For Manasquan, the Spirits of the Past Inspire Today's Success

When you walk the halls of Manasquan High School, the eyes of the past watch your every move.

Photos of Manasquan football teams from the past – the ones who won championships, the ones who added title after title to a lengthy list – line the paths as students and staff move about their daily routines.

“You literally pass under their eyes,” head coach Jay Price said.

“I can’t walk down the hall without feeling like their eyes are watching me,” trainer Kevin Hyland said. “It’s an eerie feeling.”

Those photos go back decades. There’s the recent history, teams from 1998 to 2002, when the Warriors won five straight NJSIAA Central Jersey Group II championships. There’s the team from the 1990s, the 1980s, the 1970s, the 1960s. Teams that reached the state playoffs, that won Shore Conference division titles, that excelled on the playing field. There’s photos from the 1950s and ’40s, and even the 1930s.

“They’re photos of the winning teams,” Price said, referring to the oldest photos. “Then you go back and read about these guys, the guys who played here and went on to do tremendous things” in their lives.

“It’s a burden, and it’s inspiring, too,” said Price, who has been a driving force behind the Manasquan High School Football Hall of Fame.

It’s not just the coaches who feel the weigh of the past generations, however; the players, some of whom are third- or, in the case of Christopher Morgan, a fourth-generation Warrior – know the traditions and the history of success.

“We have players here whose fathers and grandfathers played here,” Price said. “They go home and hear it.”

That is a function of the kind of school and the kind of town that Manasquan is. The school was incorporated in 1881 and sits almost in the middle of the 1.4 square miles of land that comprise the town. While the district receives students from Sea Girt, Avon-by-the-Sea, Belmar, Brielle, Spring Lake and Spring Lake Heights, the total area is still less than 10 square miles.

The school first fielded a football team in 1920, with the players donning the blue and gray of the 114^th Infantry – as chosen by Roy Fish, an art teacher who served in World War I – opening against Freehold Boro.

Now, 90 years later, the players still wear that blue and gray proudly as they take to their home field, now named Vic Kubu Memorial Warrior Field.

On Saturdays in the fall when the team is playing at home, the sounds of the game can be heard for several blocks around the school, and spectators park on sidestreets for blocks away, walking to the game.

Private residences back up to the west end of the football stadium, emphasizing how much the team and the school are embedded in the community, and residents gather in backyards outside the fence to watch the game.

Kids who grow up in Manasquan gather on the open area near the football field and play pick-up games, dreaming of the day it’s their turn to march into the stadium, giving younger kids high-fives and playing before crowds that have exceeded 3,500 fans.

And – like Price, a 1988 graduate who played linebacker at Manasquan in the early years of coaching legend Vic Kubu’s years at the helm – they come back, and don’t want to leave. Kubu, a 1960 graduate, did the same.

“Jack Hawkins has come back to coach his grandson, and he’s a connection to the ‘60s,” Price said. “Very rarely do people leave here. They’re always coming back, and they don’t want to leave.”

Some would say that goes double for the permanent residents of the halls of the high school … residents who make their presence felt from time to time, in the building and even, sometimes, on the football field.

“I remember Coach (Kubu) talking about sitting in the office and doors opening and closing, but no one appearing,” said Price, who’s experienced that phenomenon himself.

“It’s safe to say it’s never lonely in here ever at midnight,” Hyland said.

More than once kooky things have happened on the field as well – like last year’s 51-yard fumble returned for a touchdown by 300-pound defensive tackle Jack Cutrell that helped the Warriors recover from a 10-0 deficit to beat Wall 21-16 – that have some convinced the spirits spend a little time on the field, too.

Price figures Kubu – who died in 2007 of prostate cancer – is among the spirits who inhabit the halls and the locker room. “I expect to hear him giggling one of these times,” Price said.

Even if Kubu’s ghost isn’t actually there, Price feels the coach with the team all the time, in the team’s approach to the game. Price said the constant among the players and the coaches is that “you never feel like you’re working hard enough.

“You feel this constant push. Did I leave the office too early? Did I bring enough work and films home?” he said, in part because of the example Kubu set. “You know when you get out there on Saturday, you’ve got to leave it all on the field.”

On Thursday morning, all that tradition will play a part in inspiring the Warriors to come out and try to secure the Shore Conference Class C Central title against Wall.

The rivalry has become intense in the last several years, thanks to the success that Wall has had under coach Chris Barnes – so intense that the 2002 game drew a reported 9,500 spectators to a game that pitted the No. 1 and unbeaten Wall against No. 2 and unbeaten Manasquan (which Manasquan won 14-7). But the roots of it actually go deep into Manasquan’s history.

Granville Magee, who took over the Warriors when they were falling apart in 1937, took them to championship in 1939 as part of a 21-game winning streak, according to the Manasquan High School Athletic Hall of Fame information on Magee posted by Price. It was Magee’s tenure that set the tone for decades to come.

After coaching and then serving as the school’s principal, in 1955 Magee left Manasquan to become the first superintendent of the Wall Township School District. Magee, who later was instrumental in the creation of the Shore Conference and the NJSIAA, the body that oversees high school sports in New Jersey, was the one who gave Wall its colors: red, reflecting his status as an alumnus of Rutgers, and blue for Manasquan.

That’s why the winning team receives the Superintendent’s Trophy.

Thursday morning, the Warriors will travel to Wall, with the Superintendent’s Trophy on the line once more, but a bigger prize – the Shore Conference Class C Central title – theirs for taking for a third straight year.

Each team has just one loss. Both have been knocked from the state playoff race.

It’s anyone’s guess about the outcome, but you can bet Manasquan will be hoping the ghosts will help it keep its winning tradition going strong. Even if they aren’t at home.