Anthony Vitale is conducting a family-focused interview when, as if on cue, his youngest daughter sprints over, wraps her arms around Dad’s left leg, and gives him a big hug.
While still answering a question, the Saskatchewan Roughriders’ running backs coach bends over, picks up five-year-old Lia, and receives a kiss on the cheek.
“She has no boundaries whatsoever,” a proud father says with a smile. “I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but I’m not going to turn it down.”
Vitale’s family — which also includes his wife, Diane, and nine-year-old daughter, Isabella — had arrived in Regina the previous day. They will remain in the Queen City for most of the summer, until the school year looms and it is time for Vitale’s loved ones to return home to Laguna Hills, Calif.
“It gets really challenging to be apart,” he says. “You miss them and you hope they understand that you’re trying to do a good job so they can have an advantage.
“In the end, this is my job. This is what I do. They understand and they’re patient with that. When you get here, you just invest as much as you can in the job you’re doing and try to make them proud.”
Just like he made his own parents proud.
The son of Ronald and Marion Vitale grew up in Grenada Hills, Calif., where he was bitten by the sporting bug as a youngster. He was successful as a wrestler, but football was — and still is — his passion.
“Mom was a teacher and Dad loved football and helped support anything that I wanted to do in that vein,” he recalls. “I had all the support and mentorship that I needed on that end, which not everybody gets. I’m really grateful for that.”
Anthony Vitale excelled on the offensive line at Bishop Alemany High School in Mission Hills, Calif., before enrolling at Los Angeles Valley College.
“Then I hurt my knee and had my first of many surgeries,” he says. “Eventually, they wouldn’t let me keep going back out there, so I transferred to Moorpark College and wrestled for a little bit.
“When they finally stopped clearing me medically, I moved into the coaching side. I’ve been in love with that ever since.”
Vitale was the offensive line coach and video co-ordinator at Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks, Calif., from 2000 to 2012.
Along the way, he earned a bachelor of science degree in business and an MBA in finance from the University of Redlands in California.
The MBA is nice to have, but …
“I’ll never use it,” Vitale states. “I may be coaching here in the CFL. I may be coaching at Texas Tech. I may be coaching at Tijuana Tech. But I’m going to be coaching somebody. This is what I do.
“It’s nice to have. I’m proud that I was able to do that while I was coaching and balance that, which I think really helped me to speak to college athletes because I had challenged myself to do that.
“But there’s no world where I’ll ever use that. I’ll be coaching somebody the rest of my days.”
Given the precarious and nomadic nature of the coaching profession, has anyone suggested that maybe, just maybe, he should put the MBA to good use?
“My father-in-law has said that a few times,” the always-cheerful Vitale says with a chuckle. “I took his youngest daughter and moved to Canada.
“So, yeah, I’ve heard that once or twice, but we say, ‘Obsessed is a word used by the lazy to describe the dedicated,’ so I like to think of it like that.”
Vitale’s commitment to coaching led to post-secondary positions at Lindenwood University (assistant offensive line coach and offensive graduate assistant, 2012-13), Southwest Baptist University (offensive line coach and recruiting co-ordinator, 2013-18), Delaware State University (offensive line coach, 2018-20) and Eastern New Mexico University (offensive co-ordinator and offensive line coach, 2021).
He then ascended to the professional ranks, working as an offensive line coach with the Edmonton Elks (in 2022) and Roughriders (2023) before assuming his current role of running backs coach.
“He one of the best human beings that we have in this building, and we’ve got a lot of really good ones,” first-year Roughriders Head Coach Corey Mace says.
“To be able to have an offensive lineman’s thought process in the running back room, with the running back essentially being the extra protection for your quarterback, is really valuable. There’s also his understanding of the run game.
“These are all things that really went into the thought process of retaining him. When the opportunity came to put together the staff, it was an easy call for myself. I’m very happy that he wanted to stay.”
Vitale is equally pleased with the arrangement, given his recognition that any semblance of stability is something to savour for a football coach.
“So let’s see …,” he muses. “My nine-year-old has lived a little bit south of Kansas City in Missouri. She has lived in Delaware. I had a job in Baltimore, so she was a part of that change.
“I was in Edmonton and then I came here. All those stops have been in that nine-year span of life.”
None of this would be even remotely possible without the love of his life, Diane.
“She is tougher than most,” Vitale says. “She keeps things together when I’m away.
“Even through the course of changing college jobs, this business is very much, ‘You have an hour to pack and then you need to be here.’
“That burden always falls on her to deal with transitioning, getting the house packed up, finding a new place to live, getting a new job, getting the kids into new schools.
“As a football coach, you plug into a network of people that you automatically have something in common with. You’re going to have a new group of peers and friends, but your kids and your wife have to start over completely on that side.
“Her patience in dealing with that has always been more than I could ever ask for.”
He couldn’t ask for anything more, at present, than to be spending time with his family and coaching football.
Inevitably, though, the summer will near its conclusion and long-distance communications will become the norm for the final few months of football season.
“I couldn’t imagine doing this without being able to see them on FaceTime,” Vitale says. “You can call and you can talk, but it’s fun to see them.
“The girls will want to read to you or show you something that they got at school, so to be able to interact at least a little bit more, that’s helpful. I don’t know how guys did it before.”
It helps, of course, to lean on the extended family — his fellow coaches and the players they coach.
“I love the game in and of itself, but I love the interaction of the young men you get to deal with,” he says. “I think that we get to have a role in their lives as men, beyond being able to help them reach a ‘3’ technique.”
Aside from savouring time with his family, there isn’t anything on his to-do list except for football and coaching.
“I’m really lucky, in that this is what I love to do,” Vitale reflects. “I really don’t have a whole lot of balance in life.
“I have an MBA, but I don’t know how to read the stock market.
“I can’t golf.
“I don’t speak another language.
“I don’t go bowling.
“I don’t go to ball games.
“Really, this is all I’m interested in. This is it.”
