The idea was at first unfathomable, a guy with the coaching credentials of Jack Stephans actually wanting to serve as simply an assistant coach at a small school like Weehawken High.
After all, this was a man who had been a head coach at three different colleges – Jersey City State, William Paterson and Fordham. This was a man with more than 45 years of coaching experience and expertise.
Now, he wanted to be an assistant coach at a small Group I football program, one that was barely struggling to stay alive.
In 2000, Stephans became an assistant coach to then-head coach Mike Guasconi with the Indians. There was no pretense, no air of greatness in Stephans when he took the job.
“When I was the vice-principal at Kennedy School (in North Bergen), Jack’s wife Judy was a teacher there,” said Guasconi, who is now the assistant coach at St. Peter’s Prep and a vice-principal at Horace Mann in North Bergen. “I became friendly with Jack at the time and I actually asked him once if he would be interested in joining my staff. We had a very young staff and he would certainly bring experience and professionalism.”
“At the time, I wasn’t interested in becoming a head coach again,” said Stephans, who was inducted into the Hudson County Sports Hall of Fame last week with 20 other legendary sports figures. “I was retired. But I thought about it and said that I could go back again as an assistant. I decided to join Guasconi in Weehawken.”
It was a move that made Weehawken High School Athletic Director Richard Terpak happy, because Terpak had a relationship with Stephans first going back to Terpak’s days as a student at North Bergen High School in the early 1960s.
“Mr. Stephans was my gym teacher when I was a sophomore at North Bergen,” Terpak said. “So we go way back.”
Relationship back to the 1960s
The relationship continued in 1966 when Terpak was a student at Jersey City State College and he was one of a handful of students to initiate the idea of having a football team at the school. The first person hired as a head coach? None other than Jack Stephans.
It was a unique situation for Stephans, considering that he was also the head coach at St. Joseph High School in Montvale, so when he took the job at JCSC, he was coaching both teams simultaneously.
“It was crazy,” Stephans recalled. “I would have practice at St. Joe’s right after school, then rush down to Jersey City and have practice there at night. We would get the cars and turn the headlights on the cars so we could have light to practice. We would practice in a parking lot. It was incredible.”
Terpak was the jack-of-all-trades for those early Gothic Knight football teams, handling duties like equipment manager and laundry coordinator. But he grew to have an appreciation for Stephans.
“He was just a really nice guy who never had a cross word to say about anyone, and no one ever said one about him,” Terpak said. “We were real close in those days. I remember one time we played Canisius in Buffalo at the old War Memorial Stadium, and Jack drove up to coach us there. After the game, he drove back to New Jersey to coach St. Joe’s the next day. It was incredible. His dedication was unbelievable.”
Played football in 1950s
Stephans was born in Hoboken and raised in West New York and attended Memorial High School (1953 through 1957). As a football player at Memorial, Stephans was a center and linebacker for legendary coach and fellow Hall of Famer, the late Joe Coviello. During Stephans’ career at Memorial, the Tigers never lost a single game, winning 67 straight, from the freshman level through varsity. During his senior year, Stephans earned All-Group IV honors as a center.
After graduating from Memorial in 1957, Stephans first went to the University of South Carolina on a scholarship, but then transferred to Boston University, where he enjoyed a brilliant three-year career as a two-way performer as a center and linebacker. Back then players were forced to play both ways, offensively and defensively.
After graduating from BU in 1962, Stephans jumped right into coaching, joining his old high school coach Coviello to start the new program at North Bergen High School. Two of the players on those early North Bergen teams were two people who were inducted into the Hall of Fame with Stephans last Thursday, namely Eddie Petersen and Gene Pagnozzi.
From North Bergen, Stephans went on to coach at Montclair State College as an assistant for three years, before getting hired as the head coach at St. Joseph (Montvale) in 1966. As mentioned before, Stephans was also hired as the first-ever football coach at Jersey City State College and remarkably coached both teams simultaneously.
Stephans remained head football coach and assistant athletic director at JCSC for eight years. Stephans never had a losing record at JCSC and had a career mark of 63-15 at the school. He was inducted into the JCSC/New Jersey City University Hall of Fame in 1983.
After leaving coaching for a few years to a life in the construction business, Stephans returned to coaching as the head coach at William Paterson College (1975 through 1977) and Fordham University (1979-80).
Personal
Stephans and his wife, Judy, a retired North Bergen school teacher, have two children, son Jason and son Jared, who is an assistant basketball coach at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck. The Stephans family called Weehawken home for several years before moving to North Bergen and now Montvale.
“I never expected this,” Stephans said about his induction into the Hall of Fame. “I had no idea I would be selected. I saw all the names of the others and I was very honored to be considered with the rest. I just loved coaching, loved being with the other coaches, the kids. That’s what it was all about.”
During the course of the dinner, several people stopped to thank Stephans for his contributions. In his acceptance speech, Pagnozzi called Stephans “the most influential person in my life.” Those words moved Stephans.
“When I hear things like that, I feel more important than anything,” Stephans said. “To think that I made that kind of impression on someone, seeing them lead good lives. It just makes me feel so humble. Being a Hudson County guy, I am so grateful for everything I have in my life that came from me being from Hudson County. I met my wife, had my children here. I coached so many great people and developed friendships with so many others.”