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12/21/2016 11:00 PMSteve Filippone has studied football while working with premier coaches throughout his career and, as a result of his dedication to excellence, Steve continued the winning tradition that’s Hand football for the past 27 years.
Steve played high school football for one of New Jersey’s most prominent programs at Brick Township under legendary Head Coach Warren Wolf. From there, he was recruited to play at Southern Connecticut State University by line coach George DeLeone. After playing for DeLeone and future NFL coach Paul Pasqualoni at Southern—and following a coaching stint at New Canaan—Steve took a call from then-Hand football Head Coach Larry Ciotti in 1979. Steve worked with Ciotti as the Tigers’ offensive backs/outside linebackers coach for the next decade, after which he succeeded Ciotti as head coach in 1989. The rest, as they say, was history.
Steve coached Hand for the next 27 seasons, a span in which he compiled a record of 223-82-5 to go with seven state championships. After announcing that he was stepping down earlier this year, Steve, who’s only the second head coach in Hand football history, coached his final game with the program when the Tigers shut out Guilford 44-0 at the Surf Club on Nov. 23.
“I’ve been around tremendous football coaches and I had great high school and college football experiences. I got that call from Larry on a Monday and interviewed that Wednesday, a 15-minute one with the principal. We were fortunate to win states my first year by beating Darien, which catapulted us into the future,” says Steve, who is a security specialist at the school. “The essence of coaching isn’t about being the best guy with a marker on the chalkboard. I studied and read anything about Vince Lombardi and I also have looked at Tom Landry and Bill Belichick. I found out it wasn’t about Xs and Os. They had a simple approach. It was all about relationships and respect for the players and them knowing what was expected of them, and then the guys in return gave everything they had.”
Steve says that Hand’s playbook expanded as the years went on and Tigers squared off against stiffer competition. However, one thing that never changed was Steve’s relentlessness with how he pushed himself to be the best man and coach he could be, while simultaneously motivating his players to do the same.
“I tried to be the hardest worker on the field. My mentality was to work harder than anybody. I never considered myself to be a master of Xs and Os, but I had coaches on my staff that were more gifted at that than me. I was much more focused on the emotional and mental sides with our players because, to me, the determining factor in a game was who wants it more,” says Steve. “The first 10, 15 years or so I was coach, it was very simple: We threw the ball six, seven times a game and had three running plays. Yet we did it with extraordinary intensity while being fundamentally sound. Once we joined the SCC, we played teams that were just as good and well-coached as us, so we ended up becoming more sophisticated with no-huddle and spread offenses, plus 3-4 defenses. I tried to retain the motivator role as much as I could have.”
One of the biggest moments in one of his son’s lives was also a pivotal moment for Steve and the final signal that it was time to hang up the headset. Still, as someone who always put his team and his kids before himself, Steve sought permission from the patriarch of Hand football before announcing that 2016 would be his last run.
“I noticed two, three years ago that I was starting to run out of gas because you pour so much into it and you become so deeply involved. You also lose touch with important things in life. The day that my son was getting married, I was on the phone with people talking about buses to a summer camp at Yale. That’s when I realized I had to step away,” Steve says. “I chatted with Larry and asked permission to resign because I felt like the caretaker of his program and needed his blessing. I waited until the Friday night of our Fairfield Prep game [on Sept. 9] to tell everyone, but they really pulled together this year and always showed up Saturday morning, no matter what happened Friday night. We were 2-8, but pretty much all of the games were fun and exciting well-matched prizefights.”
Hand Athletic Director Craig Semple expresses great gratitude for everything that Steve has done in Madison, including the selflessness that Steve displays while going above and beyond his duties as a football coach.
“He simply has had the most positive influence on the lives of our Hand athletes in the history of the athletic program. His mantra is to serve others. He believes that with all his heart and soul. He subscribes to the belief that we are put on this earth to help each other—not ourselves,” says Semple. “We call it servant leadership in our athletic program. Put your brother’s and sister’s needs in the program above yourself.”
“He is a tireless worker that sets the highest possible standards for himself, his coaches, and all of his players. He has the ability to rally the community together for the betterment of serving each other,” Semple continues. “He will help anyone in need, not necessarily his football players, or even someone who doesn’t play sports. He is a teacher first and has the dynamic ability to inspire and validate kids to believe what they never thought possible. It has never been about the wins and losses for Steve. However, his Hand teams were never out-prepared. He brings so much value to our school and community. We have all learned from him and he is constantly striving to improve in all areas of his own life. Coaching for Steve is a vocation—not a job. It’s his passion and he is awesome at it. He will be missed is an understatement, but his legacy will be with all of us forever.”
Looking back at his time on the Tigers’ sidelines, Steve reflects on several championship teams that not only topped their competition, but also featured athletes who matured from boys into men while enduring the rigors of the gridiron.
“In 1997, we won in states versus a good Staples team. That was a tremendous team with some of the best and brightest young men I’ve ever coached. We went undefeated and were named the No. 1 team in the state for the first time ever. We went to the Walter Camp dinner and I accepted the Kelly Award as coach, which was a tremendous experience for our program,” says Steve, who also won two state titles as an assistant coach at Hand. “In 2005, my son Kevin and his team completed a three-peat of state titles by beating Hillhouse. I thought that would be the last game I coached, but after it, I said to myself that it wasn’t that bad, and realized I could do it one more time. For them to win states, it was confirmation that they were all about what we do. Then in 2012, we ran the table and were voted No. 1 in the state for the third time. My last game this year against Guilford, it was the most memorable with the outpouring of support from former players and the community. The relationships, I feel, bring the players back to the program. It showed me I was able to walk away from this without any reservation. I was able to coach in a town where the parents are so supportive of those trying to help their kids for the past 27 years. It’s a blessing of unbelievable proportions.”
As usual at this time of the year, Steve is already looking ahead to next August, but it isn’t because he’s preparing for any preseason practices or scrimmages. Instead, Steve is anticipating something that he hasn’t experienced in 50 years: a birthday away from the field. For although Steve has always enjoyed spending birthdays with his fellow football fanatics, he’s looking forward to celebrating one where he can just sit back, relax, and then blow out the candles.
“Between playing or doing conditioning camps, I’ve been on a football field for 52 years on my birthday, but there was no place I’d rather have been. It was where I wanted to be. It was all or nothing for me with football,” says Steve. “My wife and I have already planned a trip for that week next year. It’ll be interesting when that week comes along next year and I don’t have to get ready for football. I want to and need to enjoy that week.”