Old rivals look back

Marquel Slaughter Rochester Democrat and Chronicle | USA TODAY NETWORK “We’ve got them right where we want them!”

Bloody, hurt and exhausted, McQuaid’s football team entered the locker room quietly. Trailing Aquinas by a touchdown, the Knights wondered how much worse could it get? That’s until coach Tom Seymour preached affirmation into them at halftime nearly 61 years ago.

Aquinas coach Joe Repko’s Little Irish were considered a regional powerhouse. Their halftime lead was no surprise to many. Their 23,000 seat Aquinas Memorial Stadium hosted over 11,000 spectators when the Irish finally hosted McQuaid on Sunday, Oct. 11, 1964. (Way more than the few hundred fans the Knights were used to hosting; the Irish regularly played for 6,000 fans weekly.)

From Aquinas’ skill to the crowd size, everything overwhelmed McQuaid.

That’s until Seymour walked into the locker room after the second quarter. A master at reading his teams, an optimistic Seymour completely changed McQuaid’s mood with a speech still chilling decades later in his players’ memories.

Seymour’s words were the catalyst of McQuaid’s comeback, engineering one of the most significant games in all-greater Rochester area football history.

“He was serious. He was quiet. He was matter of fact,” McQuaid’s Mike Meteyer said. “We believed him.”

Aquinas vs. McQuaid was a blockbuster in the making

As two of the prominent Catholic schools in Rochester, a highly anticipated match up between Aquinas and McQuaid was rumored for years.

Instead of playing Section V teams, Aquinas spent the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s traveling across New York and out of state playing the best football programs in the eastern region. Aquinas Memorial Stadium, a 23,000seat structure located on Ridgeway Avenue and Mount Read Boulevard, hosted the first two contests.

McQuaid’s football program was on the rise. Seymour guided the Knights to the program’s second unbeaten season in 1963. McQuaid’s convincing victories against common Aquinas opponents made the case for Democrat and Chronicle reporters to predict the Knights “clobbering” the Irish with anticipation of a scheduled meeting.

Bishop Kearney and Cardinal Mooney each opened in 1962. They played each other in football each season. After the initial McQuaid-Aquinas game in ’64, the Irish began playing Mooney and Kearney in ’65.

Aquinas coach Joe Repko

The ’64 season was Joe Repko’s last coaching Aquinas. He’d retire with a 35-21-1 record while reviving the program from many losing seasons in the 1950s.

Repko had been hired to be the Irish’s new head football coach on his 35th birthday: March 15, 1956. He was a popular hire and national championship hero. In the1941Sugar Bowl, Repko was a two-way lineman who recovered a fumble that set up Boston College’s game-winning touchdown drive.

Repko repped Boston College often. He always wore a BC jacket, commonly seen in his team photos. Repko stood about 6 feet tall and was often photographed with a huge grin.

He had graduated from Pennsylvania’s Lansford High School in 1938. He was an all-state lineman. He studied at Florida University for a few months before returning home and eventually attended New Jersey’s Seton Hall Prep, where future BC coach Frank Leahy found Repko while recruiting for Fordham.

● At BC, Repko was teammates with Mickey Connolly, a successful Aquinas coach with 21 wins in 24 games from 1949-52.

● Repko served in World War II in the middle of his BC stint. He’d play professionally with the NFL’s Pittsburgh Steelers (1946-47) and Los Angeles Rams (1948-49), and CFL’ s Montreal Alouettes (1950).

● Repko’s first varsity coaching job was in 1951. He replaced John “Jock” Clarey at St. Philip High School in Battle Creek, Michigan. Repko’s Tigers were perennial conference champions, and in 1955, completed an unbeaten and untied season.

Repko arrived in Rochester a few months later in 1956. Aquinas’ 6-2 record in 1958 was a return to prominence. Their 7-1 mark in 1960 ended with a Thanksgiving Day win over Mount Pleasant in front of 10,000 people at Aquinas Stadium.

Repko replaced coach Hunk Vadas, who stepped into an assistant role, further emphasizing the Split-T offense. “My system will stress plenty of speed and deception. You’ll find I play a wide-open brand of football,” Repko said. “I think the fans will like it.”

Repko retired following Aquinas’ 1-6 season in ’64 to open the Olde Coach Inn in Albion. He returned to coaching to run St. John Fisher’s football program from 1972-77. A pioneer of Pop Warner youth football

See RIVALRY, Page 18A

George Kermis

Aquinas

Team photos

McQuaid, top, and Aquinas, bottom, in 1964 when the Irish lost 14-13 in a major

upset. ILLUSTRATION BY MICK HANGLAND-SKILL/USA TODAY NETWORK AND GETTY IMAGES. PHOTOS PROVIDED BY MCQUAID JESUIT AND BY RON KILEY/ ROCHESTER DEMOCRAT AND CHRONICLE.

Continued from Page 17A

programs in Rochester and Albion, Repko died in 1997 living in Montana.

“My father probably was best known for being a pro football player, but his greatest satisfaction was working with young people, and nothing please him more through the years than hearing from the players he coached at Aquinas,” said his daughter, the Rev. Melanie Repko Barbarito.

McQuaid coach Tom Seymour

A plaque of Thomas R. Seymour is on the wall in McQuaid’s athletic wing, and their football field is named after the legendary coach.

Seymour’s signature thick glasses were forever perched on his nose. He almost always wore McQuaid gear, whether it was a hat or jacket.

Seymour was already McQuaid’s varsity baseball coach before replacing Joe Mancarella for the football job. Seymour was an assistant to Mancarella, who went 3-2-3 in 1961 before working at Monroe Community College.

McQuaid won five city-Catholic league titles during Seymour’s reign.

Seymour was inducted into the Section V Football and McQuaid Hall of Fames for good reason. His Knights won 24 straight games between 1974-76, the third longest streak in the state.

● Born in Ogdensburg, Seymour graduated from St. Mary’s Academy High School in 1944. He graduated from Boston College in 1951 after receiving an honorable discharge from the Army.

● Seymour first worked as a teacher and coach at Fairfield Prep in Connecticut before arriving to Rochester.

● A coach at McQuaid since the 1950s, Seymour retired from coaching in 1981, then from teaching math in 1989. He compiled a 120-70 head coaching record.

● Seymour died in Ogdensburg at 83 in 2010.

McQuaid guard Welling Lifka in 1978 gave credit to what his coach had meant to his players in the 1964 championship game.

“It was (coach) Seymour who psyched us at halftime,” Lifka said. “You know Mr. Seymour. He’s a super-conservative. But he was very emotional. He got us all up. I’d never seen him like that before.”

The leadup

A McQuaid-Aquinas varsity football game was anticipated for years. Rumors of a game grew louder in the 1960s. In November 1962, Aquinas principal the Rev. Fergus Sheehy said no one had “officially” been approached about a varsity game. However, both programs’ freshman and junior varsity teams began playing each other that year.

In ’62, Aquinas’ freshman team beat McQuaid 47-0 in the first football game ever between the rival schools. Those Irish went unbeaten. The same kids played junior varsity in ’63, when McQuaid won 25-6 and finished 4-2-1 while Aquinas went 1-6. A few days following the ’64 varsity game, Aquinas’JV beat McQuaid 26-0.

So why hadn’t an McQuaid-Aquinas football game occurred before ’64? Their basketball games at the War Memorial were popular, and they competed in baseball, track, swimming, cross-country and tennis for as long as four years.

Well, Aquinas was considered a regional football powerhouse since the 1930s. They rarely played local teams, traveling across New York and out of state for top-notch competition. The Irish went 4-4 in 1963 against a grueling schedule against teams like Pittsburgh’s North Catholic Central.

“We were spoiled. Friday nights headed to Schenectady on a bus. We played big time football. It was the best,” Kermis said.

McQuaid opened its school in 1954 and was not nearly as revered as the Irish. But the Knights were on the upand-up. Seymour went 4-3-1 in his first year in 1962, then 8-0 in 1963, the program’s first undefeated season since 1958, which is credited as the program’s first “four year” team.

In November 1963, newspaper readers expressed their concerns over a previous column from George Beahon about an apparent bias toward McQuaid after he wrote: “Confidentially, McQuaid would have crunched ‘em.”

One reader, signed “X,” suggested Aquinas would be a 21-point favorite: “I had to stop and wonder if you collect two paychecks, one from the paper and one from McQuaid,” they wrote.

“I wonder if you ever attended an Aquinas football game. If you ever do, don’t announce it beforehand,” Aquinas student Michael McNutt wrote.

“Do you think that McQuaid compares with the teams put out by St. Joe’s of Cleveland? You know very well they don’t,” James H. Smith wrote.

McQuaid and Aquinas had two common opponents in ’63. They both defeated Southern Tier programs Bishop Walsh and Jamestown. A “postseason” game on Thanksgiving Day was rumored but never materialized. Why? New York’s eight-game max held strict penalties. For instance, Buffalo graduates who played in a summer all-star game were ruled ineligible for their freshman seasons of college.

On Nov. 14, 1963, a pact was signed between McQuaid and Aquinas to play the next two seasons at Aquinas Memorial Stadium.

Aquinas entered the game 1-2 while McQuaid had a 2-1 record.

“The fact that McQuaid beat us that day was a major accomplishment. It was David versus Goliath,” Aquinas’ George Kermis said.

The game

Aquinas appeared primed to cover the 21-point spread that reader “X” suggested.

Quarterback Bruce Szczepanski scored Aquinas’ first touchdown four minutes into the second quarter after Don Cannioto carried the Irish to the goal line. Szczepanski ran around his right end to break the scoreless tie. Jim Delly’s PAT kick gave Aquinas a 7-0 lead.

Delly scored again in the third, this time with a defensive touchdown as Aquinas and McQuaid traded turnovers. McQuaid’s Dan Wegman, now CEO of Wegmans Food Market, intercepted Szczepanski at the Knights’ 24. The very next play, Delly scooped and scored off of a Meteyer fumble.

Quarterback Dick Deleguardia, a star athlete, sparked McQuaid’s second half comeback.

Dan McManus, Robert DeBeer, Gerry Bunce, Bill Hassett circled a table these many years later in the Next Door private room as fond memories of McQuaid’s comeback were relived.

Earlier in the fourth, the Knights marched 95 yards to cut into Aquinas’ two-touchdown halftime lead. Meteyer rushed for a long gain, Hassett caught a key pass to Aquinas’ 35. Gerry Bunce and Mike Spiegel rushed carried McQuaid to the 3-yard line. That’s when Deleguardia found Dan McManus for the Knights’ first touchdown. Deleguardia’s PAT run made it a 13-7 game.

Sparked by a lateral, Deleguardia engineered McQuaid’s second fourthquarter touchdown drive to begin deep in Knights’ territory.

Deleguardia ran downfield 25 yards to his own 40, where he there evaded Aquinas defenders by tossing the ball back to Meteyer, who took the lateral into Irish territory and was downed at the 28.

McQuaid scored two plays later, when Hassett dove for a tipped pass in the back of the end zone that tied the game at 13. Delly thought he had it.

“I saw a hand touching the ball. ... It was a feeling of surprise. But the thing is, we had just tied the game at that point. There was no overtime like there was now,” Hassett said.

“I didn’t see it. I got knocked (down) by (Jim) “Butch” Catone. He was on me all game,” Deleguardia said.

Deleguardia rushed for the PAT (worth one point back then) for a 14-13 lead with six seconds remaining. He ran around the end opposite of Catone. “I made a bad decision. Not that I would have stopped him, but I would have had a chance,” Catone said.

“Deleguardia only lost three games his whole career. They were used to winning. So their coach said, ‘Go for it,’ ” Delly said.

Meteyer’s ankle was broken, Wegman’s ankle and Michael Spiegel’s knee were all ailing, so Deleguardia reluctantly called his own number. McQuaid did have a kicker the previous year, but since he didn’t return to the football team in 1964, Deleguardia was the hero.

“I asked everyone in the huddle, ‘Who wants to run?’ They all looked at me and said ‘You!’ Deleguardia said.

The 60th anniversary dinner

Wegman hosted dinners for the 50th and 60th anniversaries of the McQuaid-Aquinas rivalry at Next Door.

On Oct. 5, 2024, a few dozen seniors packed the dimly lit Next Door private room in the back of the restaurant in suits and sports jackets representing their schools. Of the crew, 20 of them were late-70-year-old men who shared laughs, tears and core memories from their high school days six decades ago.

Guests indulged in a large spread of food and drink, from sushi to cupcakes and, of course, adult beverages. Football apparel and a bright “1964” sign added to the party’s decor. Helmets, team photos, yearbooks and story clips created a time capsule on the tablecloth.

The coveted Challenger Trophy stood centerstage.

Standing around 5-feet tall, the large, golden McQuaid-Aquinas rivalry game trophy was introduced in 1984. The night before the dinner, McQuaid retained the Challenger Trophy for an eighth straight season. Alumni from both teams were attended the game. Some joined the 2024 McQuaid and Aquinas captains for the coin toss.

Three speeches were given at the 60th anniversary dinner.

Deleguardia spoke about the pride in how both schools have prospered over the decades since. Delly thanked Meteyer in his absence, for planning the anniversary dinners. Aquinas’ Dick Winterroth paid homage to the former players who have since died.

“It’s nice to have gotten to know the Aquinas guys. They turned out to be great people,” Meteyer said.

“We helped start an initiation that’s last(ed) 60 freaking years,” Winterroth said.

Marquel Slaughter was a journalist for the Democrat and Chronicle until the fall of 2025.

Band members play at the Aquinas vs. McQuaid matchup on Oct. 11, 1964. RON KILEY/ROCHESTER DEMOCRAT AND CHRONICLE

Members of Aquinas’ 1964 football team celebrate the 60th anniversary of their first game against McQuaid on Oct. 5, 2024, at Next Door by Wegmans.

MARQUEL SLAUGHTER/ROCHESTER DEMOCRAT AND CHRONICLE

Members of McQuaid’s 1964 football team celebrating the 60th anniversary of their first game against Aquinas on Oct. 5, 2024, at Next Door by Wegmans.

MARQUEL SLAUGHTER/ROCHESTER DEMOCRAT AND CHRONICLE