After serving nearly five decades, legendary Central New York high school football coach Carl Sanfilippo ’77 announced his retirement at the end of 2024. But despite hanging up his whistle, he remains true to his calling: to support his students.
Sanfilippo announced his retirement in December, vacating the touchline as head coach of Baldwinsville Bees football after 40 years—before that post, he coached for eight years at Syracuse’s Christian Brothers Academy—to provide the district with plenty of time to find a replacement. To date, that roster includes at least three of his former students.
Sanfilippo comes from an Upstate New York football dynasty: his father Joe was also a football coach with a storied development team.
“You always want what’s best for the kids,” he says. “The biggest thing in life is your long-lasting relationships, and believe it or not, some of my best friends played for me.”
The 1975 Syracuse University Football Letterwinner also has remained close to his former Orange teammates, maintaining a regular text thread with 12 of them: “Once you play there, you bleed Orange. You’re always a part of the SU family.”
Sanfilippo says he’s been on the field since the age of five. By high school, he was playing as a Salamanca Warrior under his father, the late Joe Sanfilippo, himself a 40-year career head coach, serving 17 of those years with the Warriors, a development team from Cattaraugus County in Western New York.
Sanfilippo’s “no nonsense” coaching style has been tempered by his willingness to learn from younger assistant coaches and his concern for students under his care as they negotiate modern challenges.
Sanfilippo attended Syracuse on a full scholarship, learning of the honor when then Head Coach Ben Schwartzwalder announced the news in person. “I came home and Schwartzwalder was sleeping in my dad’s chair,” Sanfilippo recalls. “He was a tremendous person. Ben was a World War II guy, like my father, which resonated with my parents.”
He played two years under Schwartzwalder, said to be the most successful football coach in the University’s history. With Schwartzwalder at the helm, Syracuse produced 22 straight years of non-losing football. He led the SU team to an impressive record of 153 wins, 91 losses and three ties, including seven bowl games, and the only National Championship in the University’s history, won by the undefeated 1959 team.
Sanfilippo’s final two years were under Coach Frank Maloney. He says his time at Syracuse centered around football, with winters and summers spent on off-season and pre-season workouts: “We stayed in the field house, what used to be the wrestling building. There were beds in there so we could stay all summer.”
Now 70, Sanfilippo remembers Manley Field House with dirt floors. It was said that a cloud of dirt would rise up in the Orange student section—affectionately known as the Manley Zoo—when fans stomped on the bleachers during games.
He remembers, too, grabbing trays from the dining hall with a group of his teammates to use as sleds, and stopping by Wimpy’s Wagon late at night. Wimpy’s was a food truck that would park at the base of DellPlain Hall. It faithfully arrived each evening from roughly 9 p.m. until late. Its most popular item, Sanfilippo recalls, was the “Cheese Jaw,” two burgers served side-by-side on a long, greasy Italian roll, covered in tons of cheese and onions.
Regulars, including Sanfilippo, were often college students on a night out because Wimpy’s was the only late-night option on campus, with nothing else open for blocks.
His coaching style, Sanfilippo says, was molded off the best qualities of all his former coaches. “Schwartzwalder kept it old school,” he says, adding Maloney’s style was similar, and, it has been said, his father had a no-nonsense approach.
Sanfilippo, too, has been described as an old-school coach—one who values integrity. He had one rule for his athletes: “Do the right thing.” If one of his players got in trouble, he’d ask, “Did you do the right thing?” If the answer was no, a consequence would be given. This rule, he says, is derived from how he was raised.
While he mainly agrees with the “old school” characterization, Sanfilippo believes as a coach he’s been very adept to changing times. “You must be adaptive,” he says. “I always work with a couple of young coaches. If you think you know it all, you’re dead in the water. You have to learn every day.”
His advice for teachers is the same that he gave the coaches he’s worked with: learn to delegate and learn from your mistakes. “My number one advice: Don’t do it all yourself,” Sanfilippo says. “And there’s nothing wrong with making a mistake. What’s wrong is if you don’t learn from the mistakes.”
Story by Ashley Kang ’04, G’11 (a proud alumna of the M.S. in Higher Education program)
