The year was 1990. The Bishop Hendricken football program was in the midst of its fifth straight losing season, and a rookie head coach was in the process of trying to turn it around.

Coming off a three-win campaign the year before, the Hawks broke into the win column, finally, in the seventh game of the season.

Mike Quigley, the longtime freshman football coach at the school, remembers that day, the first victory in the 17-year head-coaching career of Ron Mosca.

“I recall the joy of his first win that fall when the players carried him off the field,” said Quigley. “An embarrassed Ron said, ‘Guys, we’re 1-6!’ From that point on, things changed.”

Ninety-nine victories. Seven Super Bowl appearances. Three Super Bowl titles. An undefeated season. Things changed, alright.

Hendricken football arrived.

Quigley told that story this past Sunday, when Mosca, now 60 years old, was inducted into the very Bishop Hendricken Hall Of Fame that he helped create nine years ago.

He retired from coaching after the 2006 season, and he now faces considerable health concerns. He wasn’t able to attend the ceremony on Sunday to receive his honor. But it’s hard to imagine someone more deserving of the honor of becoming a Bishop Hendricken Hall of Famer than Ron Mosca.

A member of the football coaching staff from the moment he joined the Hendricken faculty as a math teacher in 1978, just five years after graduating from the school himself in 1973, Mosca is perhaps the most important figure in the program’s history.

Without Mosca, Hendricken football isn’t the powerhouse it is today.

It didn’t take him very long to create something special. That first year as head coach, 1990, Mosca’s team went 2-8. It was the worst mark of his entire career. Over the next 16 seasons, he built the Hawks into a perennial contender. The team went 4-4, 5-3 and 5-4 in his next three years, before embarking on Mosca’s greatest stretch, and one of the greatest stretches the state has ever seen.

Hendricken won three consecutive Super Bowls from 1994-96. They were the program’s first championships since 1982, and they were the culmination of Mosca’s efforts to turn a middling Division I (then Class A) team – that, believe it or not, was in danger of dropping to Class B – into the best team in the state.

The Hawks reached the Super Bowl in the next three years, as well, tying a state record with six consecutive berths in the title game.

Hendricken had just four championships and seven title game appearances in the previous 30 years. Mosca won three and reached six in 10 years on the job.

Current Hendricken head coach Keith Croft remembers those years well. He played for Mosca from 1992-94.

“He rebuilt the program,” Croft said. “He brought it back to respectability. I just remember it getting better and stronger and tougher. Obviously, he took them to a place where no one had ever been before.”

His name became synonymous with the program himself. When he began his career at Hendricken, he was Mr. Mosca.

Before long, his title had changed.

“That was a giant part of his life,” said Hendricken principal Jay Brennan. “When you do something for a long time, it becomes part of who you are. He was spoken to differently than other teachers because he was a coach. He isn’t Mr. Mosca. He’s Coach Mosca.”

Success is undoubtedly part of Mosca’s legacy on the sidelines, but just the wins and losses don’t tell the whole story.

His demeanor was like something out of an NFL Films Documentary, as though he was coaching with Vince Lombardi watching over his shoulder. If a running play – and they were almost all running plays – didn’t work on first down, Coach Mosca often just yelled “Run it again.” There was no secret. Everyone knew what was coming, including the defense, but more often than not, it got the job done.

He was steadfast in his ways. His teams ran the wishbone formation on offense, and the only deviation from that was when he called a timeout to yell at somebody for not lining up correctly.

I know from experience. I played under Coach Mosca from 2003-05, and got my share of earfuls for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

My favorite Coach Mosca story from my playing days was during 2005. I played outside linebacker, but got pulled on a drive for whatever reason. On one of the plays while I was on the sidelines, the player who subbed in for me got caught out of position, and allowed a big run around the edge.

Coach Mosca wasn’t happy.

“Pomeroy is KILLING us,” he said. To me.

That story always stayed with me, because that’s just who he is. Emotional and passionate, it wasn’t always perfect, but he never hid from who he was on the football field.

He wanted to win, and he wanted things done his way. If you didn’t, you’d hear about it.

Quigley talked about that very characteristic while delivering Coach Mosca’s Hall of Fame speech. He called it “aggressive honesty.” That’s the perfect way to characterize it.

“He wears his heart on his sleeve,” Croft said. “You know exactly where you stand with him. You can say a lot of things about him, but the bottom line is that you always knew with him that he bled green and gold. He cared deeply about the school, and about the football program, and he still does.”

That doesn’t mean it was all aggressive. He still serves as Hendricken’s technology director, and has been involved in numerous other programs at the school. He was instrumental in getting the Athletic Hall Of Fame created – even though he never allowed himself to be considered for induction. He chaired a committee in the 90’s trying to bring more minority students to the school. He works behind the scenes with the school’s options program, working with special needs students.

“Only the people who played for him and know him know that side of him,” Brennan said. “The people who just see him from a distance see this gruff, tough guy. In reality, he’s one of the biggest softies I know.”

The last few years of Mosca’s coaching career weren’t quite as successful as his first stretch, although one notable highlight was coaching future NFL player Will Blackmon.

Mosca reached one super Bowl in his final seven years. That was still a special moment though, as it came in his last season, 2006. Though the Hawks lost the title game, Mosca’s son Andrew was an All-State lineman, and it was a fitting ending to a now Hall of Fame career.

When he stepped away after that season, Croft took the reigns. He had joined Mosca’s staff in 1997 and served, in separate stints, as the junior varsity head coach and the freshmen head coach.

Handing over the program wasn’t easy for Mosca initially. But, in the time since, he’s become a valuable resource for the current coaching staff.

“He’s been a very good resource for us over the last couple of years,” Croft said. “I think he’s getting further away from retirement, he’s been the type of guy that we can lean on for some advice. For me personally, I’m going to be honest, there’s not a lot of people walking around the state of Rhode Island that have walked in my shoes. And he’s one of them.”

Now, as the newest Hall of Famer struggles with his health, it’s a perfect time to reflect on how much he’s meant to Bishop Hendricken.

Coach Mosca used to have us huddle around him at practice at the beginning of every season, and tell us something that he believed from the bottom of his heart.

“Sports don’t matter at this school unless we win in football,” he’d say. “Hendricken could win the baseball championship, the basketball championship, the hockey championship – a million other championships – and if we don’t win football people will say, ‘Well, Hendricken had a down year.’”

As much as he believes that, I don’t. Coach Mosca gave us many more years that mattered than just his three Super Bowl seasons. He put Hendricken football on the map.

Get well soon, coach.

Kevin Pomeroy is the assistant sports editor at the Warwick Beacon. He can be reached at 732-3100 and kevinp@rhodybeat.com.