October 1, 2009

Laurel Pfahler
Special to Rivals High

The Fort Lauderdale (Fla.) St. Thomas Aquinas football team savored its first national championship a little longer than it might have following a win against any other opponent.

The Raiders cleared perhaps the biggest hurdle in the program's 63-year history last December in the Class 5A state championship when they beat perennial power Lakeland 56-7 to clinch a second straight state title and first RivalsHigh crown.

Now, no opponent seems too daunting.

The Dreadnaughts had defeated the Raiders in the state championship game three years in a row from 2004-06 and earned a pair of national titles with those wins in 2005 and 2006. The last meeting was an especially heartbreaking loss for St. Thomas Aquinas, which came back from a 35-14 deficit in the final three minutes only to fall in overtime.

"It's for the teams that have played here before and lost to them," Aquinas coach George Smith said immediately after winning the title Dec. 20, 2008. "It's a very important win for our program."

Raiders defensive coordinator Rocco Casullo said the coaching staff took some extra time enjoying that win, but by late January, it was back to planning for the next season.

He still enjoys reflecting on that moment in Orlando's Citrus Bowl, though, seeing fans waving pre-printed newspapers proclaiming Aquinas the national champion and knowing who the Raiders had to beat to earn that title.

"Coming up short before, our kids did an unbelievable job in the offseason to prepare," said Casullo, who has been on staff since 2002. "We knew we had good chemistry in that 2008 team, and to watch them jell during the offseason and throughout the season, it was fun to watch.

"It was a great accomplishment because we were 1-5 [against Lakeland]. We finally got the monkey off our back."

Finally, St. Thomas has reached the top, and the team is doing everything it can to stay there.

The Raiders (3-0) remain the nation's No. 1 squad until someone beats them or does something to prove itself more dominant. Their biggest test comes Friday when Duncan (S.C.) Byrnes High, ranked No. 4 in the RivalsHigh 100, pays a visit to Fort Lauderdale, but if they get past the Rebels, the path to a repeat title appears likely.

Casullo said players don't come into the program anticipating that level of success, but they do know the expectations of joining a team seeped in a winning tradition. The team owns a 336-65 record in Smith's 33 years, and the only losing season during that time was in 1989 when the Raiders went 4-6.

"There's such a strong following in the community with people wanting to get their kids in here and be a part of that tradition, but nothing is guaranteed," Casullo said. "You come in as freshmen, and looking back at these guys who are seniors now, they worked extremely hard and challenged themselves to the fullest of their potential to have even just a sniff at a possible state championship, and a national championship, like we had last year, they never imagined that. They come in as freshmen and they know what's expected. Some guys do very well in the system and some guys have trouble, but for the most part, it's been very successful and very positive."

Though the program has enjoyed success for more than three decades, becoming a national champion, and finally getting past Lakeland, required some new approaches.

One of those was adding a strength and conditioning coach, Rob Biasotti.

"The tradition speaks for itself, but losing to those Lakeland teams in '04, '05 and '06, we said to ourselves, 'We need to get stronger. We need to be faster. We need to be more commanding overall.'" Casullo said. "Coach Rob Biasotti, our strength and conditioning coach, put together an unbelievable program, and the kids sort of just pulled it to the next level. To be honest, did we ever think we would get to this point? No, but the kids really worked hard in the weight room."

Biasotti, a Raiders basketball coach who has a master's degree in exercise science, started the team's first strength and conditioning program in February 2005 -- two months after the first of the trio of losses to Lakeland. He said Smith informed him if the Raiders' success continued but did not soon carry into the final game, it would be Biasotti's responsibility.

Originally Biasotti met some resistance. Players and their parents didn't believe a basketball coach who had no professional experience as a strength and conditioning director could build football players into champions.

But after two years of developing the program and again losing to Lakeland, it finally took off and led to a 2007 state title.

"They were tired of seeing Lakeland beat us -- that wasn't good for the program to keep losing those games," said Biasotti, who was an All-American basketball player at Aquinas. "That motivated them, and they bought into what we were doing. It was amazing to see kids work that hard."

Biasotti calls his program "functional training, rather than the old-school benching and squatting." The Raiders also do pilates, which was Smith's idea, and in 2007, Biasotti added games like tug-of-war and tag to the program as a 15-minute warm-up to get players enthused about what they were doing.

The former basketball star also draws feedback from players during video-taped round-table discussions to improve the program. Senior defensive lineman Matt Stokes, for example, offered suggestions to better organize the flow of the stations and reminded Biasotti the importance of keeping everyone together as a team when others talked about breaking the program into two sessions, one for the elite players and one for the lower-tier guys.

"I'm desperate to see them perform because in my mind it would be a shame if they are not able to compete at the level they did last year," Biasotti said. "There's something special about their work ethic and leadership."

But weight training and offseason workouts aren't the only things preparing the Raiders for success.

Part of what has enabled Aquinas to build its elite status has come through out-of-state competition, such as the Byrnes matchup and the games they've played and won at the prestigious Herbstreit Challenge in Ohio the last two seasons. Smith especially enjoyed the experience of traveling out of state for those games because of what he learned about his team off the field.

"Going up there, you are going to find out what kind of team you have, win or lose, because you find out how they get along with each other," Smith said this summer. "They are all doing the same things, and they are all going to be contained to one area. It tells you a lot about how you are going to be as a team, and that's very, very crucial at the beginning of the season."

The Raiders beat Upper Arlington (Ohio) 52-7 in this year's Herbstreit Challenge and learned they still have what it takes to be No. 1.

"Our athletic programs have a lot of success, but we've turned a corner the last two years, and this football team has reached the next level," Biasotti said.

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