For Toms River South, Every Thanksgiving Is A Family Reunion

(PHOTOS: 1. Jose Perez proposes to former Toms River South classmate Linda Saddy before the game. 2. Joe Fleck, Class of 1980, poses with athletic trainer Debbie Morante, Class of 1971, who began her career as an athletic trainer at the school in 1978. 3. Linda Saddy, Susan Guida, Wendy Applegate and Jose Perez, classmates and friends, reunite at the game. 4. Sandy (left) and Gil Leibrick smile as Leibrick receives the Most Loyal Fan award. Credit: Karen Wall)

In 1982, Linda Saddy and Jose Perez were classmates walking the halls at Toms River High School South.

He was an athlete -- a gymnast and a member of the track team. She was on the flag team for a year. They knew each other but never really crossed paths much.

“You always wonder what if,” Perez said Thursday, smiling as he looked at Saddy while they stood talking with friends on the sidelines at the Indians’ Thanksgiving game against Lakewood.

For the 95th year, Toms River South and Lakewood took to the football field in their annual rivalry game. It may seem odd, the idea of Toms River South and Lakewood being football rivals. But before the epic duels between Brick’s Warren Wolf and Toms River South’s Ron Signorino, before the crosstown rivalries with Toms River North and Toms River East -- long before them, in fact -- there was Toms River High School, and there was Lakewood.

It is the oldest continuously played Thanksgiving game in the Shore Conference, and one of the few rivalry games still contested on Thanksgiving. As the interest in and drive for state championships has grown, more and more schools have moved their rivalry games away from Thanksgiving, which falls in the midst of the state playoffs.

Toms River South and Lakewood have resisted that trend, however.

Toms River South won Thursday’s game, 30-26, as quarterback Tymere Berry and Khaleel Greene each scored a pair of touchdowns. The Indians now lead the series 54-37-4, according to the Asbury Park Press. And while the victory no doubt made the turkey tastier and the pie sweeter, it’s reconnecting with old friends -- as Toms River South alumni have for decades -- that makes the day sweetest of all.

“How are you?!” Joe Fleck said as he embraced Debbie Morante, the athletic trainer at Toms River South, as she stood on the sidelines. Fleck, Class of 1980, who played receiver and safety, was a member of the Indians when Morante, Toms River Class of 1971, began her career as athletic trainer in 1978.

For Fleck, the freshman assistant football coach on the Southern Regional coaching staff, being on the Toms River South sidelines is like coming home.

“The first time I stood on the other sideline it was so strange,” he said. Toms River South and Southern face off yearly in Shore Conference Class A South. ”I’d never seen the stadium from that perspective.”

He told a story of seeing some of his students at Caffrey’s Tavern in Lacey one night. He was dressed in an Indians’ jersey, prompting questions from his players.

“They didn’t realize I went to South,” he said.

“Once an Indian, always an Indian,” Morante said.

That Indian blood runs deep in some families. Cousins Wendy Applegate and Susan Guida said the maroon-and-white heritage runs way back -- back to their great-aunt Ellen Woolley, who at 106 years old is likely one of the oldest living Toms River High School graduates, if not the oldest.

“She went to the school in Cedar Grove,” Guida said. The first Toms River High School class, of five students, graduated in June 1891, according to the school district, and the school was held in the First Baptist Church building in the Cedar Grove section.

In the decades since Woolley graduated, Applegate said, her father and Guida’s mother, who are siblings, attended the school, as did each of them and their siblings. Applegate’s children attended South as well, she said.

Guida and her family live in Lacey now, but she said there’s nothing like being at Toms River South on Thanksgiving.

“This school has the most school spirit,” she said.

That spirit is embodied by people like Gil Leibrick, who was honored at halftime with the “Most Loyal Fan” award, given out yearly by the school to honor those whose support runs deep. Leibrick is credited with doing exhaustive research on the history of football at the school, helping to preserve information that had otherwise been lost to time.

The school’s spirit also is embodied in its marching band, which takes special note of its returning alumni, honoring them during the pregame ceremony and inviting them to join the current band members for the playing of the school song, “Old Indian Tom.” There were 87 alumni among the band members on Thursday, going back to the Class of 1979, from flag and rifle squads to percussion and brass. And being on the field again brought ear-to-ear grins from many.

As they played, Jack Milkovitz, who was the band director from 1965 until 1988, stalked the sidelines.

“This is special,” said his daughter, Jill Milkovitz-Lovinfosse, who followed in her father’s footsteps, working as assistant band director from 1992-2007 and then as its director from 2008 through 2010.

“My husband was a band member under my dad,” she said, as was her brother, Michael. On this day, the family -- including Michael’s wife Valerie and Jill and Michael’s brother, Mark -- was in attendance to watch the next generation of band member marching for South: Jill’s daughter, Caylee Lovinfosse, a member of the class of 2017.

No moment was more special Thursday than that of Saddy and Perez. The pair had connected a few years ago through Facebook, and after a great deal of conversation -- and a missed 30th class reunion -- Perez asked Saddy out on a date. That was just shy of a year ago.

Thursday, in front of friends and dozens of fans at Detwiler Stadium, Perez asked his former high school classmate to marry him. The overcast skies nearly disrupted his plans, because Saddy had told him Wednesday night that she wasn’t going to the game if it rained.

“I was praying it didn’t rain,” he said.

The rain hadn’t stopped them in the past, said Applegate and Guida, friends of the couple.

Saddy explained:

“He had never been flirty,” she said, but in response to a post she made about a movie, he asked her out. The first date was dinner, they said, and the second date ended with a kiss in the rain.

Perez’s proposal ended with a yes and a kiss -- and tears of joy, too.

“Since this is where we met, it seemed like a natural,” Perez said. “I wanted something different, something she will remember.”

It’s a safe bet that she always will.