Kelly Frank was in a middle school, when he thought about pulling on a helmet, putting on pads and like his older brother, playing organized football for the first time.
Frank remembers going to a sign-up meeting for freshman football with other students. He was 14 years old. Then, Don Santini, Fairport’s varsity football coach in 1977, walked in.
“By the time he was done talking, all I ever wanted to do was play football for that man,” Frank recalled. “No one ever talked to me like that. No one had inspired me like that.
“I felt like when I left the gym, this is what I’m going to do the next four years. I’m going to play football for that guy.”
Frank said he can still feel a charge of excitement when he retells the story. And that was just a small display of what one of Frank’s teammates at Fairport describes as Santini’s “superpower.” It was a gift that Santini, one of the all-time winningest coaches in Section V Football history, shared with people around him in different ways, including by taking someone “under his wing,” according to former Fairport lineman Chris Coke.
There are dozens and dozens – if not hundreds – of people with or without ties to Fairport and LeRoy high school football in Section V, who remembered how Santini inspired them and will continue to do so after his death Feb. 25. Santini was 85.
“We just can’t talk about the man without breaking down about this,” Frank said about Santini, a hall of fame member at SUNY Brockport and Fairport. “He could push you so hard, and you were willing to do it, because you knew he loved you, he loved his job.
“He just knew how to get the most out of everybody. Every person there (in that freshman football and many other meetings) felt like he was talking (directly) to them, ‘he was talking to me.’ “
Santini was an administrator and physical education teacher in the Fairport and LeRoy school districts during his career in education. Fritz Kilian, the current Fairport athletic director, said Santini was the first person to welcome him into the school district, and how “dynamic” he was.
“In my eyes, he was Mr. Fairport,” Kilian said.
When Santini retired as a high school football coach in 1992, his teams at Fairport and LeRoy had a then unmatched total of 206 victories in Section V.
“Before the pandemic, when (Santini) was a substitute administrator, he would go to a school and everybody knew him,” Kilian said. “This is 2018, 2019.
“None of these kids played for him, but their parents may have or had him as a phys ed (physical education) teacher.”
One reason for that, was because Santini “was never just about football,” according to Coke.
“He was always about the community, he was very inclusive and wanted everyone to be a part of it,” Coke said. “It’s tough to put a number on it (the number of people he made an impact on).
“You see the football stats, the sectional titles (seven at Fairport, 4 league titles at LeRoy during the pre-sectional era), the state titles (2 mythical), the records and so forth. He might be most well-known for that, but it was just a small part of it. I don’t know how he had the amount of time to do what he did, for the amount people that he did it for.”
Coke does know that Pat Santini, the Section V Football and Fairport Hall of Famer’s wife of 61 years, and their three children are “owed a debt of gratitude and special thanks,” because “he couldn’t have been the person he was or did the things that he did” without them.
“A lot of people, more than I can possibly name,” Coke said. “Whether it was a kid like me who lost his father at an early age, just like he did, or whether it was someone from a split home, it really didn’t matter.
“He took everybody under his wing.”
There is a gathering to pay respects to and in honor of Santini, a 1957 Fairport graduate, 1-6 p.m. on March 9 at the Keenan Funeral Home, Egypt location on 7501 Pittsford Palmyra Road. Those who attend are asked to park at Fairport High School to ride shuttle buses.
The funeral service is 11:15 am. Monday, March 10, at Church of the Assumption, 20 East Ave., Fairport. The Santini family asks that in lieu of flowers, donations are made to the Don Santini Foundation, 130 North Winton Road, P.O. Box 10277, Rochester, NY 14610.
“I couldn’t tell you how many guys – and women probably – who went into coaching because of him,” Frank said.
“Whether it was organized sports or not, just go pass on this inspiration, this encouragement.”
James Johnson, who grew up in the city of Rochester, has worked as a full-time journalist covering high school sports for the Democrat and Chronicle since 1996. His career began as an intern during the summer of 1990, and he has become a two-time winner of the Rochester Press-Radio Club’s Sports Media Excellence Award. He also has been a part of the Walk of Fame and Section V Baseball Hall of Fame committees, and is a life member of the Rochester City School District “Friends of Athletics” Athletic Professional Association. Follow him @jjDandC on X (Twitter).
This content is reposted from the source: https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/sports/high-school/2025/03/01/don-santini-fairport-football-coach-remembered-by-players/80824207007/
