October 1, 2003
Doug Colman returns home to Carey Stadium
By TOM WILLIAMS
Sports Columnist
On Saturday afternoon at Carey Stadium, members of the Ocean City High School Sports Hall of Fame
will gather to watch the 2003 home opener.
One of them is hoping the Raiders lose.
Doug Colman – a member of that Hall of Fame, who was named South Jersey Defensive Player of the
Year as a senior at OCHS and gained more than 1,000 yards as a fullback – will be coaching his
Absegami team against the Raiders.
“I’m excited,” Colman said. “I’m good friends with Gary Degenhardt and it will be different coaching against
him. I have some special memories on that field. But I’m happy with the team I have.”
This will be a season filled with such “homecomings” for the Absegami football coaching staff. In their win
over Egg Harbor Township, Scott Parker experienced similar emotions. So will Tim Watson when Gami
goes to Mainland.
As a matter of fact, this won’t be the first time Colman has coached against the Raiders. He did it last
year as an assistant at Oakcrest. But this time Colman is the head coach. This is his football team.
“When I put this staff together, I looked for guys with similar personalities to mine,” he said. “I think good
coaches are teachers, not abrasive guys who just scream and yell. I’ve got guys working with me who are
smart, who know the game. We were fortunate to have a guy like (Absegami athletics director) Scott
Lodgek, who let me put this group together myself. It’s a great staff. I’ll learn a lot from each of them.”
After graduating from Ocean City, Colman played on two NCAA champions at Nebraska and then in the
NFL with the Giants and Titans, including Super Bowl XXXIV in Atlanta. He was an assistant coach at
Ocean City before joining the Oakcrest staff last year and moving to Gami this fall.
Most of Colman’s memories of Carey Stadium center around his father, Wayne, who was his high school
coach. Wayne played 10 years in the NFL with the Eagles and Saints, making them the only father-son
combination in South Jersey to both play in the NFL.
“My father is a strong influence on me, as a person and as a coach,” Colman said. “We have similar
personalities. Playing for him was what made everything special in Ocean City. And I’ll be honored if
anybody says my coaching style reminds them of my father.”
Colman is out to change things at Absegami. In 29 years, the school has only qualified for the NJSIAA
playoffs twice and lost the first game both times. They have had good teams, but always seemed to fall a
little short. The school’s only conference title was in 1982, a year the Braves finished in a six-way tie for
first when Oakcrest, clearly the best team that season, had to forfeit four games because it inadvertently
used an ineligible player. Absegami did share division titles in 1993 and 1995.
“We need to develop a mind-set,” Colman said, “a new approach to the game. That’s why we needed a
whole new staff and ordered new uniforms. So far, I think we are a team that can match other teams
offensively but we aren’t sound enough yet on defense. We’ve been working on that during our extra week
of practice.”
Absegami is 2-0 but has only played one game. They claimed a forfeit in their opener when Cardinal
O’Hara could not play because of a Philadelphia teacher’s strike. And last weekend was an open weekend
for them. Still, the kids on this year’s Gami team are excited by their start. But they don’t spend much
time thinking about their head coach returning to his alma mater, even on Hall of Fame Day.
“They don’t think about that,” he said, “and we don’t bring it up. It will be strange, but fun, to be there on
Saturday afternoon coaching against Gary. Ocean City means a lot to me. But we are coming there to
beat them, make no mistake about it.”
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