Darren Cooper Local Sports Columnist, @VarsityAces / Record Sports
After 31 years, Mike Sheridan retires as head football coach at St. Mary.You hear Bob Hurley and you think of St. Anthony’s. The name Tony Karcich implies St. Joseph Regional football. Chuck Johnson means Ridgewood football and the wing-T.
Mike Sheridan is St. Mary. The Sheridan family is as much a part of the Rutherford school as the Gael nickname. Generations of Sheridans and their progeny have walked through the pristine hallways.
Sheridan, 58, announced Wednesday that after 31 years, 202 wins and 11 state final appearances he is retiring as the Gaels’ head football coach. He will remain as the school’s director of alumni affairs.
He leaves with nothing left to prove, having returned to his school when it needed him and built a powerful football program, and now has seen the neighborhood school begin to thrive once more.
To him, it’s just the right time. Even though the Gaels went 4-4 last fall, Sheridan believes they are primed and ready for years to come.
“I have been back and forth on it since the season ended,” Sheridan said in his office Thursday. “But you know it in your gut. It’s time. That’s what I kept coming back to. … 31 years, that’s a good run.”
“I said to our team, in this day and age when people run from problems, he didn’t,” said St. Mary athletic director Matt Stone. “He came back to solve the problem, and he stayed to make sure it was successful all these years.”
After graduating from college, Sheridan discovered St. Mary was on the ropes. Enrollment had declined and the football program had been shuttered, with no varsity team in 1984 and 1985. Sheridan got a phone call from a family friend asking him to return to 64 Chestnut St. and get the program started again.
“And I’ve been here ever since,” laughed Sheridan.
Really, Sheridan had no choice. His father had played on the first St. Mary football team in the mid-1930s. He was the youngest of eight kids, all of whom had gone to St. Mary. His alma mater needed him, and he was going to help.
“All good things come to an end,” said Joe Tyburczy, who graduated from St. Mary in 2000 and played at Boston College. “It’s kind of bittersweet, because he worked very hard when a lot of small Catholic schools are closing. St. Mary’s is thriving, and he did a lot of the heavy lifting over the course of the years.”
St. Mary is a throwback to a simpler time of small, neighborhood schools that infused Catholic values. With Sheridan as one of the leaders, it never lost sight of that mission.
“There are no schools like us — come here and you are in a small-classroom setting and you can play two-three sports,” said Sheridan. “Most of our kids can come here and be a basketball player or a football player. St. Mary is not that type of school and never has been. We won’t pack in kids from all over the place and be something that we’re not.”
Under Sheridan the Gaels went to 11 state finals. The history books will show they won only once, in 2006, upsetting a heavily favored Paterson Catholic, 20-13, at William Paterson to win the Non-Public Group 1 title.
In the playoffs, St. Mary had the misfortune of going up against Paterson Catholic in its prime, and after that school closed, St. Joe’s of Hammonton was the powerhouse.
But that 2006 championship was enough.
“We played in so many big games and final games and had upsets,” said Sheridan. “That one is special because it was an upset and because it finished the deal. We had been knocking on that door so many times, to finally kick it open, I’ll never forget the emotion.”
“I played for him in 1989 and we were 0-9,” said Stone. “Then, as an AD and a working colleague I have seen him coach a team that was 11-0, and the unique thing is that there was no difference from when he coached in 1989 and we didn’t win a game to the undefeated team. The energy and passion that he brought every day for 31 years is mind-boggling.”
Next season, there won’t be a Sheridan connected to the Gaels football program, but Mike said he has a great-nephew who’s going to be there in a couple of years, so the family line will continue to run.
Several years ago, Sheridan had a coach from North Carolina in his office watching film of Mike Whatley run back kicks. After watching a play, the coach asked Sheridan to rewind the film.
“He said, ‘Look at that lady down the sidelines running with that stroller,’ ” said Sheridan. “I said, ‘Coach, that’s my wife, AnnMarie.’ He said he loved the enthusiasm.”
While Sheridan may not patrol the sidelines for St. Mary any longer, his devotion to the school and students there is still running.
