The '76 Crusader Juniors were a team that really entered into the spirit of the Bicentennial. They produced so much fireworks at the Gridiron Club meetings as to almost blow the club apart. The team's head coach didn't even show up at the Awards Dinner and there almost wasn't a '77 club, at least not in the Warners Junior Conference.

Hugh Ed Gilroy proposed that we go looking for another league. Logic was on his side. We had not done well in the Junior Division for more years than we cared to remember. The league is dominated by powerhouses that are fed by 40 All-Stars selected from Intermediate leagues. Green Point usually has 20 to 25 neighborhood kids, half of them playing for the first time.

Jack Lang, the then-Intermediate coach, led the opposition. Never too strong on logic, Jack sprang his secret play. He asked the battered '76 players to speak for themselves. Vito Berretta summed it up. "Trophies are nice but the game's the thing. What good is the championship if you know you're not the best? I'd rather lose in the Warner Conference than win elsewhere. I want to know I played the best. Someday some Green Point team will win and if I kept us in the league, that win will be part mine."

Never a gracious loser, Hugh E. Gilroy sprang his own trap play and proposed that, since Jack Lang believed in it so much, he should coach them. And that's how Jack Lang ended up with his assistants Louie Pachio and George Brown coaching the team that almost wasn't -- 21 ballplayers, almost half of them in their first year, in the big bad Junior conference.

Their record is not impressive. They won one and lost the rest. There were a couple of close games.

But on the field they were impressive... if heart impresses you.

It was the team of the brothers -- the Corvinos, the Cunninghams, and the Labiaks. The Corvinos -- Joseph and Salvatore -- were two-way linemen, hard blockers and hard tacklers. Tony Cunningham had won the championship in another league and he came back to test his metal in the Warner Conference as both a thrower and a receiver. He stood tall and passed both tests behind the fine blocking of his brother Patrick. John Labiak held done the center of the line and his brother Michael held down everyone else playing 13 different positions.

Some people came just to see Frank Mangano run -- a thing of beauty. Others to watch the determined second effort of Freddie Nieve. Those who favored defense turned to the hard hitting of Billy Rohs and Chris Cobb. Both were raised on the dictum "the bigger they are, the harder they fall". Steve Michaleski was everywhere, his heart in every play.

But what will we remember most? What the rest of the league remembers: The goal line stances that stopped Rochne and College Point. How the Hurricanes blew down to the Crusader 10 and stayed there for a full quarter of play without scoring. How they had a first and ten on the 2 and gave up the ball on the 1. We'll remember the never-give-up play of defensive backs Paul Brancato, Stephen Gifford, Anthony Slesinksi, George Aunskiewicz, and the hard tackling of Gerard Daley, Eugene Ferris, Jose Francis, Mark Grocki, and Mike Rufrano. And then there was Salvatore Scudiero; injured in the early season, he came back to throw his touchdown in the end. This, all this, we'll remember.

As Jack Lang said, "There weren't enough of them, they were a little light, and they didn't like to practice... But man for man they were as tough as any team in the league. Give me them and ten more like them, let them lift a few weights and practice a lot more, and next year will be 'Someday'."