Blog: Behind the Book Reader Interview with Frank Lombardo
Frank Lombardo (far right) graduated from Carmel in 2000. He was a varsity football player in 1998 and 1999. He started his collegiate career at Northern Michigan before finishing at Wisconsin-Whitewater, where he studied Health and Human Performance. Frank spent a year at the University Wisconsin-Madison working in the strength and conditioning program.
He is currently an Area Sales Manager for Medronic, a medical device company headquartered in Dublin, Ireland. He lives in Winnetka with his wife, MaryRay and two young children.
I interviewed Frank for our Behind the Book weekly reader series.
Q: You’ve read The Boys in Brown. What is your reaction to the book?
A: I’d heard about if for awhile that it was being written. Then I saw a trailer and was excited to get it. When it came out, I got it right away. It was an extremely fast read and I didn’t want to put it down. With my past and connection with the school and the majority of the coaching staff still there, it resonated with me, taking me back 15 years ago, not just my senior year but my other years on varsity and going through the program. I thought of my junior year and my senior year for sure. I’ll bet as you go through book, anyone from any class would tell you the same thing. It read like memoir to me.
Q: One of the central story lines of the book is the relationship between Coach Bitto and the Corsairs’ star player, Jordan Kos. Bitto was hard on Kos but there was a reason–he saw potential in the mercurial fullback and wanted him to reach his full potential. Kos graduated in 2012 as the school’s all-time leading rusher. Did that dynamic remind you of anyone you played with?
A: I think there’s a Jordan Kos every year. When I played, it could have been myself or Jermaine Freeman. We were two guys who played both ways and never came off the field. There were other guys who graduated later, like Matt Roe or the Larson brothers. It works putting guys in that pressure cooker. It’s incredible, lumps of coal keep getting pumped into this furnace and Coach Bitto keeps popping out diamonds. It’s shown that kids who don’t take well to coaching won’t do well when they have a tough boss. No one works for someone who says, ‘nice try, did you have fun?’ That’s not how the real world works. There were 65 guys I played freshman football with when Coach Manfrey was our coach. There were maybe 25 by my senior year. That’s just the nature of the sport. One thing I’ve learned form other families that have gone thorugh Carmel is Coach Bitto demands a lot from his guys. And that goes way beyond the football team. That goes from walking through the halls at school to playing on a Friday night. They are held to a higher standard. They don’t show that in your tuition breakdown. Character redevelopment is not a line item on your tuition bill.
Q: What do you remember about your Kairos experience?
A: Unless you have an older sibling who goes through it, you don’t know. It’s a retreat where you go away and you are out of school for three days. As you get up in school, you learn about it. It’s more specific to your class. I led the last group of my classmates who had to go. I was a little immature my junior year and had a better experience and understanding of what my classmates were going through.We left the retreat knowing a lot about each other. It hits people in different ways. We did a one night Lock in specific for football. We slept in the upstairs wrestling room. Coach Bitto took us onto the field, turned the lights on and told us we’d remember this for the rest of our lives.
Q: You attended St. Francis De Sales in Lake Zurich before enrolling at Carmel. Now as an adult with a career, family and grown up responsibilities, does your Catholic educational experience still carry through?
A: It’s still a part of who I am. Most kids who come out of there would agree with that. There were kids who didn’t go K-8 and and went to public school and came through Carmel and pivoted there lives. When I got to be 21 or 22 I realized I should have listened to a few more people when I was in high school. You know, I went to high school with the kind of guys that are in the book. When we played our last game, there were some that couldn’t wait to get their shoulder pads off. But there are other guys that are still emotional about it. I’ve got a soft place in my heart as it’s about something very important to me. More than anything in the world I loved being a Carmel football player. Coach Bitto is a very special man and does things the right way and that carries into how I approach being a dad.
The Boys in Brown is now available on Amazon.
