The University of Delaware football team was in a Williamsburg, Virginia, hotel last Oct. 14, the Friday night before its game against William & Mary.

Then-coach Dave Brock had informed players the day before he would call several up to speak in front of the team. He wouldn’t say who. He just wanted all to have a meaningful, motivational message ready.

During that gathering, three regulars widely respected by teammates were summoned – starting cornerback Justin Watson, running back Thomas Jefferson, who’d been 2015 CAA co-Offensive Rookie of the Year, and tight end/h-back Kyle Yocum.

“I was inspired. They all had great messages,” said Patrick Crowley, then a red-shirt sophomore who’d made the team as a walk-on out of Concord High.

When it came time for the fourth and final speaker, Brock said it was someone players may not expect. Then he called Crowley.

“I asked Frank Raggo, ‘Did he say my name?,’ ” said Crowley, who was sitting alongside the Delaware kicker. “He said ‘Yeah, go up!’ I was like ‘Oh wow.’ I was nervous.’ ”

To the front of the room stepped Delaware’s smallest player, a 5-foot-6, 180-pound special teamer and third-level cornerback who had appeared in just one career game up to then.

He promptly explained to his teammates how much it meant to him to play football for Delaware. It was a lifelong dream, come true.

“His message was awesome,” teammate Troy Reeder would say later.

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Crowley is the grandson of Archie Rapposelli, an honored Delaware high school football coach who’d played for the Blue Hens. Crowley had been attending games and practices since his childhood, often wearing a full uniform, while making friends with players, such as quarterback Joe Flacco.

At one of those games, against James Madison when Crowley was 11 in 2006, he had walked down from his seat in the West stands at Delaware Stadium, plopped himself in a box-seat chair just above the field and introduced himself to the person next to him.

“Remember my name. I’m going to be on this team one day,” Crowley informed that individual, who happened to be then-UD president David Roselle. Crowley’s aunt, Maryann Rapposelli, a UD employee, watched in stunned amazement.

Jerry Oravitz, Delaware’s former football operations director and now an associate athletic director in development, remembers Crowley standing outside Delaware Stadium following games wearing a full uniform, even sporting eye black, as he greeted his heroes.

“Someday, somehow, Pat Crowley was going to be a Blue Hen,” Oravitz, who got to know the ubiquitous child, remembered thinking.

Among Crowley’s prized possessions are two photos of him and Flacco from 2006 and a framed hand-written letter Flacco sent him during his rookie season with the Baltimore Ravens, where he is now entering his 10th season as the starting quarterback.

As he spoke to his teammates last October, Crowley was addressing mostly players from out of state who’d been recruited by numerous schools and were on scholarship.He mentioned the young boys who await the players, asking for a chinstrap or wristband or just a high-five, as they head toward the locker room after games.

“I told them I was that kid,” Crowley said. “You have to think about the people that you’re playing for. You might just think, ‘Oh, it’s Delaware football, it’s no big deal,’ but to some people, it’s a huge deal.”

Crowley's love for the Blue Hens was honed as a childhood spectator, rooting for his idols, and has grown stronger now that he’s a player himself.

“The way I feel about it is, I’m more tied to this team than anybody who signed the contract [for a scholarship] freshman year,” he said, reflecting on his comments to teammates. “I have to be here. There are ties between me and this Delaware football program that I have to be a part of it. It means more to me than a scholarship. I could play on this team forever. My worst nightmare is waking up and realizing I’m not going to be a Blue Hen one day, I’m not going to be on this team anymore because I absolutely love being on this team.

“Up to this point in my life, it’s my proudest accomplishment.”

Crowley’s father, Jim, said Patrick’s bedroom in their suburban Wilmington home is “a shrine to Delaware football and Joe Flacco.” That framed letter hangs above his bed, though Sonny Riccio, Flacco’s predecessor at quarterback in 2004-05, was his first favorite.

“If there’s ever a Rudy II, this is it,” Jim Crowley said, referring to Daniel “Rudy” Ruettinger, the Notre Dame walk-on who played in his last game in 1975 and is the subject of the popular 1993 film “Rudy.”

Devotion rooted in family

The Blue Hens begin the 2017 season Thursday night against Delaware State at Delaware Stadium in Newark.

The opener is being greeted with a new sense of excitement. Brock was fired the day after Delaware lost that game at William & Mary. In December, Delaware lured coach Danny Rocco away from CAA rival Richmond. He has a 90-42 record in 11 seasons as a head coach – the first six at Liberty – and has never had a losing year.

Delaware is coming off its first back-to-back losing seasons – both 4-7 – since the late 1930s and hasn’t reached the NCAA playoffs in six years, double its second-longest absence (1983-85).

The Blue Hen Nation aches for a winner and Crowley, now in his red-shirt junior season, feels the pain.

But season-ticket sales have nearly doubled from last year, due in part to an unpopular UD Athletic Fund required donation being removed, and enthusiasm is strong.

“I think he’s more hurt than anybody by the past couple years because he’s been around it for so long,” Brody Kern, Delaware’s fifth-year senior center and co-captain, said of Crowley. “He’s been coming to games since he was a little kid and all he ever wanted to do was play Delaware football.

“He’s an amazing person, a great guy to talk to. He can talk to anybody, too. Because the history of Delaware is the way it is, having Pat is a reassurance of what we could be and what we should be.”

Crowley’s love for Delaware football was instilled by his grandfather, Rapposelli, who donned his leather helmet to play guard on coach Bill Murray’s 1948-50 Blue Hen teams after a year on the freshman squad.

Ironically, rosters listed him as 5-foot-6, 181 pounds, one pound from the identical size as the grandson who would play for the Blue Hens almost 70 years later. Rapposelli played on the offensive line, now manned by behemoths typically weighing around 300 pounds and standing more than six feet tall.

Rapposelli died June 3, 2005, at age 76. Patrick was 10 and has fond memories.

“I had a lot of Delaware football conversations with him, before I even started going to games,” Crowley said. “I always heard about Delaware football. They played in Wilmington [at 30th Street and Gov. Printz Boulevard]. He always told me about that stadium.”

Rapposelli was state high school football coach of the year in 1968 when he guided Claymont to a 9-0 record and the Blue Hen Conference Flight B title. There were no state tournaments then. A Claymont grad, Rapposelli had become the Indians coach in 1966 after nine years as an assistant at Salesianum. He coached Claymont through 1972.

“My dad loved all of his grandchildren and he would always tell them to be the best you can be and give them words of encouragement,” said Patrick’s mother Margaret. “I think he’d be busting at the seams really to see Patrick out there on the field being 5-foot-not-much, sticking with it, working hard, because he made it all on his own.”

Margaret Crowley spent some time on the field at Delaware Stadium herself. In 1984, as a UD sophomore, she wore the Blue Hen mascot suit – pre-YoUDee – during football games. Patrick’s two older sisters Michelle and Brenda also attended UD. His identical twin brother, Michael, is a senior who has played the lead role in several UD theatre productions.

At Concord, Pat Crowley was a two-year starter at cornerback, saw spot duty at quarterback and also kicked, sometimes scoring when he ran on direct snaps. He was captain his senior season in 2013, which was long-time Raiders coach George Kosanovich’s last before retiring.

“Pat worked so hard all the time and earned his way to get to where he was,” Kosanovich said of Crowley, whom he called the type of dedicated player who “really makes a program go.”

Kosanovich was coaching at Wilmington High when Crowley’s grandfather was at Claymont, knew him well and coached with him in several Blue-Gold all-star games, a fact Crowley appreciated.

“I loved Archie,” Kosanovich said. “You didn’t have to think twice about what Archie was thinking or what he was going to say. Everything he did was right on his collar and you knew what was coming.”

While in high school, Crowley took part in theDamion Daniels Elite Training program, where he got to know players who actually were elite, such as Newark’s Taylor Reynolds, who starred as a James Madison cornerback and had an Atlanta Falcons free-agent opportunity; St. Elizabeth’s Andre Patton, the Rutgers wide receiver now in the Los Angeles Chargers’ camp; and Middletown’s Chris Godwin, the wide receiver drafted in the third round by the Tampa Buccaneers in April out of Penn State.

“There’s a lot of guys who got me better training with them,” Crowley said. “It was all to get to Delaware. That was my end goal. My size wouldn’t get me here, my speed, nothing like that. So I thought my work ethic would have to set me apart to be seen by the coaches.”

When former Delaware assistant coach Brian Ginn came to recruit Concord teammate Grant Roberts, Crowley took the opportunity to make some contacts himself. It led to a 2013 recruiting visit during Delaware’s win over James Madison and a 2014 summer tryout that earned him a walk-on spot.

Crowley’s uncle Joe Rapposelli played for the Blue Hens in the early 1990s. Last year, after Crowley saw his first game action against Delaware State, Joe had a present for him.

It was Archie Rapposelli’s 1950 Delaware letter sweater, made of thick blue wool with a yellow ‘D’ sewn on. Archie Rapposelli had proudly stitched a purple and gold Claymont ‘C” on the other side.

“That’s when I realized how proud my grandfather would be that I was playing for Delaware,” Crowley said.

Lifelong dream fulfilled

The Blue Hens were well on their way to a 56-14 opening-night win over Delaware State last season at Delaware Stadium when Crowley was sent onto the field for the first time in a game to play cornerback.

“It brought tears to my eyes,” father Jim said.

That was an epidemic inside Delaware Stadium, where a woman sitting near Mike Buono asked the Brandywine Warriors youth coach why his eyes had turned misty. He told her it was from seeing one of his all-time favorite players step on the field to play for the Blue Hens.

“I get chills talking about that,” Crowley said of his first game action as a Blue Hen. “I saw my family in the stands. That was the first thing I did. I was looking up at the pressbox and I was like ‘Wow. This is like the most special moment of my life.’

“Then I started locking in. The coaches were yelling at me. I think the call was something like ‘Buzz!” and I was like ‘I have to play football’ and when the play is over I can think about it again. That was amazing.”

Crowley made Delaware’s travel roster, which consists of roughly 70 players, and midway through the season he became a starter in the punt block unit, which Delaware calls “pride and joy.”

It certainly fit that description for Crowley, who appeared in five games last season.

“That’s when I really felt like I belonged and was contributing to the team,” said Crowley, who has also been a holder for kicks this year. “That was really eye opening.”

Those contributions continue and they are not taken lightly, said Rocco.

“There are a lot of ways to add value to your program and it’s not always the guys who are the star players who are adding value,” said Rocco, who spent his childhood glued to the high school teams his father, Frank, was coaching throughout Pennsylvania.

“Pat certainly adds a lot of value in a lot of different ways. He comes in every day to practice with a great attitude. He comes to work. His enthusiasm rubs off on the teammates. It’ll bring me great joy to be able to get him out there in a game and give him an opportunity to do some things to help us get some wins.”

Chris Cosh, Delaware’s defensive coordinator and secondary coach, credits Crowley, a sport management major who aspires to coach college football, for a willingness to help other players be better.

“He’s making calls from the sidelines, predicting routes,” Cosh said. “He’ll come tell me, ‘Coach, so-and-so did this.’ He’s into it and when he gets out there he has the same expectations as everyone else. He takes a lot of pride in his work. He brightens up my day by being out there.”

Turns out Crowley has a history of helping Delaware defensive backs, going back to when he was 12.

In 2007, the week before it played Navy, Delaware had an open date. Some UD players happened to be at 69th Street Field in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, that Saturday watching youth games. Crowley, playing there for the Brandywine Warriors, spotted cornerback Anthony Walters.

“He said, ‘Be ready next week when you play Navy because of that receiver, number such and such, you’re gonna be covering. Watch him,’ ” Jim Crowley recalled. “Anthony was like, ‘We haven’t even looked at any film yet.’ ”

The following week, Jim brought Patrick to a UD practice.

“Anthony walked over,” Jim Crowley said, “and said, ‘You’re not gonna believe this. We’ve been watching game film. He was spot on. He knew exactly what they were running and that’s the guy I’m covering. He knew that. I don’t know how in the world . . . ’ ”

Despite young Crowley’s scouting report, the UD defense had a tough time in Annapolis with Navy’s triple-option attack. But Flacco threw for a career-high 434 yards and four touchdowns and Omar Cuff rushed for 141 yards and four TDs of his own in a 59-52 win.

A year later, as a Ravens rookie, Flacco answered a letter from Crowley, then 13, with an advice-filled, full-page response in which he urged the then-quarterback hopeful to “always be working to be the best self you can be!!”

He closed the letter by writing, “It would be great to see you at QB for the Hens someday, but don’t be afraid to picture yourself playing QB at USC or Notre Dame either.”

Sitting there listening to Crowley that night in Williamsburg, and understanding his lecture as well as anyone, was Troy Reeder.

Reeder was a standout at Salesianum and then started for Penn State as a red-shirt freshman linebacker on 2015. He transferred back to Delaware, where father Danny starred, so he could play with younger brother Colby.

At Penn State, Reeder had been around kids who’d been lifelong Nittany Lions fans and “are dying to just be on the team, no matter what their role is,” he said.“It might their fifth year, their last game of the season, they get to run down on a kickoff.”

Delaware football, Reeder knows, has similar allure.

“Pat’s a real good example of what can happen when you do have a positive attitude for everything,” Reeder said. “All of a sudden you go from a guy who walks onto the team and people from the outside think you don’t have much of a shot and he’s on punt return holding guys up or holding kicks or whatever.

“That’s a tribute to him and I think he inspires a lot of guys on our team.”

Contact Kevin Tresolini atktresolini@delawareonline.com. Follow on Twitter @kevintresolini.



