Coach: New UMass OC Mike Bajakian Is "Special Person"
Legendary Bergen Catholic HS head coach Fred Stengel has some strong feelings about his former player & current Minutemen offensive coordinator Mike Bajakian.
Fred Stengel feels strongly about Mike Bajakian.
That much was clear when the legendary New Jersey high school football coach called me barely five minutes after I shot him an email out of the blue asking if he’d be willing to chat about one of his former Bergen Catholic players.
It’d take longer to learn just how strongly Stengel feels about Bajakian, but not much longer.
“He’s a special person, I’ll tell you that right now,” Stengel said of UMass’ new offensive coordinator.
“All of the things you want a guy to be like, Mike is all of those things and more.”
It was obvious Stengel still felt he’d yet to truly sum up his feelings.
“If I had to say, this is the person I want to help me, like in a dying situation, he'd be the guy I'd call first,” Stengel finally says.
“That's literally how much I think of him.”
The feeling seems to be mutual. Asked about early mentors and Bajakian’s high school head coach is the first name he offered up.
Stengel has 55 years of experience coaching high school football, including 22 years at Bergen Catholic, where he went 192-49, reaching the state playoffs 21 times and winning nine state titles.
Bajakian was a three-year starter for Stengel at Bergen Catholic, spending his sophomore and junior years at quarterback. Prior to Bajakian’s senior season, Stengel and his staff decided to hand the full-time quarterback role to somebody else.
“It hurt me tremendously to make that decision,” Stengel recalled. “I sat him down and I said, ‘Listen, Mike, you're not going to like this, but this is what I feel I need to do for us to have the best team that we're capable of having.’
“And he looked me dead in the eye and he said, ‘Coach, whatever I can do to help this football team, I want to do. I'm a Bergen Catholic guy and I ain't going anywhere else.’”
Bajakian had experience playing defensive back, so that was where he focused his senior season, but Stengel made sure he still got enough time under center to put some film together for colleges.
“The games that Mike started at quarterback, we were just as efficient and just as good, and he had great tape to show,” Stengel said.
Good enough to earn a spot at Williams College, where he led the Ephs to a 15-0-1 combined record in 1994 and 1995, earning All-NESCAC and All-ECAC honors along the way.
Oh yeah, and Bergen Catholic finished undefeated during Bajakian’s senior season, winning one of those state championships.
“I love the kid, just plain and simple,” the soon-to-be-76-year-old says of his now-50-year-old former player. “That's how I feel about him. The way he handled that situation endeared him to me for life.
“In your life, you meet certain people who just ring a bell with you, strike a chord in your heart, however you want to put it. I have just always been so appreciative of that kid.”
It’s easy for new head coaches to offer up platitudes about doing things the right way and valuing people over performance, but in the end, the impact of actions will dwarf the impact of those words.
First-year UMass head coach Joe Harasymiak can say those things all he wants, but if the people he’s bringing in don’t genuinely reflect those values, it will come to light and the foundation of the program will begin to crack and ultimately crumble.
It’s clear his offensive coordinator hire checks Harasymiak’s first box for assistant coaches - “You should never be a better football coach than you are a person” - but Bajakian, who many simply call ‘Jake,’ can also coach.
“The deal with Jake is he's not only a great person, he is as diligent a football coach as I've ever seen,” Stengel says. “He works his ass off and it's not because he's just got a great personality or is a good guy or any of that.”
“There is no better, no more conscientious, hardworking, thoughtful person I've ever met. And he loves football.
“Him being at UMass, I think is a godsend.”