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Overcast Calhoun football, a constant effort
Colts coach works through winter to get players on college teams
During the rough-and-tumble football season, the Calhoun Colts gather each Friday evening in the high school’s cafeteria for a meal prepared by their parents. Squad members’ plates overflow with spaghetti, ravioli, sausage and peppers, stuffed peppers, wings and chili.
The next morning, before the game, players return to the cafeteria for a breakfast of pancakes and sausage with all the trimmings, also prepared by their parents.
Head football coach Joe Bianca said he began the tradition in 2006 “to build a family relationship” among players, noting, “The parents are great, they really are.”
The camaraderie that players build during the season carries over to the offseason, when they hit the weight room and run sprints in the high school basement each week, unless they’re involved in another sport, which Bianca encourages them to do.
For Bianca, the offseason is nearly as much work as the season itself. During the offseason he is constantly on the phone, chatting up college coaches, building a network of contacts that has enabled him to place an average of four to six of players on college teams each year since he took over the head coach’s post in 2006, after serving as Calhoun’s assistant coach for a number of years.
Bianca, 44, said he believes sports enable college students to maintain a sense of balance and discipline in their lives at a time when they’re suddenly away from home — and their parents. The team becomes a family that supports them in their darkest hours.
Before that, football — sports in general, for that matter — can help high school athletes gain acceptance into better schools, Bianca said. “The football helps them make that transition into a better academic school,” he said.
The coach knows what it is to play college sports. At Patchogue-Medford High School in the mid-1980s, Bianca earned All-County and All-Long Island honors in football as a running back. In his senior year, he rushed for 1,000 yards, second-best in Suffolk County. He also wrestled and ran track. He was second fastest in the county in the 55-meter dash and one of the top 10 sprinters in the state.
