Photo Illustration by Andrew Brown ’18 | Many sports such as football, basketball and soccer received new uniforms this school year.
By Andrew Jordan ’18
THE ROUNDUP
Brophy has a tradition of wearing classically recognizable sports uniforms, and the man behind the football team’s uniforms is Mr. Frank Antonioli.
The largest sport, based purely on total number of athletes, is football. The task of managing and distributing uniforms and equipment for over 200 athletes has become Mr. Antonioni’s primary focus.
“Typically, we will order varsity uniforms every three years and then move the jerseys down to the next level,” Mr. Antonioli said.
As more time passes from when the athletic department decided to make the switch to Under Armor, the lower levels of the football program have received uniforms similar to that of varsity.
“When I first took over as equipment manager, the freshman teams wore their practice pants to their games,” Mr. Antonioli said.
Starting recently, players at every level have access to Under Armor uniforms and game pants.
The other half of his job is handling and distributing the equipment that the athletes wear.
“The only thing that has an expiration date are the helmets, and that’s 10 years,” he said. “We send the helmets out every year to get cleaned, disinfected, and scanned for any cracks.”
Since varsity receives new uniforms every three years, there is also a set of uniforms being phased out. He prefered to call these jerseys “vintage.”
“When we have a set of jerseys that we like to say are vintage, we have been giving those to the varsity shop. They take those and sell football jerseys along with old basketball and baseball jerseys,” Mr. Antonioli said.
These provide money to put back into the program while also providing students with vintage jerseys.
“I’m actually about to take over three large tubs of vintage jerseys to the varsity shop, some of which were part of one of the state championship games,” Mr. Antonioli said. He is referring to the jerseys worn in the 2007 state championship game against Desert Vista.
Many students enjoy the black and red alternate jerseys that the team wears for the playoffs, but when asked if those will ever be sold, “I doubt it,” he replied.
“I would love to sell them and get rid of them, I don’t like the black jerseys,” Mr. Antonioli said.