy of the name like the ones written about in the spring preview elsewhere in this section and then there are the coaches who are not because they are more like shepherds than mentors for the Rams and Lady Rams and are in a baad league of their own.
Here are three of my least favorites, henceforth to be known as the coaches/shepherds who shall remain nameless:
1) The coach/shepherd of one of Port Chester's losingest teams who asked me just to write the team lost without giving the score in sports stories written for Westmore News. "But how can you expect me to write about a game without giving the score?" I asked. "Because it would be better that way," came the response. And then the shepherd seemed upset when I said reporting what happens means reporting what happens and the score is important in describing Ws and Ls. Baa!
2) The coach/shepherd who told the school's athletic director that the parents were complaining there weren't enough stories published about that team. But the shepherd never mentioned being "too busy" to return phone calls or emails seeking information about that team, something that was never mentioned to the parents or the AD. Baa, Baa!
3) The coach/shepherd who threatens to never speak to me again because I profiled an athlete who said he played for a different school because that school had a better overall program that helped him win a college athletic scholarship. I was accused of undermining the local sports program, not being a cheerleader for the local team and, facts be damned, what I wrote was allegedly so damning there would be no information forthcoming about the shepherd's players, not even about the charity events they participated in or the colleges where grads were playing or anything else about that team in the future. Ever. Baa, baa, baa!
So that gives you an idea of why this writer thinks of most Port Chester coaches as deserving of the name while a few are more like shepherds in a baad league of their own. Either way, the game is still played the right way, win or lose, and the Rams and Lady Rams kids are all right.
Because, as the late great educator Byron Womack used to say: "It's all about the kids," and most of the local coaches feel that way, even the shepherds who sometimes let their egos get in the way.
But it was the call that Domestico didn't make that still haunts him. It was the last football game he ever coached at PCHS. The grid Rams were down by one point in the final minutes of a home game against a Yonkers team. The Rams’ offensive ace, a student named Jason Ippolito, was running wild, catching passes, chewing up the field on zig-zagging runs, looking as though he couldn't be stopped until the Rams were on the one-yard-line with time to run one last play. Everybody in the stadium thought the Rams were going to die or die with Ippolito plunging into the line with a last gasp effort to score the winning points. And Domestico's gut said give the ball to Jason. But the Rams’ offensive coordinator said cross Yonkers up with a makable field goal from close range. And that's what the Rams did. But an errant snap from center sent the football sailing over the kicker's head. He never got the kickoff. The Rams lost. And Domestico took the rap and never threw the offensive coordinator under the bus for making that call. He is that kind of standup guy.
The coaching influences
Rams All-League wrestling coach Joe Facciola, for example, swears by Domestico.
Facciola was also a Section 1 wrestling champion in the light heavyweight (179-pound) weight class back in the day when he also played baseball and football for the Rams circa 2011-15. And he believes his Ram coaching influences helped motivate him to become a coach himself as well as a physical education instructor in the Port Chester School District.
"I truly believe I learned a lot from all of my previous coaches—especially Greg Domestico," Facciola recalled. "I learned some really good habits and learned what to do differently. Greg coached me in football and wrestling and I eventually coached alongside him for 11 years." Over those years Facciola learned how to be an effective coach with Domestico, once a Ram athletic star himself, who became like a surrogate father figure.
"As coaches we always stress to our student-athletes the importance of having a strong base," Facciola said. "This base is the foundation to everything, similar to the foundation of a house. The wall of a house would not stand without a good base/foundation. In sports having a good base will make you a better athlete. Having an athletic stance, keeping a low center of gravity, and having a strong body and core are essential to being a successful athlete. But I am not just talking about a physical base because having a strong mental base is just as important. As coaches we often overlook the competitive mindset. And we have to really get to know our student-athletes until they become almost like family so we can try to bring out the best in them."
Commitment to excellence
These are just examples of a good base on a superficial level, Facciola explained. The foundation is actually based on a philosophy, relationships, and core morals and values, he said. Domestico helped bring those points home to him as well as various other Port Chester coaches he has influenced like Danny Alvarado and Nick Mancuso, the Rams’ longest serving active coach with more than 25 years’ experience including football coaching stints with Domestico elsewhere, most recently in Rye with the Garnets team that beat Maine-Endwell for the state championship in Syracuse towards the end of last year.
"Domestico is a great coach, and I'm glad Greg is back in Port Chester," Mancuso said, endorsing Domestico's return as a coach at their alma mater.
"Domestico has helped shape me as a person," Facciola said, adding another affirmative endorsement. "I truly believe my effectiveness and success as a coach and athlete have come from quality experiences with him and his coaching philosophy to bring a commitment to building excellence, not mediocrity."
Mancuso and Alvarado, also Port Chester physical education teachers, feel the same way. All of which adds to the excitement and anticipation for what the upcoming spring season will bring with old Rams coming back as coaches and everything old becoming new again. That includes a budding new crop of student-athletes like Santiago Marquez and Liz Cruz, Adam Castaneda, Bryan Sachs, Jordany German, Scott Sullivan, Billy Villanova and a lot more athletes ready to come out of the melting pot that is Port Chester, all anxious to show what they can do alongside the senior leaders of the pack.
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