(Archived from the front page, Oct. 22, 2024.)
From the Georgetown Gridiron Club account on Facebook, news of the passing of former Georgetown assistant football coach Dan Droze at the age of 88.
To Georgetown players and alumni, Droze was the defensive coach for 25 seasons from 1968 through 1992, a tenure on the Georgetown football sidelines matched by only one other man in school history, current head coach Rob Sgarlata. Droze's place in Washington sports predates Georgetown by over a decade, however.
Following the Supreme Court decision in Bolling v. Sharpe, 1954 was the last season of segregated schools in the District, which featured a "Division I" of seven all-white schools (Anacostia, Coolidge, Eastern, McKinley, Roosevelt, Western, and Wilson) and a "Division II" of the city's five black schools (Armstrong, Cardozo, Dunbar, Phelps, Spingarn). Despite the administration of all 12 schools under the Interhigh banner, games were not scheduled between the divisions until the following season.
Droze grew up in Southeast Washington and was an all-Met halfback at Anacostia HS. Anacostia won the 1954 Division I Interhigh championship, but it was what happened after the season that earned Droze a place in local sports history.
Droze was invited to a first-ever exhibition game featuring an all-Interhigh team to face St. John's, the all-white private school champion, at Griffith Stadium. With a team of 22 white players and 11 black players chosen across eight of the 12 high schools, it was the first integrated football game in DC history. Before a crowd of 8,800 at Griffith Stadium, it was Droze who threw a halfback pass late in the game to Cardozo's Dave Harris (a future football star at Kansas) for a 12-7 win. In stark contrast to the 1962 race riot at DC Stadium that ended public-private championship football games in Washington, the outcome of this game and Harris' game-winning catch did not lead to any violence at the outcome.
Following high school, Droze earned a scholarship to the University of North Carolina, playing three seasons for the Tar Heels. Following military service, he became an investment advisor in the Washington area and played semi-pro football with the Virginia Sailors, which introduced him to Georgetown coach Mike Agee and later, a fellow DC high school star who had also played in the ACC: Scott Glacken.
Droze and Glacken joined the Georgetown staff in 1968 as assistant coaches under Maurice Dubofsky, who succeded Agee when his job took him out of the area. Glacken became head coach two years later following Dubofsky's death at the age of 60. Droze's 25 years as an assistant coach was largely selfless, given that Glacken couldn't pay his assistants enough for the hours they devoted to the team. He retired after Glacken's dismissal as head coach in early 1993.
"Guys who played for Droze said he was tough, instilling them with integrity, discipline and strength," writes the Gridiron Club notice. "As a member of former head coach Scotty Glacken's staff, coach Droze worked with the defensive backfield, including all-America selections of Jim Chesley, Alex Poulos, and Jim Corcoran...Twice in those years, the Hoyas finished in the top ten of the best small college teams in the East. The 1978 team finished 7-1, the best showing by a Georgetown team since 1939-1940, and came within a single point of finishing the season undefeated and qualifying for the Div. III playoffs.
"If not for the selfless contributions of Dan Droze, Georgetown football would not have survived and prospered as it did. Rest in Peace, Coach. Hoya Saxa."
