Island impact

When he started coaching here in 1964, the players wore leather helmets, the plays were drawn in the sandy soil, and there were more dogs on the field than boys. When Vito Capizzo was offered the Nantucket High School head football coaching job, the native of Sicily thought it was for Nantasket. His fiancee thought the island was in the sunny Caribbean.

“Don’t unpack,’’ he told her during that first winless season.

But Capizzo stayed 45 years, won 293 games, guided his team to nine Super Bowl berths and three titles. He was inducted into the Massachusetts Coaching Hall of Fame, and he retires this month as the third winningest high school coach in state history.

Even his enemies love him.

“He’s a living legend,’’ says Martha’s Vineyard coach Donald Herman, who faces Nantucket in the final game of the regular season each year for the hotly contested Island Cup. “He is high school football, he embodies that.’’

Capizzo, 69, with his trademark pipe and mustache peering out from under a Nantucket baseball cap, remains the only man on this rich and famous island instantly recognized by his first name. Everybody knows Vito. He taught and coached three generations of Nantucketers.

“He is a mentor who really cares about kids,’’ says Beau Almodobar, an assistant coach who starred in Nantucket’s first Super Bowl victory in 1980 and played briefly for the New York Giants. “He was always, always there, no matter what.’’

It didn’t start out that way.

“The first year I hated this place,’’ Vito says. “I told the school committee, ‘Give me three years, if I’m not successful, I’ll resign. You won’t have to fire me.’ ’’

By 1966, the Nantucket Whalers went undefeated and Vito was a folk hero. Nantucket lived and died with Whalers football. Despite Nantucket having one of the smallest high school enrollments in Massachusetts, Capizzo had one of the winningest teams.

And Vito had a unique recruiting style. He didn’t even wait until a boy was school age.

“Any former students of mine,’’ he said. “Especially females. If they had a baby boy, I would go to the hospital and give them a miniature Whalers Pride football. I did it as a matter of fact.’’

What Vito lacked in enrollment he made up in chutzpah as a teacher, coach, and athletic director. He started a booster club and gave the community something to believe in.

“I’d walk the halls. I’d say, ‘Sam why aren’t you playing ball? I need you.’ ’’

Whaler games were jam-packed, and Vito was more popular than a cold beer on a hot beach. “At one point it was the only show in town,’’ says Herman. “If you were a male and you didn’t play football, your manhood was questioned and Vito probably questioned it. He started the program from scratch. It’s his baby, he’s seen it go full cycle.’’

“One of the school committee members always used to cut my budget a hundred bucks because I used to buy two dozen clipboards,’’ he says. “Yeah, I broke two dozen this year. I used to say right after I broke a clipboard over some kid’s helmet, ‘Go tell your father.’ ’’

The dads loved it. But Capizzo says this is a different era.

“The parents have changed a lot,’’ he explains. “If you had a problem they would call you. They don’t call you anymore; they’ll call the school committee or the superintendent of schools.’’

He once won 23 games in a row. But then times changed and other sports crowded out football.

“Now we have 21 sports,’’ he says with a shrug. “When I first came here we had football, basketball, and track, and I coached all three. Now we don’t have the numbers. What happened is you got lacrosse, you got soccer, you got hockey, baseball, softball . . .’’

The makeup of the island also changed, going from blue collar to white collar. “We had 71 kids on that Super Bowl team in ’80,’’ Vito recalls. “The last four years have been sad. It was a miracle we didn’t have to forfeit last year. Thank God that didn’t happen. A couple of times I was down to 12-13 kids because of injuries. I had to use our quarterback as a safety.’’

The Whalers went winless last season for the first time since Capizzo’s inaugural year. Football observers thought Capizzo would hang around to get his 300th win or even try to surpass the record held by Armond Colombo of Archbishop Williams and Brockton High (323).

“That was not my goal,’’ says Capizzo. “That was never my goal. My goal was to see kids successful and I figure we’ve accomplished that.

“We had a great journey. I owe it all to the kids and the community.’’

Five years ago, Vito gave up teaching and the AD job for health reasons.

He admits that was a mistake.

“We need somebody in the system who is there every day walking the halls.’’

Athletic director Chris Maury was Capizzo’s captain in 1970 and says the decision to retire was solely Vito’s.

“The state of the program was hurting him and his health,’’ Maury says. “He’s always packed his soul into the program. To do that and not see it go in the direction he wants was very difficult for him.’’

Capizzo says the time is right.

“I’ve had three stents put in - 2002, 2004, and this past August. I’m 69 now, and I just want to spend some quality time with my family, my wife, my son, and my brothers. I just think it’s time for new blood.’’

Capizzo remained a disciplinarian to the end.

Last year he suspended his captain for the season for a conduct violation, negating any chance he had at 300 wins. He once even suspended his son.

“We have a rule, if you don’t go to practice you don’t dress. Well, my son was the center and he blows me off so I left him home. My son came home screaming to his mother. She said, ‘You don’t have another center.’ I said, ‘that’s OK, I’ll get one.’ ’’

When Blue Hills came over and their return ferry got canceled because of high winds, Coach Capizzo turned into Chef Capizzo. “We took over the kitchen, got out the pots and pans and made garlic bread and spaghetti sauce and fed 70 kids, including cheerleaders. Then I made them breakfast the next morning.’’

Sometimes it was the Whalers who couldn’t get home because of weather.

“We’ve slept at Mass. Maritime,’’ he says. “We’ve slept on the floor of a synagogue in Hyannis. No one else would take us.’’

A few years ago, Capizzo was blindsided during a game on the Vineyard and knocked out. He regained consciousness just as the EMTs were about to load him into the ambulance.

“Whoa. You’re not taking me anywhere,’’ he barked.

That’s typical Vito.

Capizzo compares the game against the Vineyard to Army-Navy or Harvard-Yale.

“It’s a war,’’ he says. “It usually decides the league championship.’’

Nantucket leads the series 35-24-3, but the Vineyard has won the last six contests, including a 43-22 win last November.

“I started thinking about [retirement] since the last Vineyard game,’’ he acknowledges. “It left a bad taste in my mouth. They had 72 kids, we had 16. We stayed with ’em for a half, but . . .’’ His voice trails off and he puffs on his cherry tobacco-filled pipe.

Like Red Auerbach, the puffing annoys other coaches. Especially Herman. “That pipe was not supposed to have been on the sidelines because of the state alcohol and tobacco policies, but Vito always seemed to be able to get away with that,’’ says Herman.

Capizzo laughs. Once in the 1990s he lit his pipe at halftime in the Vineyard High School hallway and the fire alarm went off and the fire trucks came blaring. The two coaches admit they have a love-hate relationship.

“We’d exchange films and he’d send me Mickey Mouse cartoons,’’ says Capizzo. “Another time he sends me a film - now I know the team scored four touchdowns - but every touchdown run is cut out of the film.’’

Herman denies the trickery. “He’s so full of it, he probably can’t see well enough to know which game it was. At least I brought the [Island Cup] trophy over every year. There was one year when they came to the Vineyard, we won, but he forgot to bring it. He claims someone else was supposed to bring it.’’

One year before the annual game Herman received a dozen cream puffs - a statement about the quality of his team - shipped from Nantucket. He in turn sent Coach Capizzo a black wreath.

“We have a lot in common,’’ says Herman. “A lot of respect for each other. We approach the game the same way. Old school, fundamentals, nothing fancy, good, hard-nosed football. Whoever replaces him has tremendous shoes to fill.’’

Stan Grossfeld can be reached at grossfeld@globe.com.