BALDWINSVILLE – Nearly four decades ago, in another century and millennium and in another era when it comes to high school football, Carl Sanfilippo arrived and, at age 31, took over the Baldwinsville varsity football program.
Now that extraordinary journey is at an end.
Sanfilippo informed his players on Monday that he is retiring, ending a tenure that spanned 40 seasons and included more than 200 victories and four Section III championships. He said it was simply time to walk away and focus on, among other things, watching his grandson, who played junior varsity football for the Bees this fall.
The son of a long-time coach in Western New York, Sanfilippo brought a style that rarely changed even as many teams, especially in the 2000s, began to feature more spread offenses and aerial attacks.
B’ville always put the ground game first, with big offensive linemen plowing the way for durable running backs like Tyler Rouse, who led the Bees to its last sectional title in 2012 and has returned as an assistant coach in the program.
This could be done because Sanfilippo’s teams consistently featured strong defensive units which, in top form, could get the ball back to the offense and allow it to control the clock and wear down opponents.
For the most part, it was effective, but B’ville had faced recent struggles, only winning seven of 19 games the last two seasons and lagging far behind the likes of two-time state Class AA champion Christian Brothers Academy along with Cicero-North Syracuse, who won the previous five sectional titles.
Still, in 2024 the Bees nearly sprang a huge playoff upset at rival Liverpool. Against a team it lost to 55-6 in the regular season, B’ville led late in the fourth quarter, and it took a two-point conversion stop, kick return for a touchdown and two-point play on the other end for Liverpool to pull it out 27-26.
Even if it was a defeat, it was still a perfect reflection of the toughness and perseverance that Sanfilippo taught throughout his coaching tenure, and his stepping down now gives B’ville plenty of time to find a new head coach for 2025.
A few years ago, Sanfilippo announced that Bill Spicer, who coached Onondaga to three state titles in the early 2000s and was now an assistant coach at B’ville, would succeed him, but that was before Spicer took an assistant coaching position at Cortland State where his Red Dragons won the 2023 NCAA Division III championship. Whether that plan remains in place remains to be seen.
