It didn’t take much to make a lifelong impression on the most tenured remaining member of the B.C. Lions upon first meeting former head coach Vic Rapp, whose passing was announced by the CFL club.
Rapp, 80, died at his home in Florida, according to the club.
Bill Reichelt was an impressionable young trainer upon arriving to join the Lions and nearly 40 years later didn’t have to think long when asked what he remembered most about a coach whose success with the club has only been surpassed by Don Matthews and Wally Buono.
“He was an intense guy,” said Reichelt, now the team’s director of medical services. “I remember there were at times at Empire Stadium and they wanted to get off the artificial turf and practice. He would find these fields but swore so much; the wives and people who watched (practice) and the City (of Vancouver) was always on him. We were getting kicked off fields just because he was cursing.
“And when his wife showed up he’d curse more.”
Rapp, who joined the Lions in 1977 and coached them for six seasons before leaving for a long NFL career, had a difficult act to follow in an attempt to make the club a contender at a time when the Edmonton Eskimos dominated three-down play.
Upon eventually getting the Lions job after the position was initially offered to Leo Cahill, Rapp led the team to its best showing in 13 seasons, earning coach of the year honours in his first year.
He never forgot the way he was treated by the Eskimos even after he left Edmonton to join the Lions, famously showing up for a 1979 press conference with Hugh Campbell wearing a pair of boxing gloves after accusing the Esks legend of running up the score during a previous game that year.
But though Matthews got most of the credit upon his arrival in 1983, it was Rapp who slowly began to turn around the fortunes of an organization that was anything but good until he arrived.
“When he showed up it changed,” said Reichelt. Some parts of Lions lore you never forget.
LIONS TALES: First-year cornerback Anthony Gaitor, whose absence Tuesday caused the Lions to work on several alternatives in the event an injured ankle didn’t respond, was back at practice in the rain Wednesday. Though the Lions also remained coy as to identifying a starting tailback again, Jeremiah Johnson had almost all of the first-team reps in practice. Buono also hinted he would make a change to Anthony Allen in the event their final game against the Saskatchewan Roughriders had no bearing on playoff positioning, a tacit inference that Johnson had earned another game Saturday in Regina.
