Football coach from Dedham killed in Maine crash

By Johanna Seltz, Town Correspondent

A funeral Mass will be held Friday at 11 a.m. at St. Mary’s for 23-year-old Dedham native Richard Dykas II, an assistant football coach at Maine Maritime Academy who died in a car crash in Maine last weekend.

Dykas died at the scene from injuries sustained when the pickup truck he was driving crashed shortly after midnight on Sunday, Oct. 24, according to the Hancock County Sheriff’s Department. A passenger, 22-year-old Steven Nackley of New Hartford, N.Y., sustained minor injuries, the sheriff’s office said.

Both men were recent college graduates who were assistant football coaches at Maine Maritime Academy, a small public college on Penobscot Bay.

The sheriff’s office said the pickup failed to negotiate a curve on Route 166, left the road, and rolled over before coming to a stop on its roof. The cause of the crash was not known.

According to the Maine Maritime Academy website, Dykas -- who played football at Dedham High School and at Mt. Ida College in Newton -- coached the defensive secondary of the Mariners’ football team. The website said that Nackley graduated from Springfield College and is the MMA team’s halfbacks and wide receivers coach.

Maine Maritime Academy had just won an important New England Football Conference victory, 28-27, in a home game over Massachusetts Maritime at Ritchie on Saturday. The victory gave the Mariners the Admiral’s Cup, the trophy awarded to the winner of the annual matchup, for the seventh consecutive year.

The local newspaper reported that head football coach Chris McKenney held a team meeting Sunday to tell his players about the accident. The school is offering counseling to students and will help any who want to go to Dedham to attend the services for Dykas.

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College president William Brennan said in the statement that Dykas’s sudden death has affected the entire school.

“Our hearts go out to Richie’s family and friends, as well as to his players and our close-knit coaching staff,” Brennan said. “He was an important member of our community, and the sudden loss of a coach, friend, and colleague has been a tremendous blow to the entire academy family.”

A wake will be held at the George Doherty and Sons Funeral home in Dedham on Thursday from 3 to 8 p.m.

Johanna Seltz can be reached at seelenfam@verizon.net.