Our People of the Century Tony Surace: Coach's Winning Attitude Made Him a     Millville Legend

Tony Surace is synonymous will Millville football, current Millville football coach Dave Heck, says.

Surace coached the sport at Millville High School for 25 years before moving to the school’s athletic director job prior to the 1997 season. He still presides over the Holly City’s sports programs.

His impact on Cumberland County and South Jersey is almost immeasurable considering:

In 28 years of coaching football, and 19 years as Millville’s baseball coach, Surace touched nearly 2,000 young lives.
His career record on the gridirons stands at 152-74-4
Surace’s 1975 team finished with an 11-0 record and won a South Jersey Group IV sectional title with a 22-12 win over Brick Township.
“It was a labor of love,” Surace said of his 25-year tenure. “I was able to do it for so long because I enjoyed it.”

The 1975 season was Surace’s magical moment. In the Group IV championship game, he outdid Brick Township’s Warren Wolf, the winningest coach in New Jersey history and a coaching legend in his own right.

Two players from the ’75 Thunderbolt team, Bubba Green and Calvin Murray, went on to play in the National Football League. Green was a freshman All-American at North Carolina State before playing for the Baltimore Colts, and Murray was the first-team Big 10 at Ohio State before returning to the area as a Philadelphia Eagle.

But Surace often did his best work when times were rough off the field. Just before the 1995 season, Heck’s father passed away.

“My father never got to see me become a head coach and Tony really filled the void,” Heck said. “(Tony) would be the one to come down and congratulate me when we won.”

And when Millville wasn’t winning?

“His players, even his assistant coaches, never saw him down,” Heck said. “When things were at their worst, Tony was at his best. If he had stayed on for another 10 years, I would have been content to stay right here with him. That’s how much I, and so many other people, think of him.”