A tip of the cap to "Coach Cap" is in order.

After leading the program for 24 seasons, Moon Area High School football coach Mark Capuano announced his retirement Friday. He compiled a 143-108 record and was the winningest coach in program history.

"A lot of good memories, a whole lot of good memories," said Capuano, 62, who retired from his position as a math teacher in 2005. "Day-in and day-out and week-in and week-out, you work hard to achieve a common goal with those young men who choose to play football.

"They are special young men, and I was lucky to have kids who went out there and worked hard and realized that was the way they were going to win. That is something that I am very proud of ... that a very great number of the kids whom our staff coached came to practice every single day and worked hard and were team players. That really is what football is all about."

No team exhibited that more than his 1998 Tigers, who lifted Capuano to his greatest season -- in terms of on-field success. That team captured the WPIAL Class AAA title with a 34-7 victory against Parkway Conference archrival Blackhawk in the championship at Three Rivers Stadium. That season, the Tigers constructed nine shutouts in the first 14 games before losing in the PIAA title game to Allentown Central Catholic.

"That was a great year, a spectacular team with a great bunch of guys," said Capuano, who was named the Parkway coach of the year in 1982, '94, '99 and 2000. "What I thought was great about that ['98] team I saw this past season.

"It has been 10 years, and we brought them back to honor them this season with a ceremony. I really didn't know what to expect, but more than 30 of those guys showed up. For them to make the effort to come back and tell the coaches how many great memories they had from that team, well, that means a lot.

"Those are the things that mean the most to me. The wins and losses are what a lot of people measure success by, but when you coach a young man and then he comes back later in life and tells you that you made a difference, that is really something special."

Capuano admitted that the win total was something that fell off in the past few years, and it bothered him. The Tigers' combined record the past two seasons was an atypical 1-18. But he didn't dodge the subject when asked about the slide in production for a program that, less than a decade ago, was a regular WPIAL playoff participant.

"The reason I got into coaching was because of the great men who coached me and influenced me positively," he said. "It is not always going to be a bed of roses, and everything is not always going to work out your way.

"I think that is part of learning. You learn from the good and the bad, and I just felt the time was right to give another coach a chance to see what he could do with the program. In the past couple of years, I just felt that my message might not have been getting through fully or that it wasn't having the effect that maybe it once had.

"I don't think there was anything that I did that was any different, but I just had the idea that, with how kids are now, I was being ineffective for some reason. I didn't want to cheat the Moon football program out of what it needed and that's why I felt the time was right."