The home crowd had ben screaming for the second-string quarterback all day. In fact, they had been screaming "We want..." since the season's second game. Now "We want" strolled out to the huddle. Visiting Waldwick had a commanding lead with less than 90 seconds to go but the crowd rose to its feet as the Mites set up on the line of scrimmage. "We want" took the snap and rolled left. No one open. He scrambled back to the center of the field. Now both sets of coaches were yelling. Still no one open. He reversed fields again as half the Warriors converged on him. The cheerleaders had come alive. The band was playing. "We want" dodged several tacklers, looked downfield and rolled away again. There were still several ticks on the clock...

  Rumor had it that Hackensack's players kicked  in money each week, with the entire pot going to the Comet who knocked the opponents' designated best player out of the game. Sure enough, the big Bergenfield end acknowledged as one of the Mites' three top players was on his way to Hackensack Hospital early in the second quarter with a compound fracture of the thumb. Still, the two teams went to the lockerroom in a scoreless halftime tie. The Mites' lockerroom looked like a MASH unit: the tough-as-nails junior defensive back was through for the day and most everyone else who had seen action was also banged up. The Mites' effort, in fact, had been so sensational that the head coach was too choked up to speak. Knowing an opportunity when he saw one, the line coach pushed his way to the center of the room and launched his own Gipper speech...

  We didn't know it then--it wasn't announced till the following summer--but the Class of 1966 was to be the last of the Mitey Mites. Although we did come away with the first two outright Northern New Jersey Interscholastoc League championships (wrestling and baseball) since BHS moved up from the Bergen County Scholastic League in 1962, the return of Bergenfield to football glory was still years away.
  Before the season, though, it had looked like a different story...

  Sure, Mitey Mite football had gone rapidly downhill since the undefeated Richie Pierson/George Grube juggernaut in '59. Things hit rock bottom with the initial NNJIL campaign (0-9) in '62. Since then, the Mites had managed just two wins and three ties in the following 17 games. But the Class of '66 had posted impressive winning records on the freshman, sophomore and junior varsity levels, including beating Waldwick's varsity on a bright October Saturday afternoon in '64.
  It would be a senior-dominated squad headed by a pair of big tackles, a punishing fullbak, two speedy halfbacks and a combination of size, speed and good hands at the ends. Unfortunately all these guys--with two notable exceptions--were also defensive starers. There was also a big senior defensive end joining the team, plus that tough junior DB and two quick junior halfbacks.
  Due to a nasty school budget fight some years before, that's about all the help the juniors would be providing: their ninth grade sports funding had been eliminated and they were effectively starting just their second year of organized football.
  Nor could the sophomores be called on: the coaching staff had a strange aversion to dressing, much less playing, sophs. In retrospect, at least two, a redoubtable fullback/linebacker who later became the first Bergenfield football player to make first-team All-NNJIL and a quarterback who later starred for Harvard, should have seen playing time. Even as a soph, the FB was the equal of any varsity back or defender, while the inexperienced QB would have been preferrable to the incumbent senior QB or the junior, "We want."

  Two-a-days in the blistering early September heat produced the first desertions from our crusade. (Among them, one of the big two-way tackles. He had gotten into theNYC music scene and had pretty much "ferried 'cross the Mersey" and out of the program by the time school started.)
  How to handle the heat? Why, full-pad afternoon practices, salt pills and no water breaks, of course. The second-string senior linebacker never figured out why water was readily available on gameday but was a no-no during ractices...
  That issue was somewhat alleviated, however, by Mitey Mite ingenuity: the wrestling co-captain lived adjacent to the practice field's northwest corner, which was six or eight feet above the level of his backyard. He simply stuck a garden hose through the fence each morning and left the water running all day. Those in the know took turns knocking each other off that end of the field andd down the hill to the waiting oasis...

  Things began to come apart late in the season opener against archrival Dumont. (The S-S SLB still doesn't understand why the season's biggest game was scheduled for opening day, while an insignificant non-NNJIL tilt against Waldwick was set for late October.) The Huskies led, 18-13, in the fourth quarter when an apparent Mite TD pass was controversially overturned for stepping out of bounds. If the Mite receiver was out-of-bounds, it didn't so appear on the grainy gamefilm. What was apparent on that film was a Dumont defender racing some 90 yards with an intercepted screen pass on the next play for the icing score. There are some who still question whether the senior QB should have called that screen--given that both teams apparently heard the play literally yelled in from the Mite sideline--but when the final gun sounded, 
Dumont had a 24-13 victory.
  The Bergen Evening Record had what many of us felt was a rather unique take on the game. The Record's lead began: "The good guys wore white and the bad guys wore black. But the bad guys had a quarterback who was 
very, very good..."
  Just two scores against a Huskie team that finished with a losing record--and a game-breaking interception--the S-S SLB was not alone in wondering if the Record reporter had left after pregame warm-ups.
  (The "very, very good bad guy's" last known address was Austin, TX, incidently, undoubtly the primary reason
Vince Young had such a good career for the Longhorns.)

  Having geared EVERY single snap of  defensive preseason  practices to stopping Dumont's single wing attack, our D's familiarity--or lack of same--with Ridgewood's Delaware wing T offense was amply demonstrated by the 27 points the Maroons rolled up. It was also becoming apparent that the celebrated double wing offense installed in preseason contained several design flaws. Chief among them: the need for bigger offensive linemen than we had available to handle the huge NNJIL D-lines while the intricate plays developed; and the lack of backfield blocking schemes inherent in the spread formation. These flaws limited Bergenfield to one late TD in a dismal 27-7 homefield defeat.
  It wasn't that we didn't have good athletes up front: both starting guards and the duo who split time at center made All-NNJIL. Unfortunately, three made it in wrestling and the other in baseball...and none of them was over 6-0 or 175...
  The big fullback was a tough, plodding runner and a hellacious blocker. A co-captain, he was doing triple duty as a starting DE and on special teams. (Might not that soph fullback have helped out a little here?)

  The circus really got going the following week in Hackensack, ironically also perhaps the team's finest moment. Despite the loss of the designated best player/end and that tough junior DB, the Mites pushed over a late score to close to 7-6. Then the wheels came off:
  An errant snap from center doomed the PAT attempt. Two recovered onsides kicks on the ensuing kickoff were flagged for offsides, pushing us back to our own 30. It is to be assumed that the thinking was  to "run that play till you get it right," because damned if we didn't try it again. This time the Comets recovered but time mercifully ran out as the Hackensack coach tried frantically but unsuccessfully to get into the end zone again.
  As the gun went off, the Mite sideline looked like something out of Walter Reed Hospital. But that didn't stop two of our intellectuals from crossing the field to challenge the Comets to postgame pugilism. At that point, in comparison, 
Custer had a better shot against Sitting Bull and the boys...
  The S-S SLB did his bit early in that game, being credited with a special teams tackle while flat on his back. Going down on the opening kickoff, he was pancaked by a Comet blocker immediately in front of the Bergenfield bench. The ballcarrier then ran right over him but somehow caught his cleats in the ties of the front of the S-S SLB's shoulder pads. He fell, facemask first...The S-S SLB carried those cleat marks on his chest until well after being issued his draft card...
  Ah, the line coach's Gipper speech? After the head coach ran from the room, the line coach roared: "Do you know what (Hackensack coach) Tommy Della Torre is doing in their lockerroom? He's taking their biggest players and kicking the hell out of them because they can't score on us!" At which time he proceeded to take the smaller of the two remaining senior ends--at 5-6 and 145 he outsized only the S-S SLB among the seniors--picked him up and threw him down on the hard concrete floor. And then--for good mesure--stepped on the end's hand...
  As the end was gamely playing despite a painful should injury, the impact on both the Mite passing game and the passing games of upcoming opponents--the end doubled as a starting DB--was rather significant...

  After that day, most anything was liable to--and did--happen. Fair Lawn was the '65 NNJIL power with a running back, Bruce Jankowski, who later made the cover of Sports Illustrated while playing for Ohio State. (He also enjoyed a four- or five-year career with the Kansas City Chiefs.) We were struggling to hold onto a 6-6 tie with about 40 seconds to go before halftime when Jankowski took a pitchout and ran some 20 yards to the end zone. The kickoff was fumbled and recovered by the Cutters deep in Bergenfield territory and Jankowski punched it in again before halftime. Then, he took the opening kickoff of the second half 60 yards to paydirt, scoring three times in less than 60 seconds and turning a tie into a 27-6 Fair Lawn rout before the BHS band had returned to their seats...
  The S-S SLB, by the way, holding precariously to a starting special teams position--the Hackensack pancake hadn't been forgotten--decided against advising the head coach that he knew that Bronco Nagurksi was a Minnesota All-American fullback who made All-Pro at fullback, offensive AND defensive tackle while playing for the "Monsters of the Midway," the 1930s Chicago Bears...
  Fair Lawn was also the day our lone remaining senior end, pressed into defensive service, broke his ankle so badly BACKING UP to make a tackle that he was eventually declared 4F...which is the precise term for our 
passing game with all three senior ends on the IR...
 

   The best was yet to come, however. "We want" and his fans had been lobbying impatiently to replace the "very, very good bad guy." He got his chance against Waldwick--and damned if he didn't look like Fran Tarkington as he scrambled away from one Warrior defender after another. He rolled left; he rolled right; he looked downfield and then tucked the ball back in. Coaches were going crazy; the officials were out of breath, as were the cheerleaders! The band had broken spontaneously into the fight song! Bedlam reigned in Bergenfield! And then the gun sounded...and "We want" casually dropped the ball on the ground and walked off the field...
  Many savy aficionados of Mitey Mite football consider that performace the signature moment of the season. Two others rank with the Gipper for runner-up honors, though...

  The designated end made an heroic return to the team in time for the Teaneck game in late November (no mean feat if you've ever seen a compound fracture). So the coaching staff dusted off the ol' end-around play. Unfortunately, they forgot to call it until midway through the fourth quarter of a Highwaymen rout, after the battered senior line had been replaced by wide-eyed juniors making their varsity debuts. Not only was the designated end nailed behind the line of scrimmage, but he was cleated in the chin, producing an instant dimple...Not that many disagreed that the new look was a marked improvement for the facial features of the man some had liken to a character in a Medieval poem then part of senior English classes..but still, it was a short, nasty senior season for the designated end...

  Then there was Thanksgiving Day...
  In the endless search for ways to get on the scoreboard, the Mites were allowed to try a then-rare field goal attempt late in the first quarter of a scoreless tie before a disbelieving SRO crowd in Paramus. The fans, in fact, were packed three-and-four deep all the way around both end zones as the Mites stunned the Spartan faithful by converting for a 
3-0 lead...
  The S-S SLB had, miraculously, managed to hold on to his special teams role all season, The coaching staff, however, in a rare spirit of holiday goodwill, had replaced most of the other special teams regulars with juniors and one particular senior who hadn't played a single down all season. In fact, the S-S SLB had been moved from his customary position two spots to the left of the kicker to the outside. He could recognize no more than four or five familiar figures as he gazed in growing alarm across the field as the Mites lined up for the ensuing kickoff. Then the whistle blew and the ball was in the air. As he began to pinch in from his outside lane to get into the play, he saw the midfield suddenly devoid of standing, tackling Mites. A second later, he had reversed his field and was haplessly chasing the Paramus kickoff returner into the Century Avenue end zone. As the S-S SLB pulled up , he heard a loud but strange noise...
it wan't cheering...and it wasn't booing...
then he identified it...laughter...

  In retrospect, it is hard to believe , all things considered, that we actually won one game, 21-7 over Cliffside Park. Antiquated equipment--leather helmets in 1965!...heavy, old-style pads instead of lightway ones...heavy uniforms suitable for late November but certainly not early September...high-cut cleats--the head coach HATED low cuts...no opponents' gamefilms nor widely-distributed scouting reports (if the opponents were actually scouted!)...that ridiculous schedule...just three varsity coaches (even in '65 not enough to compete in the NNJIL!)...no weight training or other form of organized off-season conditioning...an overall undersized senior group with little backup from underclassmen.

  And the S-S SLB, for one, would do it all again in a microsecond.

  (The author salutes two members of the 1965 Mitey Mites:
Art Goodwin ('66), USMC, who returned from Vietnam with three Purple Hearts and 
Ross Applegate ('67), USA, who made the supreme sacrifice less than 10 months
after his BHS graduation.)