AUGUSTA — Judy Gaziano Kane has watched the video before. It’s a 10 minute biography of her father, Frank J. Gaziano, the namesake of the football award that was presented on Saturday afternoon at the Augusta Civic Center. The video is nothing new to Kane, or her sister, Jill Gaziano Mitchell, or her husband, Jeff Kane. She still never tires of watching it.

“I feel as if he’s here. You see his picture up on the screen there, and the coaches of course all knew him,” Kane said. “He is probably so excited, wherever he is. This is legacy he would’ve wanted. He would be thrilled to see the next generations carrying on.”

This year was the just the fifth presentation of the Frank J. Gaziano Memorial Offensive and Defensive Lineman Awards. The winners were Windham High School tight end Zach Davis and Cheverus High School defensive end Zordan Holman. Davis and Holman each took home a trophy, a leather jacket and a $5,000 scholarship.

In just five short years, the Gaziano Award has earned a place as one of the most prestigious high school sports honors in the state.

A little about Frank Gaziano. He played college football at Holy Cross, before a professional career with Washington and the Boston Yanks. In Maine, Gaziano is known as the founder of National Distributors and as a man who gave back to the community as often as he could. The video highlights the dedication of a new bandstand in Portland’s Deering Oaks Park funded by Gaziano.

Shortly after Gaziano’s death in 2010, Peter DeSimon pitched to Jeff Kane the idea of a football award in Gaziano’s memory. Let’s do something for the linemen, DeSimon said. Let’s honor the guys who do the anonymous grunt work.

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“It was my dream. I was lucky enough, that the right accumulation of the right people came together and it caught on fire,” DeSimon said.

Oh, it caught fire. On Saturday, six of the previous eight winners of the Gaziano Award attended the banquet. Last year’s winners, defensive end Luke Washburn of Oak Hill and his high school coach, Stacen Doucette, and offensive lineman Jedidiah Scott, of Sanford, and his high school coach, Mike Fallon, presented the rotating trophies to this year’s winners. The defensive lineman trophy, a bronze Gaziano in a four-point stance, went to Holman and Cheverus coach John Wolfgram. The offensive line trophy, Gaziano in a three-point stance, was accepted by Davis and his coach, Matt Perkins.

Washburn and Scott also spoke at the ceremony, welcoming the soon-to-be winners into the club and urging them to follow Gaziano’s example. Find your talent, develop it, and use that talent to help others, Scott said.

“It’s definitely an honor when you win this. Everyone likes to come back. It really is a fraternity of guys, of great lineman and great academic people. We all went through the same process. We know what each other went through, so it’s nice,” Scott said.

“We know already, before we even meet the guys who are getting the award this year, they’re probably a lot like us. It’s exciting to come see who they are,” Washburn said.

This year, 20 players from around the state were nominated by their coaches for the Gaziano Award.

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“It has grown every year. We get better and more candidates every year,” Judy Gaziano Kane said.

The scholarships awarded have grown, too. In 2011, inaugural winners Nate Martel and Matt Welch were presented with $2,500, half the award given to Holman and Davis on Saturday. Each of the four runners-up were given $1,000 scholarships, double the original $500. DeSimon is in a never-ending quest to find more sponsors. National Distributors, the company Gaziano founded, funds the scholarships, while sponsors fund the banquet and other awards.

“It can get big. I want to see the scholarship grow. The more money we get, the more money we can give,” DeSimon said.

At the end of the banquet, all the winners and finalists, past and present, joined together for a group photo. Gaziano Kane looked on, and smiled. Her father would have loved this.

“What is so great about the whole thing is to see the earlier winners come back and have that same hold and maturity. They speak to these finalists here, and you can just see that there’s a status, ‘Wow. Maybe I can be like him someday.'” Gaziano Kane said. “It’s something that I look forward to every winter.”

Travis Lazarczyk — 861-9242

tlazarczyk@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @TLazarczykMTM


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