FHS football coach is a Hall of Famer

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Coach Russ Cellan watched his offense as it got closer to the end zone to score during last Saturday’s Homecoming game.
Coach Russ Cellan watched his offense as it got closer to the end zone to score during last Saturday’s Homecoming game.
Davy Crockett/Herald Leader

He did not expect to become a Hall of Famer. Earlier this month, however, Russ Cellan, Freeport High School’s head football coach, was inducted into the Nassau County High School Athletics Hall of Fame. Surrounded by several of his former players, some of whom have gone on to play in the NFL, he accepted the distinction during a ceremony at the Crest Hollow Country Club in Woodbury.

The Hall of Fame recognizes, preserves and promotes the heritage of interscholastic sports in Nassau County, and Cellan was honored for his 30 years of contributions to Freeport’s football program as the Red Devils’ head varsity coach. He has won more than 200 games, five Long Island Championships and five Rutgers Cups, presented to Nassau’s most outstanding team. But if you ask him, he’s just doing his job.

“We just worked,” Cellan said. “It’s like anything else. If you want to get better at something, you just have to put the time in it. We put a lot of time, and we took our lumps.”

Cellan, is a Lindenhurst High School and Long Island University-C.W. Post alumnus who played football for both schools. After graduating from LIU-Post, he taught phys. ed. and coached wrestling and football at private Catholic schools. By 1986, with the support of his fellow Hall of Famer and father-in-law, coach Ted Petersen, Cellan became a Freeport High’s coach, at age 29.

After seven years of building the football program, he said, the Red Devils team simply took off. “If you ask me why, I’m not sure,” he said. “I don’t know. All I know is that a lot of people worked really hard, and we were very lucky to have some pretty good players. All the pieces fit together, and we made it happen.”

Cellan has coached several players who went on to play college ball and a handful who reached the NFL. They include former New York Jet D’Brickashaw Ferguson, former Miami Dolphin and Houston Texan Morlon Greenwood, former Tampa Bay Buccaneer and Jet Jerry Mackey, and Nassau Community College assistant wrestling coach Tyshawn Scarlett.

“The thing that I am absolutely the most proud of is the amount of football players that we’ve had go on to college and receive their degrees,” Cellan said. “In many cases, they were the first ones to attend college in their families and receive their degrees. That’s tremendous. There’s too many of them to count. It’s that kid that if he wasn’t playing football, he would not have ever gotten that degree. I’m proud of them.”

Cellan said he was humbled to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. Asked whether retirement had crossed his mind, he said his main concern was the next Red Devil’s game, against the East Meadow Jets.

“There are so many moving parts when you talk about a good program,” he said. “It’s not just the head coach or the coaching staff with the players. It’s the community. I’ve been blessed to have an administration that has always supported us. That is not the case everywhere.”

Last Saturday, Freeport High hosted its annual Homecoming celebration, which included the game against the Hempstead High School Tigers. The Red Devils won, 28-6.