November
10, 2005
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| St. Joseph QB Robert Cervini. |
MONTVALE -- Being the quarterback of a high-profile high school program may be a glamorous position, but the word easy is no where to be found on the job description. It takes a certain type of individual to maneuver through the ups and downs of being under the microscope constantly.
Tradition and history become just as much a part of the package as talent and potential. There is little or no room for error, as the minions take aim at the slightest issue or failure, no matter how dramatic.
At St. Joseph, that history and tradition is swirling around this year’s Green Knight football team. They begin the quest for an unprecedented seventh straight state championship on Saturday when they host Hudson Catholic, and the idea that another set of championship rings will be on order is not even a question, it is the expected.
What makes this so strange is that the players who started the streak are all out of COLLEGE and the players who are in charge of upholding the championship streak were playing JUNIOR FOOTBALL when the whole thing started.
Which takes us back to the quarterback. Robert Cervini has traveled an interesting road over the past three seasons, a road that has had its share of ebb and flow. The junior is one of a number of St. Joseph players who must step up in the upcoming month if the Knights are to eclipse the state record for consecutive championships.
Cervini stands front and center, simply because it all begins with him. This team will go as far as his ability to lead it will take them. There are others who will play major roles, such as Anthony Ferla and Wallace Oldham and Terrence Klein, but the QB is the lynch pin.
So just how does a 17-year-old
deal with this? In Cervini’s case, it has been an evolution, a growth
in knowledge, stature and maturity in a place where he didn’t even expect
to be.
His heart had been set on Don Bosco, but before the summer was over, he had
made the decision to transfer to St. Joseph, along with his brother John,
who was entering his junior year.
The decision wasn’t an easy one, and there were disagreements within the family over what to do. Ultimately, what helped to seal the deal was a meeting between Robert, his father Gene and Knight head coach Tony Karcich.
“My dad liked him right away and so did I,” Cervini said of the beginning of what is now a solid coach-player relationship. “Still, it was hard. I went from thinking I’d follow in the footsteps of (former Ironmen star and current Rutgers quarterback Mike) Teel, and the next thing I know, I’m wearing green and gold and trying to win the starting freshman job.”
“What I loved was his passion for the game,” Karcich countered. “He is a kid with a great personality, athletic ability and a competitive nature. He’s always got a smile on his face when you see him in the hallways. You’ve got to love a kid like that.”
He also had to introduce himself to a whole new group of players and make new friends.
“I remember walking into the gym for freshman orientation,” he recalled, “and the only person I knew was Adam Triglia (through playing against him for Suffern against Ramsey in the North Jersey Junior Football League).
“I see Tommy LaStella, he was the quarterback, and he’s got five, six, seven kids around him. I was like, tell me I’m going to go to another school and I’m not going to start.”
Pessimism turned into a challenge, and by the first freshman game, he was the starter. The team went 5-3, but it also had to deal with the death of its head coach, Joe Blake, in midseason the week before they played Don Bosco.
Throughout the season, the Cervini/Karcich relationship was taking root.
“He knew I was friends with (fellow Suffern native and then SJR quarterback) Brent (Weiss). Then he brought me up to the varsity at the end of the freshman season. I think he kind of knew I was next in line to start.
“He would always talk to me at lunch or when he’d see me in school. It wasn’t always about football, it was what was going on, how I was feeling.”
Karcich actually had a different first impression, saying, “when I first saw him, I thought he would be a better defensive back than quarterback. I was anticipating he would be our free safety, but he developed as a quarterback.”
Last year, Cervini took on the role as backup to Weiss, though it was ironic that his main competition for the spot, Artie Clyde (a junior in 2004 who is now at Teaneck as the starting signal-caller), was felled by a broken collarbone while doing a drill with Cervini.
“The guy I’m competing with, I break his collarbone and now I’m automatically number two,” he recalls. “It wasn’t like I won the job, but I just want to show Coach that I deserved the job and that if anything happened to Brent, I could go.”
He started the entire junior varsity slate, going 8-0-1 (they tied Bosco), and he spent the season watching Weiss as he won his third state title as a starter.
“He took me under his wing,” Cervini noted. “He tried to teach me as much as he could about being a good quarterback. He was a perfect role model, someone who leads by example.”
Still it was, as he called it, “the longest season of my life.”
Never one to shy from contact, Cervini could have easily been a varsity contributor and even a starter in the defensive secondary, but, “I’m the backup quarterback, I’m not going in unless Brent goes down. They didn’t want to put me in on defense because if I get hurt and he goes down, we’ve got nobody. It was like I was at a dead stop.”
Looking at him, Cervini is not the eye-candy quarterback. He’s not 6-foot-3, 215 pounds (more like 5-11, 190), he’s doesn’t have the rifle arm, and he’s not a 4.5 40-yard dash guy. He is what coaches like to call a lunch-pail player, the type who will outwork you and maximize his potential.
“By your sophomore year, you either have decent mechanics or you don’t,” Cervini theorized. “I may not be the biggest or the fastest, but I want to be the smartest and be able to know where to throw or if I’m going to run.”
It would have seemed a natural progression for Cervini to inherit the starting job, but there was another curveball thrown his way. Robert Wilk, a junior, transferred in from Bethlehem Catholic in Pennsylvania prior to the start of summer camp. Suddenly, it was a two-man race.
“I almost felt like he wanted him to win the job so I could play defense,” Cervini thought. “I never really felt like I had the job all through the summer and into preseason. It made me want to compete more, but at times I think I tried to do too much.”
There were ups and downs. One solid
scrimmage, one not so good. The relationship between player and coach also
was taking a hit (“I didn’t know how to approach him or what to
say.”)
It was prior to the opener against Eastside when Karcich informed the team
that Cervini was his choice.
“It wasn’t like congratulations, no big announcement, no fanfare, just he’s our starter,” Cervini remembers.
Karcich had seen enough, though. While he admits that having Wilk at quarterback and Cervini in the defensive secondary was intriguing, he also says without reservation, “I had the utmost confidence that Rob could run the show.”
There is a big difference between getting the job and executing the job, something that Cervini found out quickly in that opening game against the Ghosts. It took all of one quarter to reach the first hurdle.
“The first quarter was horrible, horrendous,” he admitted. “Oh for five (passing), (missed) two guys wide open, one ball in the ground, one off the back of a defensive guy’s helmet. Jitters all over the place, didn’t feel comfortable at all.”
At the end of the quarter, Karcich approached his QB with a simple ultimatum.
“He comes up to me, yelling, and goes, either you’re going to do the job or you’re not, because right now, you look like you (stink) at quarterback,” Cervini remembers vividly. “After that, 10 for 10, three touchdown passes. He got me going, and I went back out and I was, like, I can do this. I just played football. After the game, he told me, that’s the way to grow up.”
As the season progressed, the dialogue between coach and quarterback picked up steam, as Cervini added, “once I won the job, we got more comfortable with each other. Now, I have no problem going up to him and saying, coach, do you want to watch film tomorrow.”
Then came Don Bosco. It was the first “big game” for Cervini, complete with the large crowd, the Snapple Game of the Week and the natural rivalry in addition to his own inner feelings about the school he almost called home. It was also a rainy, rotten weather day.
The Knights were trailing 10-0 in the waning moments of the third quarter, but were driving at the Bosco 30. Then came a pass over the middle, an interception and a long return. One play later, it was 17-0. It was a crushing moment, and he shouldered plenty of self-blame.
“I thought I played well until that interception,” Cervini said. “If I didn’t throw the interception, I really thought we had a shot to win. They were still in reach, only up 10, and then it was, God, end of story.
“We all had expectations, maybe 12-0,” he said. “It was almost like the season was over. We were feeling that even if we go 11-1 and win the state championship, there’s that empty spot where we should have beaten Bosco.”
Karcich played the role of encourager, calmly telling him that it was the right read, but the throw just didn’t have enough air under it (“he was right, I tried to gun it in there”). Cervini offered his mea culpa.
“I told him, don’t worry coach, we’ve still got next year, and he said, ‘we’ve still got next week.’ He got us re-focused.”
“When I looked back at the film,” Karcich recounted, “I actually thought that the one player who had the best game was Rob. As a team, we didn’t do the things we needed to do. I remember the one play where he tried to leap over the defensive back on the sideline. It was a spark, but we never could put two sparks together to start the fire.”
Three weeks later, there was another big game. Bergen Catholic. This time, the lessons learned in a losing effort were turned around. The nervous quarterback had become the confident quarterback, but more importantly, he had become the leader in the huddle.
Much like his predecessor, Weiss, he led by example. On at least three occasions in the first half, he hung in the pocket, releasing the ball just as he was getting pounded, completing all three and getting up ready for the next play.
That “bring it on” attitude was not lost on his teammates. The offensive linemen fed off his courage. The receivers were getting balls delivered on the money. The team was energized, and they romped, 42-7. There was a confidence between Karcich and Cervini.
“There was the pass (against
Bergen Catholic) to Anthony (Ferla) up the middle,” Cervini explained.
“We drew that up on the blackboard (while watching film). He said if
the safety comes up, look to Anthony. The safety came up, I went to Anthony,
and he was, like, ‘awesome’.
Karcich also pointed to that play as another signal of the strength in their
relationship, adding that “it is now at a point where I will ask him
what he thinks. I’ve never entrusted that much to a junior quarterback
before, but I trust his decision making. He doesn’t always make the
right decision, but more times than not he’s right there.”
“I like that he lets me associate my personality into the offense,” Cervini continued. “I’ll tell him I like that play or I don’t like that play, and we’ll discuss it. It’s not like it’s his way or the highway.”
In many ways, the Bergen win cemented the mind set of the team, a big game challenge conquered. It also brought the quarterback-coach relationship to the next level.
“As a coach to a player, I think he trusts me more now that I’ve performed,” Cervini assessed. “He knows he can blow up at me and then the next play it’s like nothing ever happened. When you get the relationship to a point where nothing really affects it on the field, you play better.”
“I’ve been fortunate over the years to coach some great players,” Karcich said. “Rob is just an awesome person. He is great to be around, and it has been a lot of fun. I know that somewhere there will be that moment when it won’t be so good, but he has a way about him that I know it won’t be anything that goes beyond the moment.”
There is still so much more on the horizon for Cervini. He is just scratching the surface of his football talent and football knowledge, and he is still striving to improve on both.
“He knows high school football,” the student said of the teacher. “I’m going to take every opportunity with a man like that who knows football so well.”
Like anyone else, there is the thought of what might be, those moments where you flash ahead to the dream ending. While he says that it is not in the forefront, Cervini does admit that it creeps in once in awhile.
“It’s the kind of thing you think about in the bathroom,” he said. “Like, oh, fourth and one, drop back and throw a touchdown pass to win the state championship. But it’s just another challenge, like Bosco was a challenge, like Bergen was a challenge.”
For now, it is Hudson Catholic and step one, the next stop on the road to history.
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