Sybertz is Back to Coaching Football at West Roxbury After One Year Absence

After the 2007 football season, West Roxbury Education Complex head football coach Leo Sybertz retired after three decades at the helm of the team. He spent his first season retired as an assistant at Boston Latin where he was able to coach his nephew and then helped out at Sharon High School in 2009.

Then in late May of 2010 he received a call asking him to return to the Raiders for one more season after his successor, Brian Collins, stepped down for family reasons. Sybertz agreed to return and enters the 2010 season as the team's head coach for a remarkable 31^st season.

It's a great story. The trouble is that he doesn't quite know what to expect.

"I don't know the kids very well right now," he says. "I like the kids. They seem to be very good kids. We met a few times in the spring, but I just don't know them very well right now."

The Raiders have not yet decided on any captains and Sybertz hesitates to even identify key players in 2010.

"We just need more time," he explains. "We've had some workouts and there's a number of kids who look good, but we've got to see them in pads and get a better look."

The team hasn't even yet chosen offensive or defensive schemes or systems, hoping to first get an idea of the personnel on hand before choosing how it should be best deployed.

Sybertz, who will run the defense and special teams, is leaning on returning offensive coordinator Hugh Galligan to help him get a sense for the team and the players.

"Hugh coached here last year," the head coach says. "He knows the kids a lot better than I do. We'll be okay – he's helping me out quite a bit."

But even Galligan will be a bit unfamiliar with the team. No less than 12 pieces of the 2009 roster have been deemed academically ineligible to play this fall, creating another set of problems for Sybertz and his staff.

"We're thin," he says. "We need more kids."

With so little decided and less than two weeks before the team's opener against Boston English, Sybertz will work his players hard including a week's worth of double sessions leading up to Labor Day.

Derek Wright, who played football at Boston College on scholarship, will join Sybertz and Galligan in rounding out a coaching staff that will need to give quite a performance in order to prepare a Raiders team with so many question marks. But with three decades worth of experience, which includes celebrating a 1988 State Championship, Sybertz is as good a candidate for the job as any.

And in any case, he's just looking forward to one last go of it.

"I'm very happy to be back," he says. "It's going to be very hard work but I'm looking forward to the season very much."