Warren Wolf, Brick Icon, Legendary Football Coach, Dies At 92

BRICK, NJ — Warren Wolf, the Brick Township icon and legendary coach who stalked the sidelines of Brick Township High School football games for 51 years and who served the community in a myriad of roles, has died. He was 92 years old.

Wolf, who was born in West New York on Aug. 1, 1927, died Friday, Dennis Filippone and Dan Duddy, two of Wolf's former players and longtime friends, confirmed.

"The Brick Township Public Schools mourn the loss of the legendary Coach Wolf; dedicated educator, administrator, coach, and public servant," Susan McNamara, the district's director of planning, research and evaluation and a longtime employee, said. "We send our sincere condolences to Coach Wolf’s family. Thank you Coach, for your dedication to the students, staff, and community of Brick."

The New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association, which oversees high school sports, tweeted: "The NJSIAA sends condolences to the family of Warren Wolf, who passed away today at age 92. From his Hudson County roots to his historic football coaching and administrative career at Brick, he was a true New Jersey legend."

"Brick Township lost a legend," Mayor John G. Ducey said. "He had such a large influence on so many people that he will live on through the character he embedded and the lessons he taught. Those lessons will be passed on to future generations of Brick Township residents."

Wolf arrived in Brick Township in 1958, four years after the Garden State Parkway came to the town, to take a job as a physical education teacher and head football coach at the then-new high school. He and his wife, Peg, built a home off Jordan Road in the town that had about 16,000 residents. Then Wolf helped build the town, by shaping generations of young men and shaping the town itself as it grew to the more than 76,000 residents of 2019.

He and Peg were married for 69 years, and have two children: Warren Jr., who played football for his father and later served as one of his assistants while teaching in Brick, and Donna.

Wolf got involved in politics, serving as mayor from 1971 to 1975, and from there was elected to two terms on the Ocean County Board of Freeholders, serving from 1975 to 1981. He spent one term in the state Assembly, from 1981 to 1983. He then served three straight terms on the Brick Township Council, leaving politics in 1993. He later served on the Brick Township Board of Education for two years.

“He was a gentleman's gentleman,” said Ocean County Freeholder Joe Vicari, who was hired by Wolf to become a teacher in the Brick schools in 1969. Vicari, the longest-serving freeholder in the state, credits Wolf with having that seat.

"When I told him I wanted to go into politics, he told me to run for mayor in Toms River," Vicari said Saturday. Then later, when Vicari felt ready to take his political career to the next level, Wolf encouraged him to run for freeholder. Wolf, in turn, ran for a seat in the Assembly to open up his freeholder seat for Vicari.

"We campaigned together, and he was always a gentleman," Vicari said. "He never took a cheap shot, and he was very mild-mannered, never lost his temper."

Wolf not only helped Vicari win what had been Wolf's seat, "but he gave me his office and his desk, too," Vicari said with a laugh.

Vicari lamented the loss of Wolf's gentlemanly influence in politics, which had been part of the reason the coach got into it in the first place. Back in the early 1970s, the township government was nonpartisan and there was nonstop bickering, Wolf said in a 2007 interview with the Brick Bulletin, part of Greater Media newspapers.

"I spoke to my pastor," Wolf said in that interview. "He advised me not to go into politics. But I’ve always believed you have to be at the table to make decisions. Brick was in an uncomfortable, unsavory position. Brick was too good to have that. I wanted to try and change things, and I think we did."

During his years as mayor, the municipal building on Chambers Bridge Road was built and the police department was created. Prior to 1973, New Jersey State Police patrolled the town. Windward Beach Park also was created during Wolf’s administration.

Wolf also was a longtime member of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Point Pleasant and served as a church elder.

"Without faith there is nothing," Wolf said in the 2007 interview. "You can’t be afraid. Jesus is with you all the time. I’m not a Holy Roller, but I believe that. It gives you comfort. If you have no belief, how could you go to bed at night?"

He was best known, however, for his years spent pacing the sidelines at Keller Memorial Field in his trademark gray suit, always with a white shirt and a green tie. Wolf, who played for and was an assistant coach for 10 years under Joe Coviello, a North Jersey football icon, brought the lessons of his mentor and the influence of his father and his faith to the Shore.

He demanded hard work and commanded respect from his players, but was unfailingly humble.

"In decades of being on the Brick sidelines, I never heard Wolf utter one four-letter word," said Tony Graham, a longtime sportswriter and broadcaster of Shore Conference sports for the Asbury Park Press and WJLK radio. "Rarely, if ever, did he chastise a player. It was, from my perspective, always an organized sideline. No matter what happened, it was always on to the next play."

"He would so willingly give credit to everyone," said Filippone, who was a teacher and administrator in the Brick schools for 40 years before retiring earlier this year. Filippone, who played for Wolf in the early 1970s, later served as an assistant coach under his mentor.

"He never took credit when things were good, and he would take all the blame when things were bad," Filippone said. "He found a way to get the best out of you. On the field or off the field, he had a knack for pushing you to be even better than you thought you could be."

"He always invited us to grow," said Duddy, who played for Wolf in the early 1970s and was the Green Dragons' starting quarterback in 1972 and '73. Duddy went on to become an educator and a coach, most recently at Donovan Catholic, where he still works as pastoral minister of athletics. "He was the real deal."

The success of Wolf's lessons put Brick Township and Shore Conference football on the map.

Over 51 seasons, the Green Dragons piled up 361 wins, 122 losses and 11 ties. Brick recorded just three seasons under .500 and had eight undefeated seasons, including six perfect records. He became the winningest coach in New Jersey in 1992 when he recorded his 255th victory, breaking the mark of his mentor, Coviello, who coached at Memorial of West New York. Wolf remains the second-winningest coach in the state; Vic Paternostro of Pope John of Sparta, who died in 2012, finished his career at 373-67-5 to hold top honors.

"He definitely put Brick on the map," Graham said. He said he saw that firsthand in the early 1970s, when he was living in Brick and covered some Philadelphia Phillies games.

"I used to go stay at a motel in South Jersey," he said. One stay, as he wrote down his address at check-in, the name of Graham's town caught the clerk's eye. "Brick Township? Is that where they have all those really good football teams?" Graham said. "I used to call it the 'Football Capital of the Shore' on the broadcasts, because it really was."

Along the way, the Dragons won six NJSIAA sectional championships on the field, including the first playoff game ever played in New Jersey, a 21-20 win over Camden in the 1974 NJSIAA South Group IV championship. They were awarded seven more state titles before that. Brick also won 25 Shore Conference divisional championships under Wolf.

"He always praised the other team," Graham said. "Whoever Brick was playing, they would be the Green Bay Packers, no matter what their record was." And after a game, win or lose, Wolf still would praise the other team.

Wolf was tough on his own team and had high expectations, Duddy said, both on the field and off. "He wasn't a man who threw compliments around. "

When he did offer praise, it stuck.

"We were in a close game, and he called me over on first down to give me the play. 'Get up and run L1 option,' " Duddy recounted Wolf saying. "Then he said, 'Danny, I believe in you.' "

"I still think about that," he said.

Wolf, who became an assistant principal and later rose to deputy superintendent of the district, also helped coach Brick's first ice hockey team, helping to recruit legendary hockey coach Bob Auriemma to take the reins of that program.

Wolf retired as an educator in 1993 but continued as Brick's football coach through the 2008 season. He returned to the sidelines for one final year in 2010 as the coach at Lakewood High School, where he led the Piners to a 3-7 record and helped them break a 33-game winless streak. He retired for good after that season.

The Brick schools named the Warren H. Wolf Elementary School in his honor in 2014, for all his years of service to the district and the town.

Since then, Wolf had taken in the occasional football game and attended other events, spending time with former players and assistant coaches. He was a Chicago Cubs fan and took great joy when the Cubs won the World Series in 2016. And family and friends threw a 90th birthday celebration for him at Windward Beach Park in August 2017 that drew former players from all over to help him celebrate while they reminisced about what they learned from him.

"There isn't one day where I don't say, 'What would Coach Wolf say,' " Duddy said. "His impact is undefinable. It will last for generations."

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