Two Kennedy coaches end up at DeWitt Clinton

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The first time he met with his new football players at DeWitt Clinton High School, longtime John F. Kennedy player and coach Ivan Rosario told them, “I’ll always be a Kennedy Knight and you will be Clinton Governors.” He then pledged to them, “but now I’m your coach. I’m here to give you all the tools to win; to give the kids at Clinton all that I did at Kennedy for 16 years.” 

Even during games against Kennedy.

Clinton’s other hire this off-season was Alex Vega, who was the head coach at Kennedy for five years, from 2005 to 2009.

In three years as a player at Kennedy in the early 90s and another nine years as an assistant or head coach there, Mr. Vega never set foot inside Clinton. Mr. Rosario only did so once when he had to take a summer school course as a student. 

Such reluctance has never been unusual in the Bronx football world. Clinton and Kennedy have always been rivals. 

Though many of the schools’ students live on the same block and ride the Bx1 bus home in their uniforms after practice, they maintain a palpable hostility for each other, a hostility that has existed for 40 years. 

Perhaps it is for Bronx bragging rights or because football requires an enemy, but these nearby schools have always been perfect adversaries. 

So what would make two longtime players and coaches even dream of jumping to rival turf? 

“If someone would have told me that I would be coaching at Clinton one day, I would have thought they were high on some sort of illegal substance,” Mr. Vega said. “I thought I would be at Kennedy my whole life. I thought that Kennedy would be my first and only coaching job.”

To get the two Kennedy coaches to switch schools took a perfect storm.

For one thing, Clinton’s highly regarded and open-minded coach Howard Langley came to the understanding that his Kennedy colleagues’ “bend-but-don’t-break” approach to defense might raise his team to a higher level, particularly in the playoffs. 

DeWitt Clinton High School, John F. Kennedy, coaches, football, Raphael Sugarman
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