Steve Hockstein | For NJ Advance Media
Hasbrouck Heights head coach Nick Delcalzo raises the trophy in celebration of the Aviators’ thrilling 13-7 victory over Shabazz in the North Jersey Section 2, Group 1 in Newark last season.
The end of an era came Thursday at Hasbrouck Heights.
Longtime head football coach Nick Delcalzo announced he is retiring from the position he has held for the past 35 seasons, leaving as one of the state’s all-time most successful coaches.
Delcalzo, also a 1971 graduate of Hasbrouck Heights and assistant coach in the program for 10 years prior to taking over in 1985, accumulated 270 career wins – the most all-time in Bergen County history with a coach at one school. With Hasbrouck Heights celebrating “100 years of excellence” in athletics this year, Delcalzo has been involved in the program for roughly 50 of them.
“It’s time to go,” Delcalzo said. “It’s just time to move on and let someone else coach, see my grandkids more and play a little more golf.”
Delcalzo and good friend/fellow legendary coach Greg Toal were teammates on a historic Hasbrouck Heights state championships team as players in 1969 – a team still regarded among the best in Bergen County history after finishing 9-0 with an average margin of victory of more than 46 points per game.
As coach, Delcalzo guided the Aviators to five sectional titles, including a three-peat from 2016-18, and finished .500 or better in 34 of his 35 seasons (and even the sub-.500 was a 4-5 mark in 1993 with his first state title coming the very next year) – remarkable consistency for any program, but particularly a Group 1 school with small rosters, little depth and the potential for one key injury to derail a season.
But Delcalzo always made it work.
“Every season, each team has a goal to be the best team that ever played for him,” said assistant coach Adam Baeira, who has been with Hasbrouck Heights since 2011. “For him to keep that consistency over the years speaks for itself. … A lot of the kids know the tradition when they get here and want to prove themselves in the Heights legacy.”
Delcalzo, 67, led Hasbrouck Heights to three undefeated seasons in 2007, 2016 and 2018 and entered 2019 with one of the state’s longest winning streaks at 15 games. That streak was snapped in a season-opening loss to Cresskill in early September, but Delcalzo righted the ship quickly and led the program to nine straight wins and a fourth straight appearance in a sectional final before falling to Park Ridge in the title game.
“I remember a lot of the losses, but I remember a lot of the wins, too,” Delcalzo said. “Our kids and our coaching staff always put a lot of time into this and, at the end of the day, the losses get to you. Even this year, after the last game I said to my son, ‘I think I’m ready to pack it in.’ He just goes, ‘Dad… you’re ready.’”
Under Delcalzo’s guidance, Hasbrouck Heights qualified for the state playoffs in 23 of 35 seasons – and that includes a 13-year period, from 1985-1997, when only four teams qualified for the postseason. From 1998 – when the NJSIAA adopted an eight-team playoff – until 2019, the Aviators were playoff-bound in 19 of 22 years.
In those 23 playoff appearances since 1985, Hasbrouck Heights went 29-18 overall and reached 11 sectional finals, winning five, as Delcalzo accumulated an overall career mark of 270-90-1. That also includes winning two of the first three North Jersey Interscholastic Conference titles in 2016 and 2018 and the inaugural North Group I Bowl Game in 2018.
Delcalzo, already a member of the NJSIAA Hall of Fame, was no stranger to bringing hardware to Heights – and in an NJ Advance Media story posted prior to the 2018 season, he ranked eighth in New Jersey for most career wins among active coaches.
Much of Delcalzo’s staff of assistants over the years has been assembled with former players Delcalzo once coached – a testament to the type of program he ran for three and a half decades.
Once an Aviator, always an Aviator.
“I was an Aviator, I coached Aviators, my wife and kids have all been Aviators,” Delcalzo said. “I’m one of 9 and we all went to Heights, so everyone was an Aviator. And I’ve got to credit my high school coach, Pete LaBarbiera, who taught us a lot. Not just about football, but about family. That was always important. We were always teaching football, but also always teaching life lessons.”
JJ Conrad focuses on the Super Football Conference and North Jersey Interscholastic Conference. He may be reached at jconrad@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter, @JJ_Conrad.
