Cardinal Gibbons football coach Steven Wright hits 100 wins. Here’s how he got there
For Cardinal Gibbons football coach Steven Wright, blessings are found time and again along journeys. Wright and the Crusaders’ journey home this past Friday night followed the coach’s 100th with Cardinal Gibbons — a 30-22 victory at Richmond Senior.
Now in his 11th season, Wright has won 79 percent of his 127 games at Cardinal Gibbons, Raleigh’s Catholic high school on Edwards Mill Road. He’s become an anomaly in an increasingly nomadic vocation.
“I don’t think I ever thought beyond the five-year point,” Wright said.
Wright’s first Cardinal Gibbons staff (in 2011) included Bill Liedy (associate head coach/offensive coordinator) and Chris Walker (JV head coach). Liedy and Walker are still there, too.
Wright’s eighth Crusaders team (2018) earned the NCHSAA Team Scholar-Athlete Award for having the highest unweighted Fall 2018 grade-point average among all football teams statewide.
“I certainly never thought we would be playing or beating teams like Richmond or Scotland, or your traditional North Carolina powers, or even Wake Forest,” Wright said.
Cardinal Gibbons ended Wake Forest’s 45-game winning streak on August 24, 2019, at Wake Forest’s Trentini Stadium.
Friday’s win was the Crusaders’ second over the Raiders. Richmond, playing in its 50th season this fall, has earned an NCHSAA-best seven state championships among the sport’s largest competitive classification. Cardinal Gibbons topped the visiting Raiders, 28-14, in last spring’s 4A state playoff quarterfinals en route to the Crusaders’ second consecutive state final.
In the fall of 2019, host Cardinal Gibbons defeated 4A state semifinalist Scotland, 22-15, to advance to the school’s first state final. Assistant head coach/defensive coordinator Nick Drew orchestrated the strategic adjustments that held Scotland scoreless in the second half of a game tied at halftime.
“That first win or this 100th win could not have been accomplished without the army of people who have been present along the way,” Wright said.
Tight-knit group
Wright remembers fondly the Crusaders’ 29-28 win at Sanderson (Raleigh) on October 6, 2017. That double-digit rally — capped by Jalen Brooks’ one-yard touchdown run with 10 seconds remaining — helped Cardinal Gibbons to its first Cap Seven 4A Conference championship and first undefeated regular season as a 4A school. (Brooks, now a UNC student-athlete, went on to be named 2018-19 NCHSAA Male Athlete of the Year.)
The coach’s words ring true for two Cardinal Gibbons alumni — Thomas Ruocchio and Ben Grazen — present for Wright’s first game and win, 40-26 over Clayton on August 19, 2011. That evening, the homestanding Crusaders first played on the school stadium’s new field turf. Most Reverend Michael Francis Burbidge (then Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Raleigh) offered the field’s pregame blessing.
The blessing rite included a field “First Run,” by many Catholic grade schoolers and future bound Cardinal Gibbons students. Ruocchio, then an eighth grader at Raleigh’s Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School, made that first run. Grazen, then an 11th grader, was the Crusaders’ starting running back.
Ruocchio and Grazen later enrolled at NC State among the Wolfpack’s preferred walk-ons. Both earned scholarships before graduating. Ruocchio was an assistant coach for Cardinal Gibbons’ spring 2021 state finalist. Grazen was an assistant coach for Cardinal Gibbons’ 2019 state runner-up team.
Grazen’s brother Jack — with Ben watching — was the starting running back for the 2019 Crusaders who earned Wright two “signature” wins. Jack Grazen rushed for 125 yards in Cardinal Gibbons’ 42-7 state quarterfinals win November 29 at New Bern. The outcome put the Crusaders in the school’s first state semifinals. A week later, Jack Grazen scored the winning touchdown against Scotland.
Family ties
Personal familial blessings (akin to the Grazens’ journeys) have been Wright’s greatest along this centenary journey. Wright and wife Rachel-Ruth have watched their three daughters — Bell, Sophia, and Riggin — grow from elementary school, and through Cardinal Gibbons.
Bell graduated from Cardinal Gibbons in 2020. Her senior year included the fall 2019 state final.
Sophia graduated from Cardinal Gibbons in 2021 in a ceremony on the stadium field, where her father has led Crusaders gridiron teams to a 53-11 record. Her senior year included the spring 2021 state final.
“Stability is a rare commodity in football,” Wright said. “The blessing of being able to stay in one place for that amount of time really is priceless. The older I get, the more I appreciate that.”
Riggin, a Cardinal Gibbons ninth grader, once helped Annette Jay (the school’s longtime registrar, now retired) crown the homecoming king and queen on that same stadium field. Wright said Riggin has made clear to him the next step of this journey.
“Riggin came up to me soon after the spring state championship game and kind of game me a wink,” Wright said.
As for Riggin’s prevailing message, Wright continued: “While I’m at Cardinal Gibbons, let’s go win it.”