By Hal Levy, Shore Line Newspapers
Special to MaxPreps.com
The line spilled out the door of the Augusta Curtis Memorial Cultural Center 45 minutes before the scheduled starting time.
Already, Diane Syzmaszek and her daughter, Jennifer, were greeting friends who had gathered to pay respects to former Maloney-Meriden football coach, Rob Szymaszek, who died last week after a long battle with brain cancer.
By the time wake was supposed to start Sunday, the line snaked out to East Main Street, several hundred strong. Szymaszek was held that much in respect, not just in Meriden, but across Connecticut.
A player and captain at Maloney, he returned to his alma mater in 1976 and led the Spartans to a 160-90-13 record from then until 2001 when the cancer first surfaced. It went far enough into remission that he was able to come back to work as an assistant coach and help Meriden Record-Journal sports editor Bryant Carpenter with a book, entitled "Life is Still Good." The book is due out later this year and chronicles Szymaszek's fight against cancer.
The title is taken from the phrase he often used when someone asked how he was. The answer is that even as the disease robbed him of some vitality and left him slower, it never robbed him of his dignity, his sense of humor or his care for others.
Last spring, coaches from around the state gathered with friends and family of Szymaszek at a testimonial. Some 500 people were there. He had managed to write part of a speech, but when it came time for him to talk, he discarded it and spoke as he always did - from the heart.
In addition to being Maloney's football coach, he also worked in, and eventually was in charge of, the guidance department. That enabled his passion for kids to come to the fore.
"Rob loved kids," Maloney assistant principal Donald Panciera told John Pettit of the Record-Journal. "He just had a great rapport with them. They trusted him. He never turned a kid away that had a problem or an issue. They would seek him out. He was just so giving to all our students, not just athletes."
"He knew how to push and how to console," Carpenter said. "He was the father of one daughter and de facto father of many boys who played for him."
"When I first started on his staff, my mentality was to be a hard-nosed football coach," long-time Maloney assistant Mike Falis told the Record-Journal. "I'll never forget he said `Mike if you chew their ass out in practice, make sure you hug them before they leave the locker room. They've got to know you care about them'."
Former Hamden High coach Ron Carbone, who first met Szymaszek when Carbone was the defensive coordinator at Southern Connecticut State University and Szymaszek was a defensive back there, said "Even when he was struck with this terrible disease, he never surrendered and he never gave in to it. It was always `I'm fine, I'm fine; I'm getting better.' He set an example for everybody, not only how to live, but how to die."
Maloney is off to a 2-0 start under head coach Bob Zito.
There was some thought given to postponing the second game, but Zito and Falis recalled that Szymaszek used to tell them, "Never postpone a game. It's football. You play it no matter what."
So the Spartans went to Hartford Public Saturday and got their second win, 18-8.
They didn't play their best game by any means but they played with spirit and Szymaszek was in their thoughts, as he was in everyone's this week.
