Frank Rose was in attendance at the 20th Class Reunion.
As a great member of our community and class, Frank continued to give his support to our alum and the community as a High School football coach at Leto, followed by the last three years at Jesuit.
From Bay News 9 - August 28, 2012 @ 04:49PM
Jesuit players and coaches remember Frank Rose.
The Jesuit football program will be playing with heavy hearts this week.
Tigers assistant coach Frank Rose died unexpectedly of an apparent heart attack at his home on Monday. Rose had been a member of the Tigers coaching staff since the 2010 season when James Harrell took over as the head coach.
Jesuit hosts Plant in the Bright House Sports Network Game of the Week on Saturday night and school officials are discussing ways to honor Rose during the game.
“This is obviously an unexpected loss to the football family,” said Jesuit Director of Athletics Terry Rupp. “We are just leaning on our faith right now and have to understand that God has a plan for all of us; and what Frank would want from all of us is to move on and continue the season, and for the players to move forward without him.”
Players took to Twitter to express their condolences. Tigers senior defensive back Tim Foley tweeted "RIP Coach Frank Rose. You never stopped pushing me and I will be forever thankful. You will be missed by hundreds. forever in our hearts." Junior linebacker/tight end Vincent Jackson tweeted "RIP Coach Frank Rose, This year is all dedicated to you."
“Coach Rose is what I call an inspirational coach,” Harrell said. “He was a guy that was here and had a great relationship with the kids; and he was very unassuming and never drew much attention to himself. He was a very hard worker and was dedicated to the overall development of our players, and those players really like him. He will be terribly missed by everyone in our program.”
Before he joined Jesuit's staff, Rose served as the offensive coordinator at Leto, his alma mater. He also helped in the recruiting of several Falcons players, including former Hillsborough County standout Jeremy Deering, who is now a starter at Rutgers.
"One of the main themes with Frank was he was very selfless with his time," said Hugh Dehnert, who hired Rose when he became the head coach at Leto from 2006-2009 and is now an assistant at Plant. "He did a lot for us at Leto. He was very proud of his alma mater and he was very proud to help the kids at Leto."
Rose carried that unselfish nature over to Jesuit when he left Leto after the 2009 season.
"Frank was a huge advocate for getting players to college," said Ty Alvarez, Hillsborough assistant coach and former Jesuit offensive coordinator. "He did a tremendous job of contacting the college coaches, of sending them film, a lot of behind the scenes recruiting stuff to get kids scholarships. He was just so unselfish with his time.There are kids in college now because of Frank."
Alvarez said a great way to honor Rose would be if players wore a heart sticker with his initials in the middle on their helmets.
"He had a huge heart," Alvarez said. "That would just symbolize so much."
