Ray Rogers, one of best Red Raiders ever, dies at 41
OCEAN CITY – The Red Raider family was rocked this past week with news of the sudden passing of Ray Rogers on Aug. 17.
Rogers, 41, was one of the best to ever play football at Ocean City High School.
He was a two-time state champion and still holds the school record for career interceptions.
Gary Degenhardt, who coached him at OCHS, shared his thoughts and memories.
“He was a special kid, a special player, a great teammate,” Degenhardt said. “I just can’t say enough nice things about Ray …. It’s just very sad.”
The circumstances of his passing are gut-wrenching.
“He’s at (a loved one’s) funeral, who passed away a couple days earlier, and he has some sort of cardiac event there, and they can’t revive him,” Degenhardt said. “It’s just a sad, sad event. We lost a great kid who was also a very fine athlete.” He leaves behind six children.
He carried himself with a quiet intensity on the field.
“Ray didn’t have a lot to say,” Degenhardt recalled. “He just let his play do the talking. I can still see him making plays on the field – catches, defensive plays, interceptions. He just made us better coaches because you’re as good as the people around you. Ray made the people around him better with the way he conducted himself and the way he was able to play.”
That stands in stark contrast for anyone who knew him off the field.
“I think it’s a different setting,” Degenhardt said. “When he was on the field, he was all business. He was concentrated on his job at that time. When he was with his buddies, as I do and I’m sure you do, he was able to relax and be more vocal. I’m glad to hear that of Ray; I didn’t see that side of him as a coach.”
A bevy of highlights come to mind for anyone who got to see him play.
“Oh yeah, definitely,” Degenhardt said. “We were playing EHT (Egg Harbor Township) and a ball gets thrown to him, and it should have been thrown to the outside. Instead he’s looking at the outside and the ball is thrown inside, and he just turns around in mid-air and makes the catch. I can remember turning to (assistant coach) Skip Angelo and saying, ‘Great coaching, right Skip?’
“Another time we’re up playing Millville and he makes another fantastic catch that not too many people make in the corner of the end zone. He’s sitting on the pylon and they said he was out of bounds and it would have been a game-winning catch. But it’s just plays like that as a player that made him special. He played hard, he was a good teammate, and just helped make us better. If he was on the field your team was better because he just had such fine athletic ability on both sides of the ball. The more players you have like Ray, the better your team is. As a coach for 30 years, 15 as an assistant and 15 as head coach, I learned that if you have good people you’re better coaches.”
Degenhardt is still reeling from the news.
“We’re at a loss,” Degenhardt said. “We lost a great friend, a great athlete. I wish I would have known him more off the field, but life gets in the way. But it seems he had a good life, good friends, and good times. As we move on, and I’m still trying to move on from the shock of hearing it, you remember the good times you had together and what Ray stood for. You just try to move on and help his family in any way you can.”
Rogers’ quarterback, Al Genz, remembered his friend and teammate.
“He was always a good time,” Genz said. “He was a quiet, passionate guy. The things he cared about, you could feel it and sense it. He was a hell of an athlete and as a friend and family man, he was passionate about that too. You knew he loved his family.”
Having a player of Ray’s caliber helped lift the whole team.
“You knew you were winning,” Genz said. “You knew you were winning that battle. You went knowing that guy at that position was winning. Whether you threw a perfect ball and he beat his defender it was easy. If you just happened to throw a bad ball or just threw one up just because, you knew you had Ray out there and he was coming down with the ball. He was quiet but, football-wise, when he would talk everyone listened and it brought everyone’s intensity up another notch.”
Genz had a great view for some of Ray’s best plays. “Watching him run, watching him move out there, he ran like a deer,” Genz said. “He just could go. It was so effortless, so smooth.”
“There was the kickoff return his freshman year. I can remember another when we were playing Holy Cross at home in ‘98; we were number one and two in South Jersey. Early in the game we ran a receiver hitch to him. He caught that ball at the visiting sideline and took it 80 yards down that sideline for a touchdown. You just knew no one was catching him. Fans going crazy, the place was packed, I remember like it was yesterday. He was gone. I remember when Skip Angelo would call some plays in the huddle – whether it was a 90 fly or a waggle opposite, you knew when you heard it in the huddle, or I knew when coach told me the play, I knew it was a touchdown. I just knew Ray was getting the ball. He helped make high school football enjoyable for me and made me successful.”
Going to battle together in sports can create lifelong bonds.
“Absolutely,” Genz said. “I didn’t see him as much as I would have liked, but last time I did was at my daughter’s 21st birthday party. We went out to dinner, he was taking a break from work. I saw him and I gave him a hug. It was the same vibe of emotion and love that you felt when we scored a touchdown.”
How Genz will remember Rogers: “I think he just did what he wanted his way. As a kid, as an athlete, and as an adult, he did things his way and he didn’t care what anyone else thought. And athletically – just a freak, man. I’ll be able to tell those stories forever.”
Kevin Smith, the current Red Raider head coach, was an assistant coach during Ray’s run.
“As a football player, obviously he was one of the most talented players I’ve ever coached,” Smith said. “I say him and Scotty Lipford are the two most talented kids I’ve coached. Just incredible natural ability. He was a unique player in that at this level there aren’t that many players that the opposing team has to game plan for. But he was that guy; he could eliminate an entire side of the field in the passing game for teams.”
“A quick Ray story – he had good instincts and he was a good learner. We were playing at Oakcrest, probably in ‘98, and he recognized that the split of the wide receiver had been reduced, meaning the receiver was closer to the offensive tackle. Usually that means you’re going to run some sort of out cut. They were right by our sideline and Ray looked over at me and he said, ‘Coach, you see the split?’ and I said, ‘Yeah,’ and Ray goes, ‘Watch this,’ and they ran the out cut and Ray jumped the route, picked it, and took it to the house. It was just awesome to see a kid at that level who had that great confidence.”
Rogers brought that not just on game days, but every day.
“I’ll tell you one thing I remember,” Smith said, “the competitions in practice with some of the guys. Ray only played three seasons because I think he was too old as a senior to qualify. But when Ray was a freshman he started on the ‘96 team and in practice we’d have these incredible one-on-one battles. It was Ray, Scotty, Austin and Adam Martin, some of the best players Ocean City’s ever had. They would go at each other like it was the Group IV finals on a Wednesday afternoon just because of how hard they competed. None of them wanted to lose to the other. Those guys just loved to play, loved to compete. Ray was probably the best of all of them.”
“It’s funny,” Smith said, “Ray was quiet in that he wasn’t vocal in front of the team. But when you got him in smaller groups, man, nobody talked trash like Ray Rogers. He was a tremendous trash talker but it was around the people he was comfortable with. When you put him in a bigger venue, he would just go about his business.”
“Everybody had a great amount of respect for Ray because he was super talented, but he treated people well. He was a good guy. He was cocky and confident but he wasn’t arrogant or demeaning,” Smith said. “He didn’t talk down to his teammates, he didn’t pout or sulk if things didn’t go his way. He was a good guy to have in the locker room because of who he was as a player, but he also just got along with everybody.”
By KYLE McCRANE/Sentinel Sports