Fishing trips, childhood bike rides through Oakmont and Verona and conversations during summer baseball games with Steve Dapra are some of the memories that remain vivid for longtime friend Jason Cappa.
For them, it wasn’t just about success in athletics. It was about the activities that make growing up in tight-knit communities special.
Dapra died Wednesday at age 47, and memories of him have dominated the thoughts of many in the Riverview community.
“When you grow up in small towns like Oakmont and Verona, a lot of those great memories, they’re not just about friends. They’re about families,” Cappa said Sunday. “The families are right there with you.”
Dapra and Cappa, along with a few other friends, gave the two communities that compose the Riverview School District reasons to get together on fall weekends in the 1990s, whether it was a Friday night road game or Saturdays at Riverside Park.
They helped lead a football resurgence at Riverview, where Dapra established himself as one of the more accomplished players in program history.
“If you grew up in Oakmont and Verona during that time, you knew who Steve Dapra was,” friend and former teammate Ben Erdeljac said. “I remember as a freshman and watching him play as a sophomore, and then as a junior seeing him dominate the Eastern 8 Conference. I really looked up to him even though he was just one year older than me.”
The 1994 season, Dapra’s junior year, is filled with moments that live in Riverview lore, including the improbable “Miracle at the Park” during the first round of the WPIAL Class A playoffs. Top-seeded Riverview faced almost certain defeat against Jefferson-Morgan when Erdeljac caught a 94-yard touchdown pass from Jeff Cappa with less than a minute remaining before winning in overtime.
Riverview made the WPIAL Class A championship game, losing to Western Beaver. It later would add two more appearances, a runner-up finish in 1996 and the 1997 title. Dapra wasn’t on those latter two teams, but he helped influence both groups. In 1994, he was an all-state selection, rushing for 1,924 yards and earning Valley News Dispatch Player of the Year honors.
“Steve was always great at everything he did. He was always the best, and we all saw that, but he never took credit for it. That’s just the way he was,” Jason Cappa said. “He was very humble. He never got too big for himself. He was a great athlete and a great friend.”
He goes down as one of the great backs in Riverview history, but Dapra helped preserve Riverview’s unbeaten 1994 regular season in an unlikely way.
“We’re playing Greensburg Central Catholic at home, and we’re losing in the second half. The coaches put Steve in on defense,” Erdeljac said. “He picked off a pass and returned it for a TD. That was typical Steve.”
Dapra’s talents drew the attention of Division I programs, including Pitt and West Virginia. He selected Boston College, which honored his scholarship after Dapra suffered a season-ending ankle injury during the fourth game of Riverview’s 1995 season and before he could become the first player from the A-K Valley to rush for 4,000 yards.
After graduating from Boston College, Dapra, an avid outdoorsman who was living in Plum, returned to the area. He was working as the assistant superintendent of distribution at Oakmont Water Authority at the time of his death.
“We’d run into each other at the Sheetz in Oakmont, and he’d always have a smile on his face. He’d always ask about you and your family,” Cappa said. “It was always great to see him.”
Dapra is survived by his wife, Beniamina, children Giuseppina and Marco, parents Linda and David Dapra, and many other family members.
A celebration of life was Monday at Riverside Community Church in Oakmont, and a GoFundMe has been established to help assist with everyday costs for Dapra’s children. Visit gofundme.com/f/for-pina-and-marco-with-love to contribute.