UNION, NJ — Fast forward to the future of high school football in North Jersey.
The year is 2024. One of the season-opening games is a Union County vs. Essex County special: Union High School at Seton Hall Preparatory School.
For the first time, the Farmers, of an alignment called the Big Central Conference, will clash with the host Pirates of what’s called the Super Football Conference.
No, the season-opening game will not take place around Saturday, Sept. 21. Try Friday, Aug. 30. The high school football season in the state of New Jersey is now permanently entrenched to begin pre-Labor Day.
Seton Hall Prep will host Union on Friday, Aug. 30, at 1 p.m., at Seton Hall Prep’s Kelly Athletic Complex in the 2024 season-opener for both schools.
While Union has won just one state championship since 1993 and Seton Hall Prep’s last one came in 1985, there was a time before that when both programs not only dominated on a yearly basis, but both finished with the No. 1 ranking in the state.
In 1976, Seton Hall Prep went 11-0 and captured the Non-Public, North A state championship for the second time in three years. As a result, the Pirates were awarded the Star-Ledger trophy as the No. 1 team in the state.
“I believe our era directly started the parochial turnaround,” said Chet Parlavecchio, a 1978 Seton Hall Prep grad who starred for the Pirates before becoming a captain his senior year at Penn State and then playing professionally for a brief time in the NFL.
Seton Hall Prep won its first of six state championships in the playoff era in 1974 when the Pirates were declared the Non-Public, North A champ after finishing 7-2 and not having to play a playoff game. Other titles followed in 1976, 1977, 1978, 1981 and 1985.
Parlavecchio, one of the finest linebackers to ever come out of the state of New Jersey, was a junior on the 1976 team and a senior on the 1977 squad that repeated with a 10-0-1 record and set the state record for shutouts in a season with 10.
In 1979, Union fashioned a 10-1 record – its lone loss coming to Westfield High School – and repeated as North 2, Group 4 champions. As a result, the Farmers were awarded the Star-Ledger trophy as the No. 1 team in the state, sharing the honor with Madison High School.
Union won North 2, Group 4 for the first time in 1978 at 9-1-1, falling only to Westfield and then tying Plainfield High School in the regular season before beating Plainfield, 27-0, at Giants Stadium in the sectional final. Union still has the record for most North 2, Group 4 titles won in the playoff era with 10. The others came in 1982, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1991, 1992 and 1993. Union’s 11th state title in the playoff era came in 2019 in North 2, Group 5.
Sparked by a stop made early in the third quarter by senior linebacker Tommy Blazak that is referred to by the players as “The Play,” Union went on to defeat Livingston High School, 35-14, at Giants Stadium in the 1979 North 2, Group 4 championship game. “With the score tied 14-14 at halftime, we really felt that momentum would go to the team that scored next,” Blazak recalled at a Union football reunion in 2013. “Stan Yagiello, their quarterback, was phenomenal.
“Things were happening so fast in the secondary that, with the goal line behind us, we really felt the game slipping. On fourth down they decided to go for a touchdown. It was a pitchout option to the right. I jumped off one blocker and had the goal line right at my feet.
“Then, at the last minute, I just made one lunge at the flag and it was enough to knock Fred Apicelli, Livingston’s running back, out of bounds. The referee was right on the play and he watched the play in review. Apicelli was out of bounds.
“We got the ball, went 99 yards and scored; final score: 35-14. It seems like it was yesterday.”
Tony Verducci was Seton Hall Prep’s longtime head coach, owner of a 213-76-16 record in 34 seasons from 1955-1987 that included a whopping 104 shutouts. Verducci’s 200th win was a 23-0 triumph against Columbia High School in 1985, which was his 98th shutout. Verducci’s 99th shutout was Seton Hall Prep’s 16-0 win against St. Peter’s Prep in the 1985 Non-Public, North A state championship game.
Verducci’s 1986 team posted three shutouts and his 1987 squad two more. Verducci passed away in May of 1988.
Verducci guided Seton Hall Prep to 11 state championships, the first five of those coming before the playoff era.
“I was fortunate to play on great football teams and for a coach who had 100 shutouts, which is incredible,” Parlavecchio said. “We had an attitude that we developed and a belief in what we did.
“Coach Verducci just left things alone and didn’t get cute with anything. He stressed the fundamentals, blocking and tackling, but in my three years, I never blitzed. He figured, why would he have me focusing on just one side of the ball? It was vanilla, but it was also just better.
“He was just a great head coach. I wanted more than anything to please the guy.”
Ed Galisewski, a key two-way player on Union’s first state championship team in the playoff era in 1978, his senior season, played his final two years for a man named Lou Rettino.
“When Lou came here you could see his determination,” Galisewski, a 1979 UHS graduate, said.
Rettino guided Union to 10 North 2, Group 4 state championships in his 19-season tenure there from 1977-1995. Rettino passed away from stomach cancer at the age of 54 on March 22, 1996.
Rettino played in the NFL for the Green Bay Packers and Baltimore Colts and in the CFL for the Toronto Argonauts, after excelling at Villanova University, following his high school playing days in Hudson County at St. Peter’s Prep in Jersey City. His overall coaching record was 216-56-6 and his record at Union was 171-23-5.
What he was most proud of was his 22-5 playoff record at Union, including 10-2 in sectional finals and 12-3 in semifinals, back when only four teams qualified in each section. From 1978 to 1993, a 16-season span, Union won North 2, Group 4 a total of 10 times. It was almost automatic.
“In the locker room before our first game (Rettino’s first year at Union in 1977) he gave us a speech, challenging us as men,” Galisewski said of the beginning of his junior year, a season that Union improved to 6-2-1 and posted the program’s first winning season in five years. “We would do whatever Lou asked us to. We would go through a wall for him.”
Fred Stengel is UHS Class of 1967 and was an assistant coach at Union for 16 seasons from 1972 to 1987, the last 11 with Rettino, before becoming a highly successful head coach at Bergen Catholic High School starting in 1988.
“As much as what Lou meant to the players and to the program, he meant to me personally,” Stengel said. “You want to learn interpersonal skills and you want to learn how to deal with people. There was nobody I ever met in my whole life like Lou Rettino.
“He would talk to the janitor, who was his best friend. He could talk to the superintendent of schools, who was his best friend. He could talk to every kid, put his arm around them and make them feel like he was their dad.”
Someone who had ties to both Union and Seton Hall Prep was Sam Fortunato, who was an assistant coach for Verducci at Seton Hall Prep at the time of its dominance in the 1970s and then later served as principal of Union High School. Fortunato died at the age of 66 in June 2010.
As principal at UHS, you could find Fortunato on the Union sidelines for all of its home football games. He retired in 2007.
At Seton Hall Prep as a coach, he made an impact on many, including Parlavecchio.
“He first noticed me my sophomore year at Seton Hall Prep and gave me the push I needed to get going,” said Parlavecchio, who was very close with Fortunato and a pallbearer at his funeral.
Parlavecchio also had a coaching relationship with Rettino.
“We spent time together at the Penn State camp, right before my third year at Bloomfield,” Parlavecchio recalled.
That was the 1989 season. Parlavecchio guided Bloomfield to its first win in five years in 1988 en route to a 3-5-1 upgrade.
“I remember Lou saying to me, ‘Wouldn’t it be something if we met in the playoffs,’” Parlavecchio said.
Ironically, it was Bloomfield that, by just a few power points, edged Union out for the fourth and final berth that 1989 season in North 2, Group 4. Union did not make it at 7-1 and then beat Linden High School on Thanksgiving to finish 8-1. It was the first year Union did not make the playoffs since finishing 7-2 nine years earlier in 1980.
Bloomfield High School ended up making the playoffs for the first time since 1977 and then gave Elizabeth High School a mighty scare at Williams field before the host Minutemen prevailed 19-9 in the semifinals. Elizabeth then beat Morris Knolls High School again to repeat as North 2, Group 4 champions and finish No. 1 in New Jersey that year at 11-0.
Bloomfield finished 8-2 and won a share of the NNJIL Pacific Division title that year with Nutley High School and Don Bosco Preparatory High School.
“Verducci and Rettino were the last old school guys,” Parlavecchio said. “They believed in hard practices, do your job and don’t mope.
“I also had so much respect for Rettino.”
While Union went on to prevail over such programs as Plainfield, Livingston, Montclair, Roxbury and Randolph over the years to claim its state titles, Seton Hall Prep in its heyday was simply known for not being able to score against.
In 1976, the Pirates posted eight shutouts and yielded only 36 points. Then came the record 10 shutouts and only six points against in 1977. The second game was a 22-6 win against Bergen Catholic. Seton Hall Prep was not scored upon for the rest of the year, nine straight games, including a 0-0 tie against mighty underdog John F. Kennedy High School in Paterson.
“I missed a tackle on fourth down and that’s how Bergen Catholic scored the only points against us that year,” Parlavecchio said. “The tie against Paterson Kennedy, they never crossed midfield. It might have been the weirdest game I ever played in.”
Seven more shutouts and only 30 points against followed during 1978’s 11-0 season where the Pirates three-peated as state champs.
Seton Hall Prep began 1979 with a 5-0 record to extend an unbeaten streak to 38 games at 37-0-1 before the Pirates fell to Bergen Catholic 7-0 in game No. 6 to see the streak come to a conclusion.
“We had a lot of great players and a lot of very good ones that led us to our dominance,” Parlavecchio said.
Seton Hall Prep, led by head coach Tony Verducci, was No. 1 in the state in 1976.
Union, guided by Lou Rettino, was No. 1 in New Jersey in 1979 for the first of seven times under Rettino.
Now, nearly 50 years later, they will battle for the first time on Friday, Aug. 30, to see which team will commence 2024 with a 1-0 record.