Nantucket's pride
Beau Almodobar continues to lead through his example
BY STEVE SHEPPARD
With Caio Correa this year's state scoring leader in soccer, it was time to revisit the last Nantucket High School athlete to hold a state scoring title.

From youth to adulthood, BeauAlmodobar has been a presence in Nantucket sports. In 1980 (left photo), coach Vito Capizzo posed with co-captains Almodobar (center) and Greg Moore. The same trio today (right photo) now work together as coaches.

The year was 1979 - the Whalers were the talk of the island, and Beau Almodobar was making headlines on both sides of Nantucket Sound. "It seems like it was yesterday," Almodobar said recently. It was his junior year in high school and Nantucket was on the precipice of nine Super Bowl appearances. A two-way player that year, Beau played cornerback on defense, but was almost unstoppable from the tailback position, scoring 164 total points that season.

Oh yes, he also was the team's punter and kickoff returner.

"He's probably the most versatile player the school has ever seen," coach Vito Capizzo said of his former captain. "I don't want to shortchange anyone who's played for me, but he could do it all. He's a natural athlete and he was a very coachable young man."

Today, Almodobar is helping out the same coach he once played for - as football assistant in charge of receivers and running backs. He's come full circle in 27 years, and works as the Cyrus Peirce School's health and physical education instructor in the same gym where he once starred in basketball. With the football season over, he will now turn his attention to Whalers basketball as he begins his eighth year as head coach of the boys' varsity team.

Although he excelled in all sports during his high school years, Almodobar's career path was forged on the gridiron.

After his state-leading scoring year, Beau and the Whalers came back in 1980 to win the school's first Super Bowl. "We were just loaded," Almodobar remembers. "We had a lot of depth, a lot of team chemistry."

There were also games in which Almodobar's talent made the difference. "I can remember games he won for us almost singlehandedly," Capizzo recalled, one of the most legendary being the come-from-behind victory over Manchester High School where Beau took a pitchout from quarterback Scooter Herrick, faked the sweep and threw the ball back to Herrick who ran downfield to score the winning touchdown and cement Nantucket's appearance in the championship game.

Assistant coach Almodobar roams the sidelines with head coach Vito Capizzo. With football season over, Almodobar heads to the gym where he is boys' basketball head coach.

Almodobar was named by the Boston Globe that fall as a select All-Scholastic athlete, was captain of the basketball and baseball teams, and was named to the All Cape and Islands teams in both sports.

He continued his athletic career at Norwich University, where he was converted to receiver. "Sometimes you have to adjust," he says today. "When I got to college, I saw very quickly that I was a tiny fish in a big pond. It can be discouraging when you see kids who are better but I got lucky, I just hung in there."

He was on the fifth string as a freshman but midway through the season two starters were injured and Beau got the call. "I caught four or five balls and scored a touchdown," he recalls. "But senior year I really broke out. I was captain, we went 9-2, the best in school history at that time." He was also named an All-American, one of the top college football honors in the nation.

Almodobar then had the rare opportunity to go where so few high school and college stars are able to go, to the professional level. He was invited to tryouts by several pro teams, including the Philadelphia Eagles, and also the startup USFL. "I worked out with the New Jersey Generals, who had players like Herschel Walker and Doug Flutie and Jim Kelly." He was called up to the New York Giants during the 1987 football strike and played in three games, including a Monday Night Football matchup.

He had given it his best shot, but Almodobar knew it was time to give up playing. "All I wanted to do was play, that was my niche," he says. "But I asked myself, 'What is your goal?' My goal was to play, and I had been for a long time. That was a turning point; it was time to stop playing."

He returned to college to earn his master's degree from Springfield College and was soon hired as athletic director, teacher and coach at Thayer High School in New Hampshire. He found his new career suited him. "I started to like coaching," he recalls.

After five years in New Hampshire, however, the island was calling him home.

He came back to Nantucket as athletic director and then executive director of the Boys and Girls Club. Teaching was in his makeup, however, and after a few years he was back where he began, at Nantucket High School, coaching basketball at first before moving into his full-time teaching position at the middle school.

Today he not only helps coach Capizzo, he also works alongside other former coaches, and relishes the opportunity. "I was truly inspired by the coaches I had," he said, naming his former basketball coach Dennis Caron, baseball coach Dave Webb and former assistant football coach Dick Herman as among those who encouraged and motivated him. "They were my role models," he notes, "and they're still my role models. I don't want to let these guys down.

"So now I'm giving back."

He passes on the lessons he's learned to his students, his players and to his children Darian, 7, and Celia, 5. Above all, he is glad to be on Nantucket

and raising a family with his wife, Elizabeth. "After being away after high school, I appreciate the island so much more," he said. "I can't imagine living anywhere else."

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