Zambrano moving from sidelines to the stands

Borough mayor
has been coaching
youth sports since 1969
BY SHERRY CONOHAN
Staff Writer

FARRAH MAFFAI staff West Long Branch Mayor Paul Zambrano recalls many of his coaching memories, and the players who still live locally today, at his office on April 21.

WEST LONG BRANCH — Back on Campbell Avenue in Long Branch as a kid, Mayor Paul Zambrano played football with a pickup street team called the Tigers that would take on other street teams in an informal league of their own. It was the beginning of a love affair with sports.

At the ripe old age of 13 in 1969, Zambrano became the manager of a baseball team, sponsored by the Italian American Memorial Association and thus began a 35-year career in coaching boys and girls in a variety of games that he just wound up last month.

Zambrano, who will turn 48 on May 11, packed it in at the end of this year’s campaign by the basketball team of his youngest daughter, Nicole, 14, an eighth-grader at Frank Antonides School. He has coached teams of all four of his daughters from their youngest years.

"It was one of the most pleasurable experiences of my life," he said.

Zambrano followed his father, also Paul, into the ranks of coaching. The mayor is Paul Joseph Zambrano; his father Paul Ralph Zambrano. The mayor recalled that he coached his first Little League team in 1975, taking over for his dad who coached the team in 1974. The elder Zambrano was one of three coaches for the team, which was the first Long Branch Little League team to go undefeated.

"After that, he retired," he said of his father. "He had been coaching for 10 years."

Zambrano managed the team, also for the IAMA, until 1985. He said when he and his wife Linda were married in 1978 at Holy Trinity Church in Long Branch, the members of his Little League team surprised them by showing up at the church in their uniforms with canes to form an honor guard for the couple to walk through.

Some of the team members he coached early on live in West Long Branch today, Zambrano said. Among them are Buddy Damiano, who’s associated with the Damiano Funeral Home his grandfather founded, Marino Lauongo, Kenny Bauman and Joe Laspino.

He said he also coached Andrew, Thomas and Simon Skove, from a family famous for wrestling.

"They were good baseball players too," Zambrano said.

In addition to coaching Little League baseball in the summer, Zambrano coached Pop Warner football in the fall from 1976-1985. But Tara, his first born, had arrived in 1979 and, in 1985, Zambrano retired from Little League with IAMA and Pop Warner in order to coach her.

He departed at the top, having won championships with both the Little League and Pop Warner teams in 1985.

"I left there and said I’ll coach my daughters," he related, which he did for nearly two decades beginning in 1986 with soccer. He coached soccer with Tara, now 25 and a third-grade teacher at the West End School in Long Branch, and Carissa, now 22, a senior who will graduate May 17 from Fairleigh Dickinson University, then moved into softball and basketball, where he picked up Danielle, 18, now a senior at Shore Regional High School, and Nicole, the eighth-grader.

The girls teams were part of the West Long Branch Sports Association.

At one point, Zambrano said, he was head coach for three teams on three levels simultaneously — in the "biddy" program for boys and girls in kindergarten, first and second grade, then for girls in the third, fourth and fifth grade, and girls in the sixth, seventh and eighth grade.

He said he has a great wife who was supportive through all his coaching activities and without whom he could never have done it.

"She would come to all the games," he said. "She would have the kids over for dinner. We would go for ice cream."

Zambrano has fond memories of his own sports achievements as a youth. He said his baseball team at Long Branch High School in 1974 still holds the best record with 23 wins and six losses. He said the team lost the state championship game to Franklin Township, 5-3. He said he played both outfield and pitcher. "My record was 9 and 3 in my senior year," he noted of his pitching prowess.

Zambrano went to tryouts held by the California Angels of Anaheim at Brookdale Community College but, as history will note, he did not make the team.

Zambrano also played football at Long Branch High School, where he was a wide receiver.

"I was a lot thinner then," he said with a laugh.

He said at a reunion (he graduated 30 years ago in 1974) held at Tuzzio’s four months ago — Joe Tuzzio was a fellow team member — he saw his former varsity coach, now retired to Florida, Ken Schreck, who took one look at him and said, "Boy, I could use you as a linebacker."

After working for a year following graduation from high school, Zambrano went to Jersey City State College and played one season as a wide receiver there in 1976.

"I dropped out after one semester," he said. "I couldn’t get back into the books."

Zambrano said one thing in life he really regrets is not finishing college.

"I think I really would enjoy being a teacher and a coach," he explained.

Zambrano said he thinks participation in sports builds character in youngsters.

"It’s not just wins and losses," he said. "I would always tell them stay away from alcohol and drugs and be a good citizen. You want to make sure that in life they do the right thing. That’s more important."

Zambrano coached his last game on March 14. His daughter’s basketball team, which was sponsored by Cafe Voila in West Long Branch, finished with nine wins and two losses.

"The only two games that they lost were lost by one point," he added.

Zambrano said he’s going to miss coaching.

"I really enjoyed it," he said. "If I had another kid, I would coach her too."

Zambrano and his wife are now planning for three graduations this spring and summer — Carissa from Fairleigh Dickinson, Danielle from Shore Regional, and Nicole from Frank Antonides.

Zambrano said he looks forward to the day he will have some grandchildren to also enjoy.

He confided that when he told Damiano that he was quitting coaching, Damiano told him he would go back to it again when he had grandchildren. "I said, ‘You never know — I’ll keep it open.’ "