Michael A. Miello graduated Hackensack High School in 1962 embarking on a highly influential educational career.  Others who attended Hackensack High School when Mike was in school were 1962 graduates Joseph DeFalco, the Hackensack High school coach and educator, Duke Dillard, USMC, whose brother is 1965 HHS graduate, Harold Dillard who was Killed in Action during Vietnam, and William Hodde, USMC Helicopter pilot in Vietnam.  Tony Karcich and Reggie Williams, 1964 HHS graduates, went on to have highly successful teaching and coach careers as well.  Another up and coming high school athlete, Mike Fratello, who would graduate from Hackensack High School in 1965 would become a highly successful professional basketball coach.

Mike Miello, just like these other young men at the time, were all coached and highly influenced by friends and family members who had fought in either World War I, World War II, and Korea. Mike Miello was a teenager in Hackensack when Harold V. Rielly was city manager of Hackensack in 1961 and had received a medal for Gallantry during World War I.   Tom Dellatore, and Carl Padovano, Mike Miello’s football coaches had both served during World War II and another coach, Paul Fulton, had served during the Korean War.  Paul Fulton’s brother, Neil Fulton, had served during World War II as a pilot in the Pacific Theater and was a close friend of Carl Padovano.  Another good friend and 1939 HHS graduate of Carl Padovano who had an influence on everyone in town by his presence, was Pete Youakim, who had become a cripple during
World War II when he was blown up by a bomb on an island of Guam in the Pacific. 

Such was the foundation of growing up in the 1960’s in Hackensack or pretty much anywhere in the
United States at the time; those who were coaching, teaching, or running things had dealt with war and the decisions and effects of the tragedies of war. Mike Miello was born in 1944 in Hackensack to Anthony and Lillian Miello.  My father, Tom Meli, played on a semi-pro football team after high school in 1947, that
Mike’s father, Anthony Miello, had coached.  My father, Tom Meli, had graduated from
Hackensack High School in 1946, just after the end of the war and had been captain of the football team.  Many of the guys who were on the semi-pro football team had fought in the war.  My dad said he didn’t really want to play, but as he put it, “When guys who fought in a war tell you you’re playing, whether you like it or not, you’re playing or they may shoot you”.  Mike Miello attended Hackensack High School as a 10th grader in 1959 and graduated in 1962.  His closest friends in high school were Joe DeFalco, Bill Briggs, Duke Dillard, Tony Calabrese, GB Sellarole, and Don Lodato.  He played football, basketball, and baseball, and was Tri-Captain of the football team with Joe DeFalco and Billy Briggs in his senior year.  Mike went to the
University of Rhode Island with Joe DeFalco and played Quarterback as a freshman and TE/DE the
next three years.

Michael A. Miello started his coaching career after graduating college at his college alma mater,
the University of Rhode Island, in 1966 as a freshman football coach.  After one year he came back to Hackensack as a Physical Education teacher and was an assistant coach of Football Basketball and Baseball, as he and many others desired to do who had graduated during the 1960’s.  Preparing him for his first year as a head coach at Hackensack, Mike had been an assistant coach at Columbia University in 1969. 
1970 was the beginning of Michael A. Miello’s high school coaching career which started in Hackensack at the very young age of only 26.  From 1970 to 1975, he accumulated a record of 34-18-2.  In 1971, his best year at Hackensack, and one of the best teams Hackensack ever had… they were NNJIL and
Group 4 State champions.  Some of the greatest players he ever coached anywhere were during this time:  Bruce Basile (Colgate), Mitch Harley (Norfolk Sate), Kirk Scott (Norfolk State), Carl Padovano, Jr.,
Bob Nixon (Colgate), Lee Larkin (Purdue), Dodie Donnell (Nebraska), Bart Tarulli (Marshall), and
Dave Nawacki (Maryland) to name a few.  Bart Tarulli commented on Mike Miello’s coaching style and said this… “Mike had a unique gift of being able to separate his tough coaching and his personal touch toward all the players he coached. This is a gift that makes him the great person he remains today”.  Many of these players are still close to Mike Miello today. Apparently from 1976 to 1977, Mike Miello’s coaching and teaching career took a respite.  Then, in 1978, Mike Miello became head football coach and Athletic Director for Ramapo High School for the next 22 years until 2000.  His coaching record at Ramapo High School and his influence among the students there was tremendous.  I met students over the years who, like his close friend in high school, Joe DeFalco, Mike had greatly influenced.  Mike Miello’s record at Ramapo was 144-78-1 with 5 NBIL titles and 4- Group 3 State Championships.  He had several players from Ramapo, such as
Chris Simms, the best player he ever coached at Ramapo High School, who went on to have success in college and some even made it to Professional Football. Mike Miello had coached some in college and scouted for a Rutgers University program for his former player, Greg Schiano, when he was head coach at Rutgers, but high school football was where he had his greatest influence.  Mike Miello has been inducted into just about every high school Hall of Fame and received numerous civic awards.  The accomplishment Mike Miello holds as the most important is that 98% of his players went to college.  He gave them the opportunity to succeed in life and understanding that the lessons learned on the football field were useless unless you applied them to the more pressing matters of life.  What made the graduation and college entrance so important to Mike Miello, what motivated him to make that his priority, and not just winning football games, but gave him a more complete perspective on life, I always believed as my perspective on life was changed also, may have been influenced heavily by an incident which happened in my senior year in Hackensack High School. It was the fall of 1972 on the fifth game of the football season against
Passaic Valley when Passaic Valley ran a play toward there left side where Hackensack’s outside linebacker was awaiting to make the tackle.  As the runner came around the corner, Pete McDowell, the outside linebacker from Hackensack, was there to greet him and make the tackle.  At that moment in time everything changed for him and also for many of us watching.  Pete McDowell fell limp to the ground after the tackle, which was rather close to the goal line by the Field House side.  A pastor once told me that “It is not what I can get out of a person that counts, but what I can build into the person to carry on what is good”. 
Mike Miello applied this truth throughout his coaching career and those who played for him are grateful.

Written by:
Bob Meli
June 14, 2018