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Jabrill Peppers, a sophomore at the Don Bosco Preparatory School, in Ramsey, New Jersey, approached a statue of the Virgin Mary. It was a Saturday evening in September, and he clutched a dinged white football helmet in his right hand. "It's go-time, yo!" he said. "We gave up our summer for this." The statue was enshrined in a twenty-foot-high rock formation known as the grotto, abutting an artificial pond. Peppers bobbed his head and shrugged his shoulders. "They don't know," he said, issuing what I would come to learn was the Don Bosco Ironmen's common refrain. "This is just high-school football to them."
"They," in this case, were the Mission Viejo Diablos, representing a public school from south of Anaheim, California, with an enrollment of nearly three thousand and a tradition of football dominance. Mark Sanchez, the New York Jets' quarterback, graduated from Mission Viejo in 2005, having lost only once in his two years on the varsity. Sanchez, by now on the cover of GQ, and giving back, had reportedly donated twenty thousand dollars to help his alma mater undertake the cross-country trip to Bergen County for the East-West showdown. The Diablos were determined to make the most of their opportunity. Arriving at J.F.K. on Tuesday, they'd spent four days sightseeing (West Point, the Statue of Liberty), and had hoped to enjoy a Friday-night barbecue and mixer with the two teams and their families. Don Bosco supporters nixed that idea. "I told them, 'It's not going to happen,' " a Bosco booster recounted with a smile. "I said, 'Listen, I lived in California for years, and I know you people are really nice, but this is Jersey football.' "
Don Bosco families—the Mastrianis, the Cruscos, the Marchiafavas, the Donataccis, the Scavones, even the Goldenbergs—devoted their pregame attention, instead, to an elaborate tailgate, featuring eggplant rollatini, fresh mozzarella, biscotti, and the crooning of Ol' Blue Eyes, Hoboken's own, blasting from the speakers of an S.U.V. in the school's parking lot. Up in the coaches' lounge, above the locker room, meanwhile, the coaching staff watched "The Godfather" on DVD, for inspiration, and snacked on cannoli. "This is the best part," an offensive-line coach said, dragging on a cigarette, as Clemenza taught Michael how to make spaghetti sauce.
At the grotto, Father Manny Gallo, a thirty-one-year-old theology teacher with a shaved head and a goatee, addressed the players—there were more than a hundred—before a recitation of the Hail Mary. He began by apologizing for the fact that, "because I'm a priest," he wouldn't be able to say certain inspirational words. "Jesus Christ will teach you two things today," he said. "The first thing is, when Jesus was carrying that Cross, defeat was not on his mind. Victory was on his mind!" The boys listened solemnly. "The second thing, gentlemen, that Jesus Christ can teach us is that weakness was not in his heart. So when you feel pain, when you feel like vomiting, when you feel nervous, when you feel that you can't no more, think about that."
The teams were preceded onto the field by a bagpipe processional, as eight thousand spectators looked on. The Californians had an advantage, because Don Bosco's offensive line was playing shorthanded. Its biggest starter, a senior who weighs two hundred and seventy pounds, had been suspended for posting an offending video to his Facebook page. The video depicted a common suburban prank involving a soda lobbed back through the window of a fast food drive-through, like a grenade. ("Fire in the hole," it is called; YouTube it.) Making matters worse, the incident was rumored to have occurred shortly after a summer football practice, in the midst of an unofficial team-bonding excursion to Hooters.
Mission Viejo's front line was bigger regardless, with three players exceeding two-eighty. But it hardly mattered. The Don Bosco defense began swarming the ball carriers with startling ferocity. A Diablo running back struggled to get up after a third-down stand, and then wobbled on his way to the sideline, requiring extra shoulders for support. "That kid doesn't know where he is!" an Ironman substitute shouted.
Don Bosco led by 14–0 at the half, and, as the Diablos' defense began to tire, the Ironmen kept up a no-huddle offense to exploit their superior conditioning. Jabrill Peppers, who played cornerback as a freshman last season, débuted here as a running back as well, and slashed and spun his way into the end zone for a pair of touchdowns, prompting the student cheering section to chant, "He's a sophomore!" The former New York Giants wide receiver Amani Toomer, providing color commentary for the local television broadcast, coined a phrase for the fifteen-year-old's acrobatics: the Pepper Shake. By the time Mark Sanchez checked in on Twitter ("how are the boys doing? U got a score update?"), the game was out of hand. Final score: 35–7.
Afterward, Mission Viejo's coach, Bob Johnson, a sixty-six-year-old veteran who has coached more than half a dozen future N.F.L. players, said of the Ironmen, "That might be the best high-school football team I've ever seen." The Don Bosco head coach, Greg Toal, was more measured in his appraisal, giving his bunch a B-minus for their performance. It was the school's thirty-sixth consecutive victory.
For all the pride in "Jersey football," Don Bosco Prep is really something of a metro-area all-star team. More than twenty players on its varsity roster commute from New York. Steele DeVito, a 2010 graduate, lived in Ridgefield, Connecticut. Nicholas Youngblood, a current sophomore, lives in the Bronx. The geographic diversity of the school's student body is a bit of a sore point, both among the fans of teams that struggle to compete with the Ironmen and among Don Bosco parents, who can become defensive. "I could probably throw a rock from here and hit New York," Bill Yankovich, the father of Mike and Danny, the starting quarterback and a second-string receiver, told me, while sitting in the bleachers one afternoon, watching his boys suffer through a gruelling sequence of bear crawls (running the length of the field on all fours) and wounded dogs (two arms and a leg). But for the past several years the Yankoviches have been giving over their spare bedroom in Ramsey to another player, Leonte Carroo, whose mother and sister live in the town of Edison, some fifty miles to the south, and whose father lives in Newark.
The Yankoviches are not alone in making their household biracial. "One of the players lived with us, too," Ed Fox, the president of the Don Bosco Touchdown Club, the parents' booster organization, told me. "His mother commutes from North Brunswick. Sometimes he would sleep over, and then my son Spencer asked if he could stay with us for the whole year. It was a great experience for him and for us." Fox is Jewish. "And I'm the president of a Catholic football program!" he said, explaining that he was as surprised as I was. He sent his older son, Zack, to the school six years ago, primarily for lacrosse, and had since caught "Bosco fever," a condition that seems to blend progressive views on upward mobility with an almost self-parodying appreciation for North Jersey wiseguy culture. Another father approached me in September and said, "If you write a hit piece, these guys will come find you." He was kidding, I think.
Don Bosco, which belongs to the Salesian order of Roman Catholicism, was founded in 1915, as a boarding school for Polish boys, and shut its dormitories for good in 1969, by which point the school's demographics had broadened to include heavy strains of the Italian and Irish lineages that predominate in Bergen County. Situated in an affluent area, amid generally excellent public schools, it was a place you attended for sports, without sacrificing academics; or because your parents favored the disciplinary environment of morning Mass and no girls. Its reinvention as a football factory began in 1999, with the arrival of a new principal, Father John Talamo. Talamo, who was thirty-four, had grown up on the outskirts of New Orleans, and brought with him the football-centric values of his native Louisiana. "What happened is, Don Bosco kept getting cremated by everybody," he recalled last summer. St. Joseph's, the Ironmen's frequent Thanksgiving opponent, had beaten them seventeen games in a row. Bergen Catholic, their chief historical rival, "kept running us into the ground," Talamo said. "It was humiliating." Talamo set as his goal hiring a coach who could transform the football program into a national power.
Greg Toal, a winner of seven state championships with a couple of nearby public schools, had taken a few years off to assist with his son Greg, Jr.,'s high-school team, in Franklin Lakes, and was thought to be interested in another head-coaching position now that Greg, Jr., was going off to Boston College, on a football scholarship. "I hunted him down in the phone book," Talamo recalled. "I said, 'Let's meet at nine o'clock at night, so nobody else is around.' I asked him if he would join me, man." (Talamo is that rare priest who talks like a surfer.) Toal's concerns included the fact that the field at Don Bosco was littered with stones—a lawsuit lying in wait. When he was coaching at Hackensack High School, some of his own players had injured their knees while competing at Don Bosco. Talamo promised to raise money for a complete resurfacing. Toal had been planning to accept an offer from another public school the next morning. Talamo asked him to sleep on it. "I only agreed because he was a priest," Toal later said.
Toal's career coaching record at the time he accepted the Don Bosco job was a hundred and twenty-seven wins against twenty-six losses. That was his football coaching record, at any rate. He had also coached girls' junior-varsity softball ("I don't think we lost any games," he told me) and boys' recreational basketball, employing an aggressive press that he called "the bullet" and leading his sons' eighth-grade teams to championships. (After one too many sixty-point victories, the bullet was outlawed for all but the final two minutes of games.) Newly installed in Ramsey, Toal reconceived the biography of the school's patron saint, John Bosco, a nineteenth-century priest who amused the poor children of Turin by juggling and tightrope walking, as that of a proto-jock. "Your patron saint was a tough guy!" Toal would tell his players. "He loved to compete." Don Bosco Prep became the "home of the tough guys," a slogan later reprinted on T-shirts that were sold at the school store.
"When I hired him, I caught hell from parents, because he was too hard on the kids," Talamo said. "I caught hell from local principals, from the newspapers. It was terrible. The administrators and the faculty were all against us in the beginning. We got very little support from the Salesians." A number of boys quit during that first summer of practice. At the grotto before the team's first game, Talamo took a look at Toal and the roughly thirty uniformed boys who had accompanied him. "Where's the team?" Talamo asked. "This is it," Toal said. "I didn't tell you it was going to be easy." In the first twelve seconds of play, the Ironmen marched eighty-six yards down the field. They reached the state finals that season, and again the next year, with help from the running back Ryan Grant, now a Green Bay Packer, defeating both St. Joe's and Bergen Catholic along the way. By 2002, they were state champions and winning regularly by fifty points or more. Sponsorship deals with Reebok, New Balance, and Nike followed, and big-time college coaches began making regular pilgrimages to Ramsey.
Talamo was reassigned in 2002—he is now back home in Louisiana, at an elementary school with only a flag football team—but Toal remained, and never let up. For him, and for the school, the success was self-reinforcing, such that any misgivings that the Salesian leadership may have about an obscured spiritual mission must be tempered by pragmatism. Enrollment, which was at seven hundred, and declining, when Toal arrived, is now nine hundred, and applications have increased by more than sixty per cent. Two years ago, a hundred and twenty boys went out for freshman football—more than half the incoming class. Toal never cuts anyone, and ninety-eight-pound weaklings still suit up alongside their hulking betters. "It's free publicity," Brian McAleer, who was hired as the admissions director the same year that Toal came aboard, and is now the athletic director, told me. "Kids want to be a part of something larger. They want to be proud to wear their school sweatshirt to the mall."
"All I knew when we started this whole journey was 'Mommy, you got to get me into this school,' " Lavern Carroo said. " 'This school is crazy. They win everything.' " She was referring to Don Bosco, but the occasion for her remarks was her son Leonte's college-commitment celebration, which took place in August at a banquet hall on Route 22, in front of a hundred and fifty friends and relatives. A star wide receiver, he had been promised full rides by coaches at Wisconsin, Miami, Boston College, California, Rutgers, North Carolina, Michigan State, Penn State, Pittsburgh, Georgia, and Maryland. Diehard college-football fans pinged him daily on Facebook, where he had acquired four thousand friends. Someone in Michigan had gone so far as to mail him an improvised football card, Photoshopped to make it appear as if he played for the Spartans, asking for an autograph. Now, with two-a-days just under way, and on his grandfather's birthday, he had decided to put an end to all the speculation so that he could focus on his senior year.
Leonte, who is six feet one, two hundred and five pounds, and still rangy, made a delayed entrance to the party, accompanied by the song "I Made It." The guests, many of whom were already seated at tables festooned with calla lilies and framed photographs of the receiver in action, stood and applauded as he hugged his parents and his sister, and then the Yankoviches, whom he later presented with a plaque. "Mr. Yank, Mrs. Yank, I call them Mom and Dad when I'm at home," he said. "Before she goes to bed, she kisses Emily, Danny, and Mike, and she also kisses me."
"Yo, this is a weird party," a young man named Shannon Mitchell said, standing near the cash bar. Mitchell was an aspiring "brand manager," as he put it. He went by the Twitter handle WorldWideShan, an allusion to World Wide Wes, or William Wesley, the N.B.A. power broker who made his name forging tight bonds with young phenoms. "I'm like the Wes," Mitchell said, and offered to introduce me to "the next Michael Vick," Devin Fuller, whom he spotted across the room, mingling with some Ironmen. Fuller plays quarterback for Old Tappan High School, also in North Jersey. "Hopefully I can build a relationship with the kid," Mitchell said. "I just like to help people."
Several reporters and "analysts," as the recruiting Web sites call them, were on hand to witness the naming of the lucky college. Some live-tweeted the proceedings. ("The tableware is blue and gold. Cal colors. Could it be??" "No announcement yet. . . . Food is being served.") There were more presentations: "These flowers represent the seeds that you have planted in your children and the beauty that is sprouting in your grandchildren." A Justin Bieber song was played.
Finally, Carroo, who is as polite as he is fast, took control of the podium, standing slightly duck-footed in a blue suit and a red tie. "Now what everybody been waiting for," he said, and gave a shout-out to his teammates in the back. ("Bosco!") He thanked his auntie Ken, his uncle Matt, his uncle Lou, and his auntie Bena. He thanked the Cartel, a group of teen-age disk jockeys who were set up in the corner, and he thanked "all my doctors." "Taylor and Mrs. Anderson, thank you for coming," he said. "And, um, I guess it's time. Jake, bring it on up."
Jake Morganstein, a friend and former teammate, approached the microphone with a backpack. "So," Carroo began, taking hold of the backpack and beginning to unzip. "Due to all my teammates, my family, my friends, I decided to commit to the University of . . ." He pulled a scarlet-red cap out of the bag, with an "R" above its bill, for Rutgers.
He was staying close to home. His mother began to dance. Carroo disappeared for a wardrobe change (tight-fitting black T-shirt and designer jeans, meeting the approval of a few girls in dresses), while Alison Yankovich stood off to the side, talking nostalgically about the boys' first meeting. It was at the Ironman Football Academy, the summer before ninth grade. "Mike came home and said, 'Mom, I threw this pass to a group of kids, and these two black hands came up and caught the ball.' " They'd been best friends ever since.
Don Bosco's athletic facilities are outdated. The locker room is cramped and mazelike, with scarcely room enough for an ordinary football program, let alone one that encompasses a fifth of the student body. (Visiting teams dress in the cafeteria.) The weight room was built half a century ago, and has no air-conditioning. "Remember when Rocky won the title, and he was training in the ballroom of the hotel, with all the girls running around, and he got his balls kicked?" Chuck Granatell, the offensive-line coach, once asked me. "And then Apollo took him back to East L.A. and went back to work? That's what our setup is like. It's East L.A."
The Ironmen practice and play their home games "up the hill," as everyone says, behind the school, at Charles I. Granatell Stadium, named for Chuck's grandfather. (The surname may be familiar to fans of Kim G., in "The Real Housewives of New Jersey.") Chuck, or Big Nasty, as I've heard him called, attended Don Bosco and was a member of the school's first state-champion team, in 1968. His grandfather died when he was a freshman. "My father knew somebody who was in the excavation business, and he dropped off a 'dozer," Granatell said. "The A.D. at the time was a priest, Father Al Sokol. Big Al got on the 'dozer and started knocking down trees like he was MacArthur clearing the 38th parallel."
The field on the top of the hill is still ringed by trees, and its seclusion ranks surprisingly high among the factors commonly cited to explain the Ironmen's uncommon success. The coaches say things like "They don't have the hill," as a rallying cry. What they mean is that the Ironmen's rivals don't have a place where you can yell with impunity, and where no one looks askance when linemen begin to bleed from the bridges of their noses. The code of football operates with monopoly protection up there. As Greg Toal once put it to me, "We're away from civilization, the way I like it."
The first time I went up the hill, last summer, I had a difficult time finding Toal. There were more than a dozen men patrolling the field who looked like coaches, and not a few of them with the weathered skin and receded or whitened hair to suggest acquired authority. One of them, I later learned, was a police officer assigned to a drug-rehabilitation facility, who works midnights; another, known as Uncle Nick, was eighty years old and a veteran of the undefeated 1949 Lyndhurst Golden Bears, one of New Jersey's finest teams. Players were scattered around in six or seven different stations, grouped more or less by body type, or position. This turned out to be pre-practice, which lasts a half hour, or more, before the hydraulic lift with the video camera goes up and the formation drills begin.
Then a silver-colored Chevy Cobalt pulled up near one of the end zones. A man emerged and started approaching the nearest group of players, who were engaged in an exercise that seemed to me like a recipe for concussions. Goal-line tackle, they call it: two players square off, a few yards apart, and drive their heads and shoulders into one another, fighting for inches. "Run your feet!" the man shouted, and soon grabbed one of the players forcibly by the helmet, dragging him back to the goal line. "Again!" he commanded. "We're going to get the girl out today." This had to be Toal, I concluded. Heads collided, and, after a few more seconds of struggle, the players toppled. "O.K., we got half the girl out," Toal said. "Now let's see if we can get the other half out." He ordered the same kid back to the line. "You're going to stay here until you become a football player!" he shouted. "The only guy that's going to help you is you. Again!"
In his younger days, Toal resembled the actor John Ritter, only thicker. His hair is still light brown, for the most part, but sparser now, and his face bears the fleshiness of fifty-eight years. He has giant hams for calves, and walks with an ex-fullback's pitched limp, so that he appears almost to be stumbling forward. Both his scowl and his smile share a trace of discomfort, as though he were squinting into the wind, but it is his voice and his clipped manner of speaking that most distinguish him, and that have inspired generations of Ironmen to attempt imitation, never quite nailing the accent. Toal was born in the Bronx, and still sounds like it—"Dey ain't as tough as you"—although his family moved across the river, to Hasbrouck Heights, when he was five. His mother was an X-ray technician, and his father, a bus driver, immigrated from Ireland after serving in the Royal Navy in the North African campaign during the Second World War. An older brother, Michael, went on to become a U.S. Army colonel. Greg, who never enlisted, absorbed the military ethos vicariously, and often likens his players to marines landing on the beach and Navy SEALs for motivation. After September 11th, he compared their opponents to the Taliban.
Toal's sole interest, as far as I've been able to discern, is football, which he played at Hasbrouck Heights, in the late nineteen-sixties, and then at Virginia Tech, where he struggled. "I was a whiner, a complainer, and a commiserater," he says. If not for the football team, which was paying his way, and the persistent mentoring of a new coach who was hired before the start of his senior year, he thinks he might never have amounted to anything.
After college, he painted houses and bounced unruly customers from bars, and even boxed a little, advancing to the finals in the heavyweight division of the Golden Gloves tournament, down in Elizabeth. His first full-time job was with Bergen County Special Services, as a teacher of "socially maladjusted" teens, as the lingo then went. It impressed upon him the virtues of tough love. "The best thing I ever did was dealing with special ed," he recently told a group of car salesmen, to whom he'd been asked to give a pep talk. "You can deal with those kids, you can handle anything." (He also told the salesmen, "You can't worry about that dealership that's blowing everybody away," urged them to huddle up every morning, and added, "Now, let's whoop some ass!")
Unlike the fashionable new breed of football coach who labors over complex chalkboard schemes, Toal preaches simplicity and the importance of technique. "His X's and O's actually work," Ralph Dass, Toal's successor at Hackensack, says. His credo is that a fourth grader should be able to follow his instruction. "If I had to coach guys for just one day, I would tell 'em, 'Hey, explode with your hands, protect your crotch,' " he said. "If you can do that O.K., you can become a good defensive football player." A fourth grader, and even some fully grown men, might have trouble adhering to the other essential component of the Toal program: relentless aggression, endlessly repeated. After a pre-season scrimmage in Pennsylvania that Don Bosco dominated, Toal bear-crawled the team in front of the losers, causing the perplexed opposing coach to ask, "Did they do something wrong?" Phil Simms, who won a Super Bowl as the Giants' quarterback, and is the father of a Don Bosco grad, told me, "They work harder than the pros. That's not even in question."
Another father once gushed to me that Toal insists that his players remain standing even when overexertion compels them to retch. "He thinks bending over is a sign of weakness," the man said.
"It could be pouring rain," a mother said. "Coach Toal walks up that long hill and it stops, because he won't tolerate it."
Iggy Urbina, the team's trainer, and a Spanish teacher, likes to joke about his first day on the job, four years ago, when he approached Toal at midfield, introduced himself, and explained that one of the starting linebackers had pulled his hip flexor. Toal looked down at Urbina and said, "Until you got here, he didn't even know he had a hip flexor."
Five days after the victory over Mission Viejo, the Ironmen boarded a JetBlue flight out of J.F.K., bound for Bradenton, Florida. They were due to play the Manatee Hurricanes, perennial contenders in the Florida state playoffs, which are often regarded as the nation's toughest. The cost of the team's travel, including the plane, the hotel, food, and busing, amounted to forty-five thousand dollars, and was covered by a forty-seven-year-old man from Columbus, Ohio, named Ken Halloy, a longtime college-football enthusiast and fan-magazine publisher whose new career, as the president of Halloy Boy Sports Marketing, is monetizing a high-school pastime.
Tickets for high-school games, if they are required at all, typically cost five dollars, with proceeds going to the home team, to cover insurance and equipment. Halloy figured that he could charge three or four times the usual amount by arranging marquee matchups between schools from states that prided themselves on producing homegrown football talent, promoting them heavily, and securing larger venues, where possible. An old college classmate was involved in the booster club for a big Texas power, Tyler Lee, and, in 2005, they worked out a deal for Tyler Lee to play Cincinnati's Colerain High School, in Columbus, on the eve of the highly anticipated Ohio State-Texas game.
The concept was a hit, and caught on quickly, spawning a new class of nationally touring high schools—though not in Texas, where "winning State," as they say, remains the chief ambition. Let others come to us, if they must, goes the thinking in Dallas and Odessa and Lubbock. "Don Bosco? I'm not familiar with him," Tony Heath, the coach of the Pearland Oilers, told me, when I called to get his impression of how the Ironmen measure up. Texas is one of only two states (the other is Massachusetts) that play by collegiate rules, which allow "cut blocking," or blocking below the waist, and many of the best teams in proud football regions elsewhere in the country have thus far declined to meet Texas on its own terms, for fear of injury.
In Bradenton, I met Halloy in the lobby of the Holiday Inn. He was wearing a denim shirt with a Manatee Memorial Hospital insignia above the breast pocket, in support of his chief sponsor for the Suncoast Challenge, as he was billing the Don Bosco-Manatee game. He had flown Coach Toal down for a press conference a month earlier, and published a game program featuring on the cover a photograph of Toal and the Manatee coach, Joe Kinnan, standing with their backs to each other, arms crossed, as if in a boxing promotion. "SHOWDOWN! COACHING LEGENDS COLLIDE" was the headline. His efforts appeared to have succeeded, as the looming contest was now front-page news, above the fold, in the local papers. A skeptical sports columnist wrote, "The finest high school football team in the nation hails from New Jersey? Really? That's a little like saying the best seafood comes from a joint in Omaha called Joe's." The Ironmen were greeted at the airport with "Sopranos" jokes from baggage handlers.
"There was this big uproar, about kids being exploited and so forth," Halloy said, of his initial efforts to promote high-school events. "Next thing you know, ESPN's trying to televise the games, using that as a marketing tool, because you've got guys that are in the recruiting business"—a business that has become a multibillion-dollar industry. "So they want to put on games that feature top players," he went on. "And then you had an uproar over that—saying, 'ESPN is exploiting blah blah blah blah blah.' " Halloy has a boyish face and the glinting blue eyes of a born salesman. "The beauty of ESPN, for me, is they can take something seemingly radical and turn it mainstream," he said. "That's exactly what's happened with high-school football. ESPN has mainstreamed it. ESPN can buy anything." He added, "Schools are so desperate for money these days they can't say no," and predicted that Texas exceptionalism could last only so long. The lure of television exposure is too great.
The emergence of recruiting Web sites like Scout.com (which is owned by Fox) and Rivals.com (Yahoo!) had also helped make minor celebrities out of several Don Bosco players, who were now passing through the lobby, in front of Halloy, on their way to a team meeting. These were the so-called Don Bosco Fab Four, a group of especially coveted seniors: Leonte Carroo; Yuri Wright, a cornerback from Spring Valley, New York; Elijah Shumate, a linebacker and running back from East Orange; and Darius Hamilton, from West Paterson, a defensive lineman with shoulders so broad you worry about the doorframe. (Hamilton's father, Keith, spent twelve seasons with the New York Giants, and was known as the Hammer.) "ESPN, they're not so much driven to have Don Bosco on TV as they are having Darius Hamilton on TV," Halloy said.
Professional encroachment was normalized long ago in solo sports such as tennis and golf, thanks to internationally renowned coaching gurus like Nick Bollettieri and David Leadbetter, both of whom are now affiliated with IMG Academies, in Bradenton, the world headquarters for athletic prodigies. Within hours of touching down in Florida, Don Bosco's boys had been bused over to IMG, for a tune-up practice and a tour of the campus's state-of-the-art weight-training facilities, which left them slack-jawed with envy. ("Yo, is this a school? This is awesome!") During practice, an IMG employee mentioned that the organization had just begun a football residency program, and suggested that I spread the word back home to ambitious families. Sixty thousand dollars will buy your son a year at IMG and all the stair runs and bear crawls he can endure. Or, for a fifth as much, you could send him to Don Bosco.
"There's not an ounce of fat on any of these kids," Halloy said, as the last of the Ironmen exited the hotel lobby. "I've never seen a leaner, better-conditioned high-school football team. It's unbelievable." He described his vision of the future, perhaps a decade from now, involving a high-school bowl series, with regional post-season games occurring during the week between Christmas and New Year's Day. He was certain that the audience already existed. Offshore-gambling sites had been issuing point spreads for noteworthy high-school contests since August. "If Don Bosco played St. Thomas Aquinas on December 23rd or 28th, on national television, those ratings would be as good as the Sun Bowl, in El Paso, Texas," he said. (St. Thomas Aquinas, in Fort Lauderdale, was last year's consensus national champion, as Don Bosco had been in 2009, and was hoping to be again in 2011.) It was just a matter of getting the coöperation of the various state governing bodies that serve as a bulwark against competitive progress. "I don't think there's any question it's going to happen, and, again, what's going to drive it is money," Halloy said. "The high-school associations are going to get their hands in that kitty."
Meanwhile, Halloy said, "I have to treat Don Bosco like they're the Florida Gators." He went on, "Most people I work with kiss my ass. They're just so happy to be getting on a plane. Not these guys. 'You didn't have this or that on the buffet menu!' "
On the day of the game, the digital thermometer outside Manatee High School showed ninety-five degrees. This was good news for Halloy, who'd been so concerned about hurricane season that he'd spurned ESPN's overtures to televise the game, fearing that it might deflate attendance, and it was even better news to Joe Kinnan, the Manatee coach. At the press conference, Kinnan had cited the local humidity as one of his team's unsung assets. The Ironmen were suspicious. "They try to make it seem like it's Africa," Brian McAleer, the athletic director, said. "I know ninety-five, and it ain't ninety-five. Tell Kinnan it ain't working." Out on the field, an enormous electric fan had been set up on the Hurricanes' sideline; no such hospitality was accorded the visiting team.
Just before kickoff, three paracommandos from nearby MacDill Air Force Base fell toward the fifty-yard line from five thousand feet. One commando held in his hands the game ball, which he presented to an official upon touching down. Manatee won the coin toss, and deferred, opting to kick. "That's their first mistake," Coach Granatell muttered. "They don't know, baby!" the players shouted. "Jersey football!" a senior safety from Orange County, New York, said. But the bravado soon proved misplaced. There were other local complications. Because of the climate, Florida rules call for official water breaks throughout the game. The stoppages undermined the value of Don Bosco's no-huddle offense, which is a rarity at the high-school level. Also, there was something about the water. "It tastes like mold," one of the Ironmen said. "Tastes like salt and shit," Leonte Carroo said. "Poison," Jabrill Peppers said. And then a penalty flag voided a touchdown pass from Mike Yankovich to his housemate Carroo. The refs had assured Coach Toal beforehand that they would be impartial, but now a local reporter flashed a mischievous grin. "Got some home cookin'!" he said.
Manatee led by 7–6 at halftime. (Is it hot?" the Hurricane fans shouted. "Welcome to Florida, baby!") During a pregame video session at the hotel, Toal had warned his players about the Hurricanes: "There ain't nothing nice about them." His players now seemed inclined to agree, complaining in the locker room about routine gut punches when the refs weren't looking. A few Ironmen were nauseated and others were cramping. Toal prescribed them Alka-Seltzer Gold, while Ed Fox, the Touchdown Club president, went off in search of a vending machine for bottled water.
Toal disappeared into the bathroom for a couple of minutes, where he paced and seemed to work himself up into a trembling rage, while an assistant coach told the Ironmen that he considered them "the worst fucking team in America." When Toal reëmerged, he ordered out of the room all the "young guys" and the "guys that aren't playing," so that he could deliver his "gut check" message more personally and without crowding. "Don't give me that laissez-faire," he told the offensive line, and went on, using language more colorful, at an echoing volume. He looked spent when he was done, but the boys left the room in a frenzy of excitement, banging on lockers.
Don Bosco pulled ahead in the third quarter, with a field goal, though that, too, was not without its difficulties; lining up on the ten-yard line, the Ironmen were called for a false start and backed up to the fifteen—and then backed up again, for the same infraction, before they were allowed to proceed with the kick. "We got 'em on the ropes," Carroo yelled. "Let's choke 'em now." Instead, Manatee retook the lead with a field goal of its own, at the start of the fourth quarter. Then, with seven minutes remaining, Yankovich threw long over the top, while his surrogate brother sprinted forward, leaving his defenders in the dust. Sixty-three yards. Touchdown. No flag this time. It came, instead, on their seemingly successful two-point-conversion attempt: illegal procedure. Before the second try, another flag. A final attempt, from thirteen yards out, failed.
Manatee seemed to panic, and hiked the ball over their punter's head on the next possession, handing Don Bosco another easy score: 22–10. Facing aggressive pursuit on fourth and eleven during the following possession, the Hurricanes' versatile quarterback scrambled and found a narrow escape route. He tumbled to a stop and was granted a generous spot, further infuriating the Don Bosco supporters. First down! Two time-outs and four plays later, he scrambled again, and floated a pass in desperation to the back-left corner of the end zone. Replays later showed that the leaping receiver had come down out of bounds, but the official's arms went up, signifying a touchdown and bringing Manatee back within reach, at 22–16. What's more, Don Bosco was flagged for roughing the passer and unsportsmanlike conduct, to be enforced on the ensuing kick. "Make some more new rules up!" Toal shouted, as the Manatee band sprang to life.
A little over a minute remained. Manatee set up for an onside kick from the Don Bosco forty-five, and, on the New Jersey sideline, one felt a strong sense of foreboding. Chris Clark, a sophomore, received the bouncing ball like a shortstop and held on heroically as a couple of Hurricanes pummelled him at full speed. ("My leg feels like it fell off," he said afterward.) Victory saved. The refs, still under verbal assault from the Don Bosco side ("Pack up your fucking whistle, you prick!"), hurried away as the final seconds counted down, and were powerless to prevent what came next. Jabrill Peppers turned toward his teammates and began clapping his arms up and down, like the jaws of an alligator—the Gator Chomp, a local Florida custom. Some Hurricanes took offense. "Don't be doing that down here, boy," the nearest of them said, and shoved Peppers. The two sides converged quickly at midfield in a show of tribal posturing and shoving that escalated almost to a riot. There would be no customary handshaking and reconciliation. Toal stormed off the field without acknowledging his rival coaching legend.
Jabrill Peppers grew up in East Orange, a small city on Newark's western border, in a single-parent household. He played Pop Warner football for a team known as the Rams, which one of his former coaches, Yusuf Abdullah, characterized to me as representing "the ghetto," but he went to Catholic school and often made honors. In January of Jabrill's eighth-grade year, his older brother Don was shot in the face, point blank, while ordering dinner at the counter of a Chinese restaurant in Newark. His mother resolved to get Jabrill "out of the community," as she put it, and began taking more seriously the interest she'd been getting from the football coaches at private suburban high schools.
Peppers, a.k.a. Pep, Peppito, Peppy, and Brill, was a Pop Warner legend, the kind of special talent about whom fathers and coaches still recount stories years after he's left the playground, with maybe a touch of retrospective embellishment. There was the time when, as an eight-year-old, he "ran right out of his shoes," Abdullah told me, and continued on for eighty yards, into the end zone, in his socks. And that was before another coach, Chris Spivey, noticed that Peppers had a flat-footed stride that was suppressing his maximal speed. Spivey introduced him to a private track coach, who got him running on his toes. The coaches in East Orange were most impressed with Jabrill's power game, and liked to say, "When the kitchen gets hot, we're going with Brill Peppers." He played linebacker back then, and one opposing coach chose to pull his ten-year-olds off the field rather than submit them to minor car crashes at such an early age.
Ivory Bryant, Jabrill's mother, is a social worker and a Baptist minister, with a master's in divinity from Drew University. Her initial impression of Greg Toal, as she read about him and his boxing background on the Internet, was that he seemed "mean." But Jabrill was enthusiastic about Don Bosco, which he had seen on television, so she arranged to attend a game in Ramsey with the mother of Tony Jones, a star running back for the Ironmen who had grown up in Paterson, amid a similar environment. (Jones now plays for the University of Colorado.) Jabrill had always been good at assimilating; she recalled how easily he'd befriended Asian boys at the laundromat. "Believe it or not, I thought I would have a harder time adjusting," she told me recently, while sipping hot chocolate at a Dunkin' Donuts in Allendale, an upscale town that borders Ramsey, where she and Jabrill are now renting a two-bedroom apartment from the brother of one of Don Bosco's assistant coaches. Toal, she said, is "actually very nice."
Peppers was only the third player in Toal's Don Bosco tenure to make an impact as a freshman, but his early success was more than just rare by local standards; a year after his brother's death, he was named by Gatorade as the nation's top freshman. He has grown two inches since coming to the hill, and now stands six feet tall and weighs a shade below two hundred pounds. He bench-presses two hundred and fifty and runs the forty-yard dash in 4.3 seconds, or about as quickly as the typical N.F.L. running back. He has the smile of a natural entertainer and reminds one of his Don Bosco coaches of a young Michael Jackson—"you know, when he just went up there on Ed Sullivan and danced and spun and the world fell in love with him. They both have that aura shrouding them."
While the Fab Four seniors had been the focus of most of the pre-season attention, Peppers was quickly emerging as the breakout star of 2011, and it was his flashy style that seemed to resonate above all, even as it somewhat contradicted the traditionally conservative Ironman image. Peppers had followed up his two-touchdown performance against Mission Viejo with two more touchdowns, and an interception, against Manatee, and then returned home to find clusters of small boys hovering near the field each week, asking, "Where's No. 18?"
Bryant grew concerned when strangers started asking her to do the Pepper Shake. Jabrill had a cousin who had gone off to college as a football player and never graduated. College recruiters are technically forbidden from making contact with prospects until their junior year, but Bryant had already heard "whispers" from Rutgers and South Carolina, among others, and she was preparing her son for what she had been warned was likely to be the most intense solicitation of any athlete ever to come from New Jersey. "You're one injury away, every game, from not being able to play football," she told Jabrill. "So you have to have your Plan B."
Bryant enlisted Jabrill's Pop Warner mentors in a fatherly role, and they, seeing Peppers as a potentially redemptive figure for all of East Orange, were more than happy to help. "He's just a kid that God is steering in a different direction than some of the kids from the same area, man," Abdullah said. Fearing that divine intervention might not be sufficient, Abdullah still made sure to send text messages to his former pupil at least two or three times a week, "to remind him that he's not missing anything in the 'hood."
"They tell me I have to transcend the ordinary path," Peppers told me. "It's definitely a lot of pressure. I just go out and do what I know how to do best." He added, "I want to be an orthopedic doctor if this football doesn't work out, but songwriting is always going to be in my heart." As a freshman, he wrote, recorded, and posted online a number of songs, including "R.I.P. D-Tek," paying tribute to the unlikely role model that his brother had proved to be. "He just always pushed me to do good, even though he wasn't doing the right thing himself," Peppers said. "I want the younger generation to know what I'm doing is right."
Greg Toal stopped for breakfast at Abbie's Diner, in a strip mall about a mile from his house, in Wyckoff, on Columbus Day. It was unseasonably warm, and he was dressed in a blue Nike warmup shirt and mesh shorts. He'd given the team the week off from practice, their first such break since June. They had just defeated St. Edward, last year's Ohio state champion, 38–7, at the State Pride Challenge, another Ken Halloy special, held on the Fordham campus in the Bronx. (Jabrill Peppers made an interception, scored three touchdowns, and said afterward, "I'd like to thank my linemen.") They had a bye week coming up, and then a string of games against opponents in their nominal league, New Jersey's Big North conference. Plenty of people had made jokes that they were looking at a bye month, but Toal wasn't having it. "You're dealing with sixteen-, seventeen-year-old kids," he said. "Nothing you can take for granted."
The last time Don Bosco lost to an opponent from New Jersey was in 2005, in the state-championship game, against St. Peter's Prep, from Jersey City. The last time they lost to a public school was in 1996. Local teams, when not lamenting the fact that they have to play the Ironmen at all ("We don't take a general-math kid and put him in a calculus class, do we?" the coach of Clifton, the school Toal spurned to join Father Talamo, told the Times), have come to measure their own success in relative terms: minimizing Don Bosco's point total, say, and delaying the state's mercy rule from kicking in. (The clock runs without stopping in the second half once the lead reaches thirty-five points.) Ridgewood High, a public school in a wealthy town, achieved a moral victory in the season's third week by losing only 35–0 to Don Bosco. They achieved this in part by running the ball on nearly every down, and waiting out the duration of the play clock before taking each snap, so as to limit the amount of time available for Don Bosco's superior athletes to pile on. For a brief moment, late in the second quarter, it seemed as though Ridgewood might even score, and its fans gave the overmatched players a standing ovation. For Ridgewood's coach, Chuck Johnson, the point of greatest pride was that Don Bosco had not found sufficient comfort to send out its second string, which typically takes over at halftime. "There's not another public school in the state that's going to force them to play all four quarters," he boasted.
"I coached most of my life at public school, so I know how they feel," Toal said, after his eggs and bacon arrived. Yet what was he supposed to do? The Ohio game marked the end of the Ironmen's national schedule, and the beginning of a long and mandatory anticlimax. When they first started playing out-of-state opponents, in 2006, they'd been required by the New Jersey sanctioning authorities to demonstrate efforts to find local opponents first. They would send out blanket e-mails to athletic directors across the state, seeking availability, and sarcastic replies would come back recommending that they go play the Giants. In order to remain eligible for the state playoffs, they'd have to have played at least seventy per cent of their games against New Jersey teams. They looked into declaring independence from the state—becoming, in effect, a rogue football protectorate on a hill—hoping that this might inspire the creation of an I-95 Conference of parochial superpowers from Maryland to Massachusetts. They were told, Fine, but take your basketball team and your lacrosse team and your bowling team with you. The economics could never support such an arrangement.
The futility of the present circumstances in high-school football may best be illustrated by the transitive property. Ridgewood, having lost triumphantly by five touchdowns, then beat Teaneck by six, 41–0. Teaneck beat Northern Highlands, 21–3. Northern Highlands trounced Wayne Valley (42–6), who clobbered Passaic (48–13). And Passaic beat Fair Lawn by 46–14. Fair Lawn, according to MaxPreps.com, is the twelve-thousand-six-hundred-and-fifty-fourth-best team in the country, and its campus is eleven miles from Don Bosco.
"Everybody's always concerned that football's going to be too important, too big," Toal said. "And that makes a lot of people uncomfortable." He raised his eyebrows. "We've had kids that were borderline enrollees, guys that didn't do great. I said, 'Listen, at least they got a passion.' I teach driver's ed now. You've got some kids who—I worry about giving them their license, because, I tell you what, they got no passion for nothing. They don't play. They don't do anything. I think that's scary."
Jabrill Peppers had just scored a ninety-five on his permit test, and was making second honors for the current marking period. "The thing about Pep is, he's very bright," Toal said. "I think his I.Q. is probably off the charts. He's too damn smart, maybe, for his own good sometimes." Passion wasn't Peppers's problem; excessive attention was. "Hopefully he stays grounded," Toal said. "You know, you get too many people in their head sometimes. You get the lost uncles. They figure this is going to be their meal ticket, and all of a sudden they become the advisers."
A former Ironman, home from college for the long weekend, came by and said hello to his old coach. The interruption seemed to make Toal wistful, and he revisited the subject of competitive imbalance, framing it now as a consequence of Vietnam-era culture shock. "It's interesting how public schools have gone," he said, bringing up a stat that he'd heard in an education seminar a while back, about how, in the nineteen-sixties, something like eighty per cent of school principals were former football coaches. "Throughout the nation," he said. "Or the Midwest, whatever it was, but eighty per cent! They were the leaders in their community. They were looked upon. It was Friday-night football. Cheerleaders came out. It was a huge thing."
When he'd arrived at Hackensack High School, in 1990, he was surprised to discover that the football players were not the social leaders. "As time went on, they became the leaders of the school, and the school ran a lot smoother," he said. "Younger kids had role models. They said, 'I want to be like that guy.' If those kids are running the school, you got a chance."
On a recent chilly week night, a few dozen nine- and ten-year-olds were hollering in unison around a boisterous bearded man I'd seen several times on the Don Bosco sideline shouting advice, like a freelance coach, at some of the team's African-American players. His name was Nasir Gaines, or Coach Nas, as everyone calls him. "All set?" Nas shouted. "You bet!" the kids replied. "Who house?" "Our house!" "What's our number?" "One!" They were the North Ward Cardinals, a Pop Warner team getting ready for the league-championship game, at Newark's Schools Stadium, a newly refurbished landmark where the New Jersey National Guard amassed during the 1967 riots. The Cardinals, Nas told me, had gone years without winning a game before he took over as coach and instituted a tradition of "mini-Ironman practices," modelled on Toal's punishing workouts. "What are you playing for?" Nas finally asked the boys, and was met, at first, with silence. "The championship?" one kid volunteered. Nas shook his head. "Nah," he said. "You playing for a scholarship."
A voice over the loudspeaker congratulated Coach Nas and his Cardinals on their collective 3.01 grade-point average, and alluded to the program's burgeoning tradition of developing talent for local high schools, "including Don Bosco Prep, and, for most of you who do not know, Don Bosco Prep is not only the No. 1 team in the state of New Jersey; they are the No. 1 team in the United States of America." Cowbells and air horns sounded throughout the bleachers.
Don Bosco does not give athletic scholarships, which are illegal in New Jersey, as in other states, but it does offer academic scholarships and financial aid. Last year, the school awarded forty-four scholarships and distributed seven hundred thousand dollars in aid to more than two hundred additional students. The school's records don't indicate how many of those students play football, but Billy Lopez, an assistant coach who works primarily with wide receivers, told me that there were now about a dozen kids in the football program from Essex County, which includes Newark and East Orange, and he doubted that many of them were capable of paying the sticker price. He also noted that there was no bus service between there and the school, and pointed at John Krommenhoek, or Coach Kromes, a volunteer who played at Hasbrouck Heights with Toal forty years ago, and who now serves as the team's unofficial chauffeur, delivering a handful of city kids to and from school each day. "That guy is the hidden secret behind Don Bosco," Lopez said. "He's the greatest guy in the world."
Lopez is the cop who works the midnight shift. Now in his eleventh year of coaching at Don Bosco, he was earning just forty-four hundred dollars a year for his contribution. He saw it as a moral calling—"the theory of St. John Bosco is, take the kids from the city and help them"—but it was beginning to wear him out, and he thought more and more about retiring, to spend time with his nine-year-old twin boys, who play soccer. In addition to all the Don Bosco practices and video sessions, there were Pop Warner games to scout on weekends. He was the primary point of contact for Coach Nas and a couple of other youth coaches I met up on the hill, who have come to view themselves collectively as the Ironmen's farm system, or "pipeline." He was also involved in a tense confrontation at East Orange's Oval Park, two years ago, that illustrates some of the spillover effects of Don Bosco's rise to dominance in a state not known for its abundant football talent.
"I received a call saying that Bosco was in the park," Marion Bell, the football coach at East Orange Campus High School, explained recently. Bell grew up with Jabrill Peppers's mother, and was only then beginning to resign himself to the fact that he might lose possibly the most promising athlete ever to come from these parts. He hurried over to see for himself, identified Billy Lopez as an unfamiliar face, and asked him if he had a son on the field among the seventh and eighth graders who were then practicing. "Guy said no, he was there to check out athletes," Bell recalled. "I said, 'What, there's no good kids up in Bergen County?' We had some words, and he ended up leaving the park. It was just time for him to go."
Lopez told me that although the Don Bosco program had been built on the backs of "true New Jersey blue-collar kids," who were willing to do "whatever it takes," the team's expanding ambitions and travel schedule necessitated more natural talent. "You can't go out there and not have a guy that runs like Jabrill," he said. "You just can't do it."
"They think they're doing something for the kids," Bell scoffed. "There's only a handful that you can count and name that actually did something with the opportunity. Most of them go up there and don't play." He added, "I tell the Pop Warner guys, 'If you're going to sell those kids to Don Bosco, make them give you money. Make them give something back to the program.' If it were me, I'd say, 'Fine, if you want 'em, give me five thousand dollars.' "
When I brought this complaint up with Yusuf Abdullah, he laughed. "He has to humble himself," Abdullah said, and pointed out that Bell's own son, Tre, is a junior at St. Peter's Prep, and starring on its football team. Principle breaks down at the family level. Who wouldn't want the best for his boy? "I'm looking at sending my son to Bosco," Abdullah added. "He's not an outstanding football player, but his grades are decent. He blocked for Jabrill in PeeWees. I'm trying to get him out of the environment that we're in now. He might meet a kid at Don Bosco that becomes a lawyer or something, and become his longtime friend in life."
Billy Lopez recommended that I pay special attention to Jabrill Peppers as the team warmed up before games. "He'll be like this," Lopez said, shifting his head back and forth and darting his eyes around. "Looks like he's messing around. But you know what he's doing? He's already visualizing himself making somebody miss. That's why me and you aren't Jabrill Peppers. We can't do that."
It was true. During pregame walk-throughs in the gym, in the locker room, and even out on the field, between plays, Peppers was always in motion: dancing, flexing, "swaggin'," as he and some of the others like to say. "Hey, Mama, them boys is coming!" Peppers announced, as the team approached the field one Saturday, where he was about to expand his repertoire. On the Ironmen's first offensive play, Mike Yankovich handed off to Peppers, who, instead of taking off running, lofted a pass fifty yards downfield, just beyond Carroo's outstretched hands. "How about Jabrill Peppers, he can throw it a little bit, too," a commentator said, up in the broadcasting booth. "He can be our Q.B. next year!" someone shouted on the sideline.
"There's a lot of things I can bring to the table," Peppers told me. "Sometimes I have a tendency to do a little too much." He still preferred playing cornerback. "Defense is all about attitude," he said, and discussed his thought process in the rare instances when opposing receivers made catches on his watch: "O.K., that was lucky. Next play. If they catch it again, that's luck—next play. That's just how I stay with that edge. Like, I don't want to be cocky, but on the field I have to play with intensity."
On the street, he was trying to maintain a lower profile. "I'm still the average kid," he said, and mentioned that he often wore a hat or a hood, for cover. (In Allendale, which is less than one per cent African-American, this wasn't likely to help much.) But he couldn't resist engaging his Internet fans. "Google me," he wrote, at the top of his Twitter bio, and retweeted choice compliments: "It's like LeBron when he was in high school"; "A future NFL player @jabrillpeppers just followed me. #happiestdayofmylife." In his few spare moments, as the fall progressed, Peppers continued jotting down lyrics in a notebook, for future use: "Destined to make it, moving like the matrix, can't stop my athleticism, get back to your basics. . . . I'm No. 1, but I added a 8, lockin' up receivers if they land upon my plate." Another recording session would have to wait until the winter.
Late in October, Peppers's responsibilities broadened still further. Leonte Carroo, traditionally the team's punt-return and kick-return specialist, separated his shoulder during practice—a casualty of the full-tilt warrior ethos on the hill. The next game, Peppers dropped back to receive his first punt, against Paramus Catholic, and returned it forty-five yards to the end zone, untouched.
Marching down the hill at halftime, a few minutes later, the Ironmen found themselves in an unusual position. They were being taunted—for leading by only ten points. Fifty Paramus Catholic Paladins, clad in black and pink (for breast-cancer awareness), encroached on the rear guard of the Bosco phalanx and appeared almost to be chasing the home team away from the field, in shame. "Uh oh!" they howled. "Tough guys can't take a hit. Better not play us close!"
Peppers and Carroo were among the last in line, and slowed up, closing the gap. They seemed to revel in the antagonism—a rare bit of drama for a New Jersey football game—as their coaches quietly seethed. Peppers turned and began clapping his hand against his helmet, in mock applause at the Paladins' audacity. "You're lucky I ain't playing," Carroo shouted.
"You let 'em talk," one of the Don Bosco coaches admonished.
"We'll see them in twenty minutes," another said.
But the coaching staff was humiliated by the display and, behind doors, let the boys know it. Toal's speeches are legendary, and alumni still slip into the locker room to be reminded of their emotional force, like students of great university lecturers, even if the consensus seems to be that he's getting complacent, relying on old material, or else self-conscious about the microphones and cameras that now turn up with regularity. Toal's halftime show did not disappoint this time, however. Water bottles wound up on the floor. Some furniture was rearranged. The spectre of new "opportunity periods," as the most punitive practice sessions are called, was raised. The Ironmen went out and scored twenty-eight points in the third quarter. On the sideline, a priest shook his head and told me, "It's like two different teams. Coach Toal must have said a special prayer for them in the locker room."
Yet the Ironmen's eventual forty-five-point drubbing of Paramus Catholic was deemed unimpressive and introduced an element of doubt about their presumed top-dog status at the start of the season. Rivals.com, perhaps relishing the chance to stoke a virtual riot on its message boards, dropped Don Bosco from No. 1 in its national rankings, declaring the Ironmen offense "one-dimensional."
For Toal and his staff, this slight provided a handy excuse to impose more opportunity periods in the weeks to follow. When the Ironmen faced the Paladins a second time, in the first round of the playoffs, in November, they were instructed to "get after their asses from the first whistle." They led 35–3 at the half, and this time, as they swaggered down the hill, one of the assistant coaches asked Peppers why he insisted on cutting back toward the middle of the field on long runs, instead of sprinting wide and leaving pursuers at a distance.
"Coach, Coach, you don't understand where I'm from," Peppers said. "I like making people miss."
"The Lord told me to tell you one word today: that you're unstoppable," Father Manny Gallo said, addressing the team at the grotto for the last time, in early December. "Yes, they might stop you one yard. They might tackle you. But they can't stop you from winning." He held up a relic of St. John Bosco, the Italian acrobat turned tough guy. "Let him be an inspiration to us, that he who did not quit was unstoppable. You hear that? Don Bosco was unstoppable, because he's in a hundred and thirty-five countries and there's seventeen thousand Salesians." A few minutes later, they all climbed aboard three buses headed for MetLife Stadium, in the Meadowlands, home to the Giants and the Jets, for the state championship.
The Ironmen's winning streak stood at forty-five games. They were set to play their nemeses the Bergen Catholic Crusaders, but, in a sense, they were also competing against another Catholic school, seven hundred and fifty miles away—the Trinity Shamrocks, in Louisville, Kentucky. Trinity, which plays under Kentucky's more lenient—that is, less merciful—mercy rule, had done an arguably better job of running up the score against mediocre opponents (72–0, in the first round of the state playoffs, for instance), and had acquired its share of non-local scalps as well, with victories over teams from neighboring Ohio, Indiana, and Tennessee. The high-school ranking system is even more fractured than the college system was before the consolidation of the Bowl Championship Series, with no fewer than nine organizations purporting to offer finality. Sports Illustrated and a couple of the recruiting sites were favoring Trinity; ESPN and USA Today leaned toward Don Bosco. Merely winning would not suffice.
Don Bosco vs. Bergen Catholic is the North Jersey equivalent of Harvard-Yale, and draws crowds of ten thousand or more in spite of the recent imbalance. Two years ago, the Bergen Catholic administration, faced with declining enrollment and increasing financial constraints owing to the recession, decided to confront its Don Bosco problem head on. Its solution was to poach Toal's deputy, the offensive coördinator Nunzio Campanile, and install him as head coach. ("I was in Costa Rica on vacation when I got the call," Ed Fox said. "This guy I know from Bergen, he says, 'We got Nunzio!' ") Last year, Campanile lured another Don Bosco coach across the county, as well as a young running back, who transferred. Don Bosco, meanwhile, installed Campanile's younger brother, Anthony, in his place, elevating the rivalry to a blood feud.
Bergen Catholic was now going national, too. This season, the team played on the undercard at each of Ken Halloy's Don Bosco promotions, losing narrowly against a Tampa school at Bradenton, and defeating Washington, D.C.,'s Friendship Academy at Fordham. During the schools' regular-season meeting, in late September, Bergen Catholic had led going into the fourth quarter, and succumbed only after a couple of late miscues. The Crusaders were ranked thirty-third according to a Rivals.com compilation poll, and joined Don Bosco last fall in pressing the state for an exemption from the seventy-per-cent rule next year.
The contenders for the state football championship do not receive police escorts in New Jersey, as they do in Texas, and Friday-night traffic delayed the buses along Route 17, negating somewhat the emotional momentum of the players' tearful departure. Each lost himself in his headphones, and seldom has a bus full of teen-age boys remained so quiet for so long. As in the season opener, the Ironmen were short a valuable player: one of the receivers, an Essex County transfer, had been asked to withdraw from school after he was accused of breaking into lockers and stealing phones. A couple of defensive grunts were nursing swollen ankles from sprains and stress fractures suffered months earlier. Leonte Carroo's shoulder was only just ceasing to make him wince every time he got hit. Several of the seniors struggled to recall the last time they had experienced losing. "Freshman basketball, we lost in the counties to Teaneck," Darius Hamilton said. "I cried, and I didn't even play."
Toal, in his pregame talk, urged each boy to "play this game for someone that you love—they could be deceased, or they could be alive," and Jabrill Peppers, thinking of his brother, felt as if the message were being directed right at him. Without thinking it through, perhaps, he had taken in recent weeks to embracing the nickname Boobie, as in Boobie Miles, the charismatic black running back who is nonetheless the tragic figure of "Friday Night Lights": an All-American talent from a broken family who injures his knee and loses his future.
The announced attendance of sixteen thousand-plus only underscored the vastness of MetLife Stadium, most of which remained empty, but the atmosphere at field level was suitably professional. A trio of Nike reps were waiting on the sideline, in support of their Don Bosco brand. The Pop Warner pipeline was ready, too, with new recruits in tow. "Meet the next Jabrill Peppers," Coach Nas said, introducing me to an eighth grader from Newark named Steven Morris. "They call him the Hustleman." Worrisome rumors circulated that this could be the end of the Toal regime—that he was a candidate for the head coaching position at Fordham, and might find it hard to turn down the chance to work for Vince Lombardi's alma mater.
"They don't know!" the Ironmen shouted, though if there was anyone who ought to know it was the Crusaders. Bergen Catholic's problems went beyond familiarity. They got the ball first, and quickly looked unprepared and outclassed: sack, interception. A priest wearing a Don Bosco varsity jacket over his clerical shirt and collar took out his cell phone. "Seven-nothing," he reported. "Still the first quarter. . . . Very good start." Then the Crusaders botched a punt and the Ironmen scored again.
Don Bosco led at the half, 21–7. Peppers, as is his habit, paced throughout much of the break, while the rest of his teammates slumped on stools, recovering their breath. "Don't want to sit down and go into a withdrawal, or whatever," he told me. "I just want to keep that rush going, so I can come out in the second half explosive." With a safe lead seemingly in place, the student cheering section began chanting "Speedy, Speedy," addressing an ungainly senior who had suffered through four years of round-the-calendar workouts without seeing any meaningful action. No such luck here. In the third quarter, Mike Yankovich emerged from a pileup with no sensation in the ring and pinkie fingers on his left, or throwing, hand. He stayed in the game. Only later did he realize that he'd broken his right hand, too. With two minutes remaining, Peppers, who had thus far been stymied, put his explosiveness to good effect, barrelling over a defender and continuing thirty-six yards, into the end zone, for his twenty-fifth touchdown of the season, pushing the lead to 42–14.
Just as in the pros, hundreds of championship hats had been pre-made to order, in anticipation of an Ironmen victory, and the boys flocked to put them on before mugging en masse for any camera in sight, index fingers held aloft. The caps said "State Champions," but the celebration on the field left a different impression. "National champions, baby!" "We did it." Down in Kentucky, the Shamrocks had won convincingly as well, by 62–21, and were likely thinking the same thing. A pair of proud heavyweights, they seemed destined to split the belts, and Ken Halloy, back in Columbus, was already dreaming of his next challenge match. ♦


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Country Music Association Awards: Take a big bow, Blake
The Blake Shelton-Miranda Lambert household needs a trophy room expansion after the couple swept the top categories at the 46th annual Country Music Association Awards in Nashville on Thursday.
Shelton won his first entertainer of the year award, and he and his wife took home vocalist honors in their respective categories. They shared song of the year for writing Over You.
His three wins matched his career total: He had previously won musical event and twice won male vocalist. Lambert had won five previous awards, including female vocalist in 2010 and 2011.
Shelton said he has far exceeded his early career goals, which were to "have a gold record ... and become a member of the Grand Ole Opry. I love country music more than anybody in this room."
PHOTOS:Relive the show's performances
WINNERS LIST:Who took home the trophies?
PHOTOS:All the red-carpet looks
LIVE FROM THE CMA AWARDS:The news as it happened
Lambert said she'll try "to represent all the females who want to be up-and-comers. We'll stick together."
In something of an upset, veterans Little Big Town won vocal group over Lady Antebellum, winners for the past three years. The quartet also won single for Pontoon, a song that was the subject of a risqué barb from fifth-time co-hosts Carrie Underwood and Brad Paisley.
"It was like an out-of-body experience," said Kimberly Schlapman afterward of the group's first awards. "I didn't know what was happening."
Also winning for the first time was emerging star Eric Church, who showed that his progressive sound also is influential. In accepting album of the year for Chief, he said he had spent "a lot of my career wondering where I fit in — too country, too rock. I thank you guys for giving me somewhere to hang my hat."
Church, who had five nominations, the most of any artist, said backstage that "country music has always been the coolest format. It's in a great space creatively.''
On the heels of Church's album win, cherub-faced Hunter Hayes won new artist.
Contributing: Brian Mansfield in Nashville

subset: commoncrawl


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Viewing tagged as: hot topic
During its tenth session (16-20 March 2015), the Commission for Phytosanitary Measures (CPM) agreed that the concept of a commodity standard should be determined and agreed to Terms of reference (ToRs) for a working group to discuss the concept of a commodity standard (please find them attached).
The meeting of the working group is scheduled to be held from 20 to 24 July 2015 in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. Experts for the working group have been selected by the CPM Bureau.
According the ToRs, the International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC) Secretariat is issuing a call for discussion papers for this meeting ...
hot topic
Continue reading…


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The Norton Reader: An Anthology of Expository Prose
Arthur M. Eastman
Norton, 1969 - College readers - 1505 pages
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American asked become better C. S. Lewis called century course duckspeak E. B. White E. M. Forster Emily Post essay Essoin example experience expression eyes fact feel fish give grammar hand human I. A. Richards ideas imagination Ingsoc intuition Jacob Bronowski judgment kind knowledge language learning Leary literature live look Marshall McLuhan matter meaning ment metaphor mind nature never Newspeak noun object Old English Oldspeak once Pearl Harbor perhaps person poet poetry possible prose Proto-Indo-European question reason relation rhythm seems sense sentence shock simply snow social society sound speak speech style talk teach teacher tell tence things thought tion true truth turn understand verb vocabulary whole Wimsatt's note words write


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The Wheat Foods Council is defending the health attributes of enriched grains and white flour.
The council recently drafted a letter supporting enriched grains following a Nov. 12 article in the Washington Post about "healthful alternatives" to baking with white flour. Author Casey Seidenberg said refined white flour is called "the white devil" by many in the nutrition community and claims most of the essential minerals are lost during the enrichment process.
Enriched white flour is the finely ground endosperm of the wheat kernel. Many of the nutrients that are milled out are replaced through enrichment or fortification, according to the council.
"It's an easy target to talk about enriched grains, because when you take the bran and the germ out, you do lose a lot of nutrients," said council president Judi Adams. "But they always forget, and we keep trying to tell them, three main B vitamins are added back in equal or in one case, double amount. There's twice as much folic acid in there."
In the letter, the council says enriched flour is the primary source of folic acid. The Centers for Disease Prevention and Prevention (CDC) say enriched grains, primarily wheat, are responsible for dramatically lowering the rate of neural tube birth defects by approximately one-third in the United States. The CDC named folic acid fortification of enriched grains as one of the top 10 public health achievements of the last decade.
"White flour may be enriched with 'synthetic' vitamins – i.e., vitamins that have been made in a laboratory rather than by a plant – but clearly they are well-absorbed as illustrated by the effect they have had on the health of infants," the letter states.
The letter says it's a stretch to blame white flour for weight gain in the United States, noting that U.S. wheat consumption has decreased 13 pounds per capita since 1997 as obesity has skyrocketed.
Weight gain is a matter of calories from all sources, not one particular food or group, according to the council. The current Dietary Guidelines for Americans call for the average American to consume six one-ounce servings of grain foods daily, half from whole grain sources and the other half from enriched sources. When followed correctly at an appropriate calorie level, the guidelines have been shown to be nutritionally balanced, aid in weight management and reduce risk of disease.
"Unfortunately, less than 5 percent of Americans actually follow the guidelines," the letter states.
Adams estimates she writes six response letters a year to instances of enriched grain "bashing."
"Whole grains are the darling, and they should be – they're great, they're nutritious, they're important, but enriched grains are important too, for women of a childbearing age," she said.
Adams said the council is working to get correct information about enriched grains to dieticians.
About 95 percent of white flour in the United States is enriched. Adams doesn't expect federal regulations regarding whole or enriched grains to change. The council will continue to promote current dietary guideline recommendations, she said.


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Garage Doors East Haven, Garage Doors & Gates Repair.
Schedule Garage Door Repair and Service Today!
Welcome to TCWRC Garage Repair , performing garage door repair in East Haven, Connecticut. We offer garage door repair for broken, bent, off track or noisy garage door tracks, rollers, cables and more.
We also provide garage door installation of new doors or panels, door openers, transmitters, receivers and a variety of accessories. Garage Door Experts can do it all.
We provide expert overhead and garage door repair and installation for a affordable and expert garage door repair and installation company in East Haven, simply contact TCWRC Garage Doors Repair for an estimate today!
Some common garage door problems we have solved for clients include broken springs, bent tracks, noisy doors, broken cables or rollers, and more. You'll be glad to know that we service all makes and models of garage doors And chain overhead door openers, so remember no job is too small. We do it all.
we repair and install all types of garage doors and garage door openers from Lift Master to Genie and many more. Some of the most common repairs include fixing broken springs, doors that are off track, doors that won't go up or down. We provide complete door opener and garage door replacement services.
Overhead Door Installation East Haven
Automatic Door Opener Installation
Automatic Door Opener Repair East Haven
Panel Replacement East Haven
Replacement Transmitters and Photoelectric Eyes East Haven
Broken Springs Roller and Hinge Replacement
Extension Spring Replacement East Haven
Broken Cable Repair East Haven
Upgrading to Energy Efficient Insulated Garage Door East Haven
Call us toll free at : (877) 343-0556
We Services this cities in Connecticut:
• Ansonia • Beacon Falls • Bethany • Bethel • Branford • Bridgeport • Brookfield • Cheshire • Danbury • Darien • Derby • East Haven • Easton • Fairfield • Georgetown • Greenwich • Guilford • Hamden • Heritage • Madison • Meriden • Middlebury • Milford • Monroe • Naugatuck • New Canaan • New Fairfield • New Haven • Newtown • North Branford • North Haven • Norwalk • Orange • Oxford • Prospect • Redding • Ridgefield • Seymour • Shelton • Sherman • Southbury • Stamford • Stratford • Trumbull • Wallingford • Waterbury • West Haven • Weston • Westport • Wilton • Wolcott • Woodbridge • Woodmont •
We Services this Zip Codes in East Haven:
• 06512 •


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Backyard Beekeeper
In-stock orders in by noon usually ship out same day! If there is a delay, we'll let you know ASAP.
20 Years
of Service
of Service
We've been doing this for a while now, so you can count us to be here for you. We're a family run business with a focus on service!
No Hassle
30-Day Returns
30-Day Returns
Whether you got the wrong product(s), something arrived broken, or the product is just not what you were expecting, we want to make sure you are happy. Give us a call for any returns. For specific information, read our return policy »
We've Got
The Experts
The Experts
Our staff collectively has over 45 years of experience! Have a question? Just ask!
5 Star
While we can toot our horn all day long, why don't you see what OTHERS are saying about us »


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Binoculars of all types are wanted by collectors. Those made in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are favored by serious collectors. Binoculars were first made about the time the telescope was invented, in the 17th century. The small, attractive binoculars called opera glasses are listed in their own category.
Enter your email below to receive Kovels Komments for the latest antiques & collectibles news, answers to readers questions, marks and tips. In your inbox every Wednesday.
Current & Past Issues
Buyer's Price Guide
Words of Wisdom (Letter to Lee)


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List of parishes in Iceland
This article or section is a stub (i.e., in need of additional material). You can help OrthodoxWiki by expanding it.
- Saint Nicholas Orthodox parish in Reykjavik, Iceland. Rector: Fr. Timothy Zolotuskiy. Language: Russian, English, Bulgarian, Polish. http://here.is/orthodox
- Serbian Orthodox parish in Reykjavik. Language: Serbian. http://spc.is


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I am programming a Pac man game. But I don't know how I can create a Level. I have upload the file, where you can see how the level should look. P stands for Pacman, M for his opponent, and # is a power up, * is the wall and ... is the stuff which he has to collect. My first idea, was that I convert this file into an Array. Then I could use a for loop, to display it on the Screen.
But how can access the file?
Can someone please help me?


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Celebrate Our 5 Year Anniversary With Us Free Shipping On All Orders In August
Visitors Right Now
All of our Blazin' Baseball Hoodie Blankets are custom-made-to-order and handcrafted to the highest quality standards.
You should be confident that your purchase is through a credible and dependable seller that you can trust. Pacific Pike has been certified by Google allowing our products to be sponsored on their trusted shopping network. Not only do we have to meet strict guidelines but our reviews are verified for 100% authenticity. Feel free to view Pacific Pike on the Google Shopping Network by clicking on our certified shop banner.
We ship worldwide from one of our four locations.
At Pacific Pike, we truly offer the most stunning, high-quality products in the world.
We do WHATEVER it takes with outstanding customer service support to assist everyone as we genuinely value our customer satisfaction with absolute ZERO risk.
We make sure that every customer is 110% satisfied in every aspect with 24/7/365 FAST SUPPORT!


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1997 Ty Beanie Baby Snort the Bull
In great condition with swing tag.
Style number: 4004
Birthday: May 15, 1995
Intro date: January 1, 1997
Retire date: September 15, 1998
Length: 9"
Info from website: tycollector.com
Tags: beanie baby, plushie, vintage collectible, collectible toy, stuffed toy, stuffed animal toy, plush animal toy, plush toy, bull, cow, red, farm animal, animal toy
Items are to be paid in full before they are shipped.
Items are shipped out within 1 to 3 business days. Shipping labels are purchased through Etsy so the tracking number will be posted instantly.
I recycle boxes that are in good condition to keep down shipping supply costs. Bubble mailers are not recycled and are always bought brand new.
Domestic and international shipping fees are calculated by your location with several options for shipping costs.
We offer a free shipping guarantee, within the United States, on all orders $35 or more.
Not all items are always eligible for international shipping. Please check the listing to find if it is available for international shipping or not. If you are not sure, please message me and I will let you know if the item is or not.
Holiday shipping cutoff dates:
Domestic shipments (continental US)
• USPS Retail Ground: December 14
• USPS First Class Package Service: December 20
• USPS Priority Mail: December 21
• USPS Priority Mail Express: December
Just contact me within: 7 days of delivery
Ship items back to me within: 14 days of delivery
But please contact me if you have any problems with your order.
Because of the nature of these items, unless they arrive damaged or defective, I can't accept returns for:
All vintage items are sold as is. If an item is damaged from shipping, please contact me immediately and we will go from there.
No refunds or exchanges on digital downloads (digital photos).
*We do not resell vintage items that were bought from a store or online.
*Hagglers of our items' prices will not be tolerated.
*We are not interested in collaborations with other sellers and/or creators at this time.
This Privacy Policy describes how and when I collect, use, and share information when you purchase an item from me, contact me, or otherwise use my services through Etsy.com or its related sites and services.
This Privacy Policy does not apply to the practices of third parties that I do not own or control, including Etsy or any third party services you access through Etsy. You can reference the Etsy Privacy Policy to learn more about its privacy practices.
To fulfil your order, you must provide me with certain information (which you authorized Etsy to provide to me), such as your name, email address, postal address, payment information, and the details of the product that you're ordering.
I share information with Etsy as necessary to provide you my services and comply with my obligations under both the Etsy Seller Policy and Etsy Terms of Use.
I retain your personal information only for as long as necessary to provide you with my services and as described in my Privacy Policy.
*this privacy policy is subject to change as I learn more about GDPR and how to maintain a compliant privacy policy*


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February 22, 2011
Reminder: Candidate forums start today
The first candidate forums for the position of Sr. VP for Academic Affairs are taking place today and tomorrow, February 22 and 23. An open forum will be held at 3 p.m. today, and the second faculty forum will be held at 1:30 p.m. tomorrow. Both forums will be held in WD 409. The candidate is Dr. Rhonda Richards. You can read more about her here. After attending a forum, you may complete the Feedback Form posted online at the above location.
Dr. Richards speaks with faculty members this morning.
Chorus to perform March 6
Giovanni Pergolesi died at age 26 from tuberculosis.
The Columbus State Vocal Ensemble, under the direction of Gordon Franklin, will perform its Winter Concert at 3:00 p.m. on Sunday, March 6, at the Franklin Park Conservatory, 1777 East Broad St.
The concert will include the chorus, soloists and a string orchestra. Schubert's "Mass in G" and Pergolesi's "The Magnificat" will be featured, accompanied by a selection of spiritual hymns and psalms.
During his short life (1710–1736), Giovanni Battista Pergolesi became an accomplished composer, violinist and organist. His "Magnificat" in B-flat is an excellent example of a Baroque Period four-part choral piece. The text of the "Magnificat" is derived from the vespers, or evening prayers in the Roman Catholic Church.
Franz Schubert (1797–1828) was an Austrian composer from the Classical Period. He is well known for his religious works. Schubert's "Ave Maria" is perhaps one of the most widely known of his works. His "Mass in G" is a four-part choral piece written to accompany the Latin text in the Roman Catholic Church and varies only slightly from the Order of Mass. "Mass in G" is a pristine example of classical liturgical music.
Gospel Ensemble to perform twice on
March 11
The Columbus State Gospel Vocal Ensemble. Director Emma Easton is at center front.
The Columbus State Gospel Ensemble, under the direction of Emma Easton, will perform at the Presidential Inauguration on Friday, March 11, and perform their Winter Quarter concert at 7:30 p.m. in Nestor Auditorium.
The Gospel Ensemble will present "Paved the Way," the story and song of pioneers who braved societal issues to broaden the path for today's gospel singers. During this program, GVE will travel the streets of yesteryear to pay tribute to the father of gospel music, Thomas A. Dorsey, the queen of gospel, Albertina Walker, and trailblazer Andre Crouch. The concert is free and open to the public.
Women's self-defense class offered
The Office of Student Activities and Athletics will hold women's self-defense classes on Tuesday, March 1, and Tuesday, March 8, from 12-1 p.m. in Delaware Hall Room 158. The classes are free and open to the public.
Sustainability Committee speaker rescheduled for March 1
The Sustainability Committee invites the campus community to the rescheduled meeting with Jerry Tinianow, from the Center for Energy and Environment at the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission on Tuesday, March 1, at 2:00 p.m. in WD 404. The meeting was rescheduled from earlier this month due to bad weather. You can read more about the Center here: http://www.morpc.org/energy/center/main.asp.
Tinianow will discuss the activities surrounding Eco Summit 2012, which will be hosted in Columbus in the fall of 2012.
Upcoming professional development opportunities listed
To see a complete listing of professional development courses and seminars on topics including technology, leadership, supervision, and much more, view the flyer online here.


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The Sack of Lawrence and the Guerrilla War
On the 150th anniversary of William Clarke Quantrill's raid on Lawrence, Tony R. Mullis of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, examines the notorious massacre and the years of back-and-forth atrocities by Confederate bushwackers and pro-Union Jayhawkers that led up to it.
Mullis is a retired lieutenant colonel in the United States Air Force and the author of Peacekeeping on the Plains: Army Operations in Bleeding Kansas.
Co-sponsored by the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College Foundation.
Part of our A Quantum of Quantrill series of events


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SSC Result 2012 Mark Sheet will be available on May 16 – Tabulation Sheet Distribution – www.educationboard.gov.bd
SSC Result 2012 has been published on May 7, 2012. Now all the students are eagerly waiting for their Mark Sheet, also known as Tabulation Sheet. Bangladesh Education Board has published a circular to inform that, SSC Exam 2012 Tabulation Sheet (Mark Sheet) will be available from tomorrow Wednesday, May 16, 2012.
All the schools are hereby notified to collect respective institutions Tabulation Sheet during office hours from specific board office, Secondary Examination Branch. Every school principal or a teacher referred the principal can collect the Tabulation Sheet. No other person is authorized to collect the SSC Exam 2012 Mark Sheet.
Students can collect their SSC Result 2012 mark sheet from their own school from May 16, 2012, only after their SSC Exam 2012 Tabulation sheet has been obtained from respective board office.
All students passed SSC Exam 2012 need the SSC Marksheet 2012 for their College HSC Admission 2012 finalization.


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Java's Not The Only JVM-Based Language
MartinPacker 11000094DH Comments (9) Visits (20457)
JVM-based languages have an interesting property for z/OS programmers: They are zAAP-eligible. As we all know zAAP Eligibility brings a number of benefits - including the licence charge benefits and the ability to run on a full-speed processor even when your general-purpose processors are subcapacity ones. (I'll briefly mention zAAP-on-zIIP here for completeness, and then move on.) You... [More]
Pretty Printing XML in Python
MartinPacker 11000094DH Comments (2) Visits (27020)
A need has arisen for pretty printing XML. This post includes some Python code to do it. I've been working with the OpenOffice.org ODP presentation file format recently: I want to generate presentations from application code. An ODP file is a structured zip file. Among other items it contains an XML file - content.xml - which describes the pages in the presentation. content.xml... [More]


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Billetproof Nor-Cal: September 20, 2014
18 years of blood, sweat and gears!! Billetproof is backwith one-of-a-kind events, live bands, great vendors, and the sickest 64 and prior do-it-yourself traditional rods, kustoms and motorcycles on the planet. We will be limiting attendance to 1000 vehicles, so register early! There will be no exceptions this year.
Billetproof Nor Cal – September 20, 2014
Antioch Fairgrounds
1201 West Tenth St.
Antioch, California
- Spectator entrance opens at 8am (Spectator entry is $10 Free for kids under 13 and police & fire with proper ID)
- Indoor vendor and artist booths (check the Vendor Info section for details)
- Pinstripe panel jam
- Live bands playing throughout the day!
- Pin-Up Contest (contact Mitzi to participate Mitzi Valenzuela <firstname.lastname@example.com>)
- Pin-Up Dunk Tank
- Our famous trophies awarded in many categories!
- Swap Meet
- Delta Blues Festival in dowtown Antioch on Sat. Night. (FREE!)
- Dirt Track Racing at the Fairgrounds on Sat. Night (separate admission)
Registration is $25 if RECEIVED by Aug. 22, 2014. After that and at the gate it's $30. Do not count on being able to register at the event! PLEASE remember that this is an event for those of us who build our own traditional style rods and customs on a limited budget. NO billet-clad, digital gauge, pastel graphic, named after a fifties song trailer queens! Entry confirmation will be mailed approx 1 month before the event. Billetproof goes on rain or shine! No refunds. See you there!
Online Registration is now closed. You can register your ride on the day of the show at the gate. See you there!
Vendor Registration
Want to be a vendor at Billetproof Nor-Cal this year? We are expecting over 5000 people and 1000 cars this year !! All looking to have a great time and spend money on cool stuff. Our available spaces are $175 for a 10'x10′ space or $250 for 10'x20′. Spaces are indoors in a well-ventilated, high ceiling, easy access building with concrete floors. You can also be outdoors if you prefer. Print & mail the Billetproof Vendor Registration Form:
Billetproof Vendor
Registration Form
(about 555K)
Swap Meet Registration
Want to be a Swap Meet vendor at Billetproof Nor-Cal this year? We are expecting over 5000 people and 1000 cars this year…and you can be there with your swap goods for sale!!Swap Meet Spaces are for USED CAR AND MOTORCYCLE PARTS ONLY!!!! No Chinese tools, No Sham-Wows, No antique dolls, No new products. If you are dealing new products you must have a commercial vendors spot. Swap Spaces are 20×20 feet. Need more room? Buy more spaces.
Print out the form below and send it in. We will send you back a confirmation, map and schedule via email. Print out the confirmation and bring it to the gate on Sept. 20, 2014.
Billetproof Vendor
Registration Form
(about 555k)
If you have problems opening the vendor registration form, you can download Adobe Acrobat Reader here. If you have questions or would like a registration form snail-mailed to you, email us at firstname.lastname@example.com.
- 1964 and prior TRADITIONAL style rods and customs ONLY
- No visible billet anything! Especially wheels!
- No digital gauges
- No IFS on fenderless cars
- No trailered cars
- No mag wheels made after the 60's
- Traditional looking choppers and bobbers ONLY! (No modern West Coast Choppers, OCC style bikes)
Keep in mind that we have the right to refuse any vehicle WITHOUT A REFUND, so read the rules carefully and decide for yourself. Don't cry when we turn you away, tears stain billet.
For more info or to get on the Billetproof mailing list, email us at email@example.com.


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Whitney Port Models Two Wedding Hairstyles: See the Exclusive Photos (Plus, All the Scoop on Her New Invite Collection)
The star models to hot wedding hair styles and open up about her big day beauty plans
Whitney Port is in full wedding mode. The designer has been busy planning her upcoming nuptials to fiancé Tim Rosenman, and she also just launched her new invitation collection with Wedding Paper Divas — a process which has helped her brainstorm for her own big day.
To celebrate, PEOPLE joined Port at a hair trial. Below, the 29-year-old star modeled two popular hairstyles straight from the bridal runways and opened up about her wedding vision.
Courtesy Brittany Talarico; Inset: Mike Coppola/Getty
"It was a huge decision to cut my hair before getting married, because I feel like a lot of brides want the quintessential long wavy wedding hair," Port told PEOPLE. "For me, I was like, 'Do I really want to do this?' And everyone was saying that you're going to look back at your pictures and not like this short bob. It was something that I thought about, but I've looked at myself with long hair for so long, it will be fun to be different."
And the star maintains she won't be adding extensions for her wedding. "I think with the short hair, we can make something a little bit more traditional look a little bit more modern."
Port felt that way about the hairstyle she spotted at Marchesa's 2015 bridal fashion show. "I loved this one," Port shared of the soft, romantic pulled-back style. Instead of faux feathers, Port's hairstylist Dallin James added white flowers to her half-up look for a more earthy feel — a look Port hopes to incorporate into her wedding hair in some way.
"I love the idea of fresh flowers in part of my veil or something," she shared. "I think it's pretty, whimsical and looks bohemian."
Courtesy Brittany Talarico; Inset: Mike Coppola/Getty
But as much as she liked the first look, the second style is definitely more Port's vibe. "I'll probably go with something like this — just down and simple, and I can whip it around and not worry about it coming out and everything. I think it's effortless and beachy, and I could wear this if I wanted to do something more upscale and formal and do something cool for me."
The star's wedding day beauty mantra is all about feeling comfortable in her own skin. "I think overall wedding beauty has to be simple — less is more, really natural and pretty. It's a long day and you want to be fresh and you know a million people are going to be touching you and kissing you. It's just more about letting your natural beauty shine."
As for what she'll wear, Port's idea for a gown has evolved.
"I've had different ideas about the dress," she shared. "At first I was thinking very Calvin Klein, a little slip-y, simple. But then I thought, 'You know, it's your wedding day. Wear something a little bit more than just lingerie.' So I'm working with a designer to actually design something with a little more detail in it."
Courtesy Brittany Talarico; Inset: Mike Coppola/Getty
With her wedding pending, now was the perfect time for the bride-to-be to launch her invitation collection with Wedding Paper Divas.
"Each collection is very, very different. Each one defines a different kind of person so you won't really see a very fluid theme throughout — which was important to me. I wanted it to be very unique," she said. "In terms of designing the invitations, it's a lot about utilizing textures and fonts and colors. It's different because it's not so much about feel and comfort. So the color palate and the fonts I think are most important."
And while she's not using one of her exact designs for her own wedding paper, she did incorporate elements of them all.
"There's one that has the green wreath watercolor, which is really pretty because it is enchanting and forest-y and whimsical. I think that one is chic and not busy," she explained. "What's been so fun is I have so many inspirations from my own wedding. I change my mind almost every day about what I want mine to look like so it was fun to use this as a tester to see what I was really leaning towards and gravitating to."
Catch a clip of Port talking about her new line below. What do you think of her bridal vision? Which hairstyle do you like? Share your thoughts below.
–Brittany Talarico