Carm DeFrancesco returns to his roots, and his dream job at MCA
MOUNT CARMEL - Carm DeFrancesco readily admits that he's a hopeless romantic.
He's dreamt of walking onto the field as the head coach of the Mount Carmel Area Red Tornadoes for the first time and of how things were when he was a player.
There's no question that DeFrancesco now considers himself at home, so comfortable in his red and white surroundings that he told someone who remarked that the veteran coach looked good in the Tornadoes' colors that it had been a long time coming.
DeFrancesco was an assistant at Mount Carmel under Jazz Diminick before losing out on three separate bids to become the head coach since Diminick's controversial ouster following the 1992 season.
Most notably, DeFrancesco's other coaching stops included a seven-year gig at Shamokin, which he could never steer to a win over the Tornadoes.
But now, DeFrancesco owns the rights to don the red and white and lead the Tornadoes onto the Silver Bowl turf.
"I've been on the field before, but on the other side," DeFrancesco said. "Just coming into the field house, and I guess I'm a romantic. When you get to be my age, you start to think about what it was before, how you grew up and I just grew up, up the street. The field house was built my junior year, and when you walk around here you get a sense of just how fleeting life is and you really have to enjoy every moment. It is going to be a thrill for me to run out there and understand that I've got the responsibility of maintaining the greatest football tradition in the state, and I take that job seriously."
DeFrancesco continued by joking at media day that he told his wife to put all his other coaching shirts out at a yard sale in favor of the Tornadoes' colors. And what a collection it is, with the blue and gold from Cardinal Brennan, purple and orange of Danville, purple and white of Shamokin and black and orange of Upper Dauphin.
But in those 18 years, DeFrancesco has learned a couple lessons from his various stops.
"I'll tell you what the biggest change for me was - I forgot how small the practice area was. We don't have a lot of room, and that was a change for me. Special teams are a real problem," DeFrancesco is quick to point out. "But nothing much has really changed.
"Kids are kids, and I've had a chance now to compare kids from different districts, and if we've learned one thing over the years it's that high school kids are high school kids - they have the same anxieties, the same wants, the same desires as any other kid. So really it hasn't been that much of a change."
The desire that hasn't abated at Mount Carmel is to win football games, something other coaches have sensed, but DeFrancesco knows first hand the way the town expects and embraces a winner.
That same ambition - to win - has always driven DeFrancesco, but with a return home comes the added pressure of shepherd of history in addition to coach and, hopefully, winner.
"It's the way it is here, and I know that," DeFrancesco said. "The biggest change for me personally, for the first time in my career, it's not about me. It was always coming in, finding a coaching staff, building a program that's been in the tank and that's what I've been exposed to my whole coaching career. Coming in here, this is a dream. I'm only a small piece of the puzzle and I understand that. It's not about me, it's about the tradition and the history of our school. The role I have now is the new gatekeeper."
The last thing, or perhaps the first, DeFrancesco hopes to accomplish at Mount Carmel is making his coach and mentor feel welcomed again at Mount Carmel.
"The first day he came down here he was at the fence, and one of the kids asked me, 'Is that Coach Diminick?'
"I stopped practice and brought him in. They wanted to meet him because they heard about him but never met him. We want him to understand and feel free that whenever he wants to come down and watch that he's not going to stand on that side of the fence. We want him to come in and feel welcome."
Just as things were when Mount Carmel was in its heyday, Carm and Jazz in red and white.
DeFrancesco readily accepts the tag of dreamer, and dreaming is always easier in your own bed.
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