Longtime Cape coach Bill Geppert died over the weekend. He had just turned 60. He's been part of the Cape community for decades and has played a big part in so many people's lives over the years. 

I knew Bill for a long time over snippets of time as a teaching colleague and sports reporter who knew him as Coach Gep and a dad of Will and Marlee, and husband to Molli. We were both more football guys who pretended to understand field hockey. Actually, we didn’t pretend, we'd just shrug if we came face to face after a close game. 

Bill was a mainline Villanova guy; he couldn't shake that aura. He learned the game in the quarterback room. I am a North Broad Temple guy, a lineman who learned the game as a non-skilled player who was told to shut up and block somebody and not ask questions.

Gep got me, and I understood him as well. When I would see him – over the last 20 years it's been once in a while – he would just smile and bob his head up and down knowing we would meet at the crossroads where education policy met the world of athletics.

Bill was the science guy, a chemistry teacher. I was in social studies, and turned all teaching into storytelling. Coaches connect best by recounting stories that make us laugh in retrospect but were not all that funny at the time. I was sitting in the football coaches office at 6 p.m. It was actually a big closet in the loft off the Little Big House. It was about 1994 and I just visiting with Coach Glenn and Coach D. We were three Catholic boys from a bygone era. Coach Gep walked in having just returned from Sussex Tech and a JV football game.

“How’d it go over there?” Glenn asked Gep.

“We won rather easily,” Bill said.

“And how easily is rather easily?” Glenn asked.

It was hammertime. 

“70-0," Gep said somewhat apologetically. 

Glenn went off on Gep, “You can’t beat people 70-0! How and why did you do that?"

Gep played defense, “They just weren’t tackling guys. We didn’t throw the ball.”

When the quarterback tells you, "We didn’t throw the ball,” it is code for, "We threw the ball.”

I saw the entire exchange as a column item. And I wrote, “In Philly, when you get beaten by more than 50, it's called getting smucked.” I meant it as an item of information and education, but my friends at Sussex Tech turned the column into bulletin-board material and they were hating on me and Geppert big time.

Gep was Teflon, but I was cast-iron skillet with burnt cheese stuck to the sides of the pan.

On Friday night, I arrived late to the sidelines for the varsity game. Tech had scored its second first-quarter touchdown to lead 14-0. Glenn went off on me, "They are yelling your name and yelling Smuckers. What the hell did you write? We can come back from two but not three. Maybe they should hire you as a motivational speaker.”

Coach Geppert looked at me with a sly smile while bobbing his head. We’d be connected by this game forever. Cape came back and won, saving me from the wrath of Glenn, which only ever lasted 24 hours.

Back in 2001, Gep was the head coach of Cape football and expanded the offense, which is what you would expect from a Villanova quarterback. I was there as the Cape football reporter and sometimes unwanted sideline consultant. The referee made a call coach Gep didn’t like and he barked out, "Holy peanut butter and jelly, ref!”

I sidled up to Gep, “Bill, don't ever say that again. Don’t let anyone ever hear what I just heard or they’ll remind you as a football coach how much you look like a chemistry teacher.”

Gep smiled and said, "You’re right!"

I never heard Gep use bad language or berate an official.

I can’t speak of his stunningly successful career as head coach of the boys' and girls' swim team or his career as a lifeguard captain on the southside of the Indian River Inlet, where the saves were real every day. 

Bill had two rocky years, 2001 and 2002, as head football coach. Close games blew up in weird ways. Cape suggested he concentrate on his successful swim team. Gep was not happy. That May, we were walking up the steps to the Baycenter for the end-of-the-year all-sports banquet, when Gep said, "Wait until I get to that microphone. I’m going to tell them all what I think and they are not gonna like it.” I told him, “The Villanova guy doesn’t do that. You are the chemistry teacher kids all love, the good family guy, successful swim coach and leader of lifeguards. No one can chump you out cause you ain’t no chump!”

Gep said, "Yeah, but I always thought of myself as a football coach.”

I said, "Holy peanut butter and jelly, coach, let it go!”

He smiled and shook his head. When he got his turn at the microphone, he played nice, as I knew he would. 1-877-Cares for Kids, that is how Coach Geppert rolled every day.