#35 on Fox 40's Top 40: Fran Angeline
We continue on Fox 40’s Top 40 Most Impactful Local Sports Figures of All Time right now sponsored by UHS Sports Medicine and UHS Orthopedics.
Number 35 is Union-Endicott's Fran Angeline! Angeline played his high school days as a U-E Tiger, then took his talents to Colgate University in college, he was his team's captain as a senior both in high school and college.
At Colgate, Angeline also joined the coaching staff as he worked for his master's degree.
After his college days, Angeline took over as Johnson City's head coach at the ripe age of 22. After three seasons as a Wildcat, Angeline returned home to Union-Endicott where he'd coach for 32 years. Along the way, Angeline took the Tigers to the top twice. First, in 1979, Union-Endicott went undefeated and finished as number one in the New York State Sports Writer Association rankings, which is how state champs were decided prior to the state tournament days.
That year, Fran and the Tigers outscored opponents 413-26 and are widely argued as the best single-season team to ever come out of Section IV, and for that, Angeline was named the National Coach of the Year by the High School Football Coaches of America. In 1989, the Tigers once again went undefeated, averaging 42 points a game and hammered Buffalo's Bishop Timon 60-7 and ultimately ranked 17th in the nation by the USA Today poll.
Angeline went 216-88-9 in his tenure, retired as the fifth-winningest coach in New York state history, coached Tennis at UE, and was a teacher. Angeline is now the namesake of the Tigers' field house.
For finishing undefeated four times as a coach, being named the New York State Champion twice and the National Coach of the Year, along with inspiring a generation of great coaches and athletes that include another U-E legend, Ed Folli, Fran Angeline comes in at number 35 on Fox 40's Top 40.
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