'Coach Hap' Relished His Role
Working With Young Gridders

As a young assistant he learned the ropes of the gridiron game alongside legendary coaches Clary Anderson and Butch Fortunato, and nearly a half century later he was still enjoying coaching, just at a more understated level.

Yet he continued to love coaching young football players as much as he ever had 40 years prior.

Regardless of the fact he was frequently fulfilling his role in the more obscure setting of chilly fall Saturday mornings, where mostly just freshmen players’ parents and families were on hand for 9 a.m. kickoffs, it didn’t matter to Dick Hapward.

In fact, he relished those teaching moments regardless of being out of the more high-profile setting of varsity football with Friday Night Lights or the sunny focus of Saturday afternoons.

“I hired Dick as my freshman coach when I took the job at West Essex, and he was such a great person to have on your staff,” recalls Ron Anello, who recently finished a 2-year stint as the interim athletic director at Montclair and has a long and impressive resume as an AD and head football coach. “A couple of years later I asked him if he wanted to move up with me on the varsity level, and he said, ‘No, I want to stay with the freshmen team.’

“There are some guys in coaching with the experience he had whose ego would not let them accept just being a freshmen coach, but Dick was different. He simply loved teaching at that level, and he was so great at developing kids, teaching them basics of the game, and the kids loved him!

“And, he was amazing with his dedication in being thorough, that’s for sure!

"After each season we asked for a review of the players progress and Dick not only provided his insights, but handed me two or three very detailed hand-written pages on each of his freshmen players, which was just incredible!

Hapward, one of the true ‘Good Guys’ in New Jersey high school football coaching circles for nearly half a century, left us to join Anderson, Fortunato and others on that big football field above when he passed away Jan. 9th after a brief illness at the age of 91.

A 1952 graduate of Bloomfield High School where he excelled in football and basketball, the very athletic, former Bengal then played both soccer and basketball at North Carolina State University.

He served in the U.S. Army and had a long teaching and coaching career beginning at Madison High School where many legendary coaches such as Ted Monica, Frank Bottone and Jack Davies also had their early starts which jettisoned to memorable careers in the sport.

He taught Math and Science at Madison, Montclair and East Orange high schools, and also operated the popular ‘Hapward’s Tennis Shop’ in Bloomfield which has been around for more than 100 years.

But, it was coaching football that always pulled him back to the field during late summers and throughout the fall, and while he went with Anderson to Montclair State College when the legendary Mounties football and baseball coach left high school coaching in 1968, perhaps his most memorable moments in the sport would come three and four decades later as he mentored young ninth-grade gridders on the rise at West Essex, Delbarton and Seton Hall Prep where he spent much of the latter part of his coaching career.

“He will be missed by many,” said Anello. “And, remembered as the great coach and wonderful man he was!”

Hapward went from Madison to another scholastic football hotbed at the time as a young assistant on a veteran staff at Montclair alongside the well-known Anderson and Fortunato.

Hapward’s fellow assistants were grizzled veterans in Connie Egan, Mike Oriel and a young Mike Arace, all of whom had developed their own strong resumes in a number of different sports as Egan would become Montclair’s head baseball coach and Arace its longtime wrestling head mentor.

During a 2009 interview, Hapward reflected on his early experience working alongside Mountie coaching icons.

“Working with Clary and Butch was such an education each and every day, and having the opportunity to do my part as an assistant coach with such great young men on the Montclair High School football team is something I’ll never forget and always value,” he said. “You are really part of a big family when you coach high school football, and that is something that is undeniable.”

Whether it was at Madison, Montclair, West Essex or East Orange, he continued to gain so much valuable experience and was happy to transition back to the roots of any high school football team as a freshmen coach, adding his vast knowledge and the hand of a father-like figure for youngsters experiencing a very valuable stage in what was hoped to be a burgeoning scholastic gridiron career.

After leaving West Essex he did spend a couple of seasons as the head coach at East Orange and then it was back to what he had enjoyed so much with Anello’s Wessex Knights, guiding the freshmen players, as he joined the staffs at Delbarton and then Seton Hall Prep.

“If I remember correctly, I think he may have expressed an interest at one time in coaching at Immaculate, but whatever the connection was, I reached out to him to join our staff when I came to Seton Hall Prep,” said John Finnegan, who is a former head coach at both Immaculate and SHP. “He really knew his football, that’s for sure; and he did a great job with the kids.

“He was a real find for us, and I know that the other freshmen coaches loved having such an experienced and knowledgeable person on the staff.”

Then head freshmen team coach Dave Giarrusso, a highly-regarded, longtime North Jersey lacrosse coach and now the freshmen football coach for Vito Campanile at state champion Bergen Catholic, certainly has very fond memories of working alongside a very unique and special man who may have been in his early 70’s in 2009-2010, but remained quite young at heart.

“Coach ‘Hap’ and I were together for two years under Finnegan,” said Giarrusso. “Dick brought with him an incredible football IQ. But - most importantly - there wasn’t a kid he couldn’t connect with.

“His service in the Army and his storied coaching career helped, but it was his love of the game and watching kids have success that mattered most to him.

“Our rivalries with the East Orange freshmen were always special games which you had to tighten up your shoulder pads and chin straps for, but I always loved walking into Robeson Stadium and watch Coach Hap hug all the opposing coaches before our games, giving witness to the fierce and friendly concept that is so important for the kids to see.

“We ended up getting a close 14-12 victory on a great 2-point play call by Coach Hap- “sprint right special”. All his former coaches and teammates, and former players, knew he loved calling that play, but you just couldn’t stop it.

“He had a way of making his kids successful. I truly believe he designed that play on a napkin during a lunch break at Hapward Tennis.

“I still call it ‘The Hapward Special.’

“Essex County lost a great educator, a true principled man who put loyalty, dedication and hard work at the core of all his coaching.”