Phil Anastasia: Wrestler, late brother honored

John Villecco was a great wrestler. He was an even better big brother.

Just ask Jerry Villecco.

"To me, having an older brother is like having a hero," Jerry Villecco said. "When you are younger, you always have somebody to look up to.

"I was lucky because my older brother was a great athlete, but he was a great person, too. He influenced me as far as the kind of athlete I wanted to be but more the kind of man I wanted to be."

Jerry Villecco, a two-time state champion in wrestling, will be inducted into the Deptford Hall of Fame on April 27. It will be a special night for the best wrestler in the township's history, and one of the best wrestlers in South Jersey history.

But it will be bittersweet, too, because Jerry Villecco will be inducted along with his older brother, who was Deptford's first state champion.

John Villecco died in 2006 at age 55 after an illness.

"Losing my brother was the hardest thing I ever went through in my life," Villecco said.

John Villecco became Deptford's first state champion in wrestling when he won the 157-pound title in 1969. Jerry Villecco won the 157-pound title in 1971 and the 168-pound title in 1972.

John Villecco was a two-time NAIA all-American wrestler at Glassboro State. Jerry Villecco was a three-time all-American wrestler at Penn State.

"Those guys are Deptford wrestling," said Deptford coach Joe Hollywood, who won a state title at 129 pounds in 1986. "As soon as I got involved in the sport, I heard about the Villecco brothers."

Jerry Villecco was in sixth grade when John started wrestling for Deptford High School.

"I used to get so excited watching those matches," Villecco, 55, said. "I'd go home and start doing push-ups and sit-ups because I wanted to be just like him."

Jerry Villecco said his older brother was a product of his upbringing. The family lived on a farm in the Mullica Hill area for most of John's childhood, so he never played youth sports.

When the family moved to Deptford, Jerry got involved in Little League baseball as well as midget football.

"Our family had a rule: If you weren't playing sports, you had to work," Villecco said. "I played everything, so it cut down on my time at work.

"My brother worked so much when he was a kid. That's how he got so strong."

John Villecco was the ultimate big brother: quiet, humble, honest, and so naturally strong that nobody wanted to mess with him, on the mat or off.

"I must have had 30, 40 guys tell me my brother was the strongest guy they ever met," Villecco said.

Van Lynch, who wrestled with John Villecco at Glassboro State, said his teammate's strength was legendary.

"He was almost superhuman," Lynch said. "You had to see the look on guys' faces when they would wrestle him. They couldn't believe how strong he was.

"The thing about John was that he was the perfect teammate. He was totally fair, totally ethical."

Villecco said that when his brother won the state title in 1969, he was proud but also inspired. He knew he could be next.

"I never wanted to come across as cocky," Villecco said. "But when he won the state, I knew that meant I was good enough, too.

"Because of my brother, I had that belief in myself."

In typical big-brother fashion, John helped Jerry in another way.

"He used to beat me up when I was little," Villecco said. "That's how I got fast, running away from him."

Jerry Villecco, who also was a star football player at Deptford, was just the second wrestler in South Jersey history to win four district titles. He was the fourth South Jersey wrestler to win two state titles.

"They set the standard," Hollywood said of the Villecco brothers.

The Villecco brothers didn't get overly emotional with each other. But Jerry said he knew how proud John was of his kid brother's accomplishments.

"I had other people tell me how much it meant to him," Villecco said. "We were quiet with each other. But when he was with other people, it would come out, and they would tell me.

"That meant so much to me because of how much I looked up to my brother. All my life, I was looking up to him."