NEW YORK -- Al Bagnoli has spent the last 24 years of his life as a head football coach, either at Penn or Union College. It is a long time to spend in any job, especially one built on the kind of stress that only coaching young men on a football field can create.
Yet in all that time, he had never yet had to deal with the kind of trauma the Quakers faced this past week. There was one summer at Union when one of his captains drowned, but Bagnoli said Saturday that moment didn't even come close to Kyle Ambrogi's suicide.
"It was obviously tragic in its own right," he said. "But it didn't happen right smack in the middle of the season, and it didn't happen in the context [in which] this happened."
Can anything compare to this? Can any event match the shock and the pain that hits you like a running back's shoulder when someone as universally well-liked as Kyle Ambrogi decides to take his life seven months before graduating from one of the best schools in the nation?
It is a question that no one should ever have to face, but the Penn football team and the entire Penn community have had to deal with it for a week now. And when faced with all this pain, the Quakers did the best thing they could possibly do.
They took to the football field and routed Columbia on the Lions' homecoming weekend, 44-16.
Sure, hindsight is often as clear as the skies were over Wien Stadium when the game began. But let there be no doubt now that this game needed to be played, because it served as a vital step on the road to emotional recovery for the young men with Ambrogi's number on their helmets.
"With everything that's happened, it just felt great to really work as hard as we could to give this game to Kyle," Penn running back Sam Mathews said. "Really going out there and playing with max effort is something in the backfield that we really wanted to do and give that to him as an honor to him."
They certainly did that.
Mathews and Joe Sandberg simply ran the Lions over, as the Penn backfield totaled 277 rushing yards.
Mathews contributed 157 yards and two touchdowns on 21 carries, while Sandberg ran for 95 yards and one touchdown on eight carries.
Both of Mathews' scores were of the kind that Ambrogi made his trademark -- lowering his shoulder and knocking the defensive line backwards on the way from the 1-yard line to the end zone.
"It was very therapeutic, it was a great way to let out a lot of emotion -- there was a lot of frustration, a lot of sadness," Mathews said. "For about three hours today we were able to forget everything and get this game for Kyle."
The defense played with similar passion.
"We took a very traumatizing situation and used it to motivate us, for everyone in general to go to the next level," linebacker Ric San Doval said. "It was the best job we could have done today."
Even Columbia coach Bob Shoop knew what was coming.
"I kept saying to the guys that Penn would come out with tremendous emotion, and they did," he said. "They also came out with flawless execution."
When it was over, Bagnoli praised his team for its poise. The players hadn't talked to the media all week, but it's not hard to figure out what they've been feeling.
"To be able to put this aside and to concentrate on a Wednesday, 48 hours after this happened, and to concentrate on a Thursday, it speaks volumes of the kind of kids we have," Bagnoli said. "I've never been prouder of the team -- this is as bad a duress as I think you can possibly put a team under, and you saw the way they reacted."
Now the healing process continues, and it might well keep on going until the final snap of the final game against Cornell. Yesterday was a big step, and in winning with true class, Penn created the perfect memorial to Kyle Ambrogi.
Jonathan Tannenwald is a senior urban studies major from Washington, D.C. His e-mail address is jtannenw@sas.upenn.edu.
