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Napa High School Athletic Hall of Fame: Cabral learned from sports how to battle adversity in life
Angelo Cabral, AJ Cabral, Brandy Cabral, Debbie Cabral, Joe Cabral.
Angelo Cabral
Angelo Cabral
Angelo Cabral
Angelo Cabral
VINCENT D’ADAMO
Angelo Cabral succeeded in and out of sports with an old-fashioned work ethic, leadership ability, and a big heart.
Work ethic and leadership have never failed the 1993 Napa High graduate. But a rare heart condition that required surgery caused a slight detour for Cabral, which is fitting because he was conditioned with the mindset that the road to success has no shortcuts.
Cabral, who starred in football and baseball for Napa High, will be one of eight inductees in the 2024 class of the Napa High Athletic Hall of Fame. The other inductees are Max Alvarez, Macy Jo Harrison, Heather Highshoe, Susan Jackson, John O’Connor, Robbie Steen and Robert “Rooter Bob” Zanardi. Enshrinement will take place Oct. 12 at the Napa Elks Lodge.
Cabral played baseball in college, redshirting one year at Oregon State before returning home for a two-year stint at Napa Valley College under head coach Matt Stewart. Cabral played two more years under legendary coach Tony Robichaux at the University of Southwestern Louisiana, which is now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
“As so much time has gone on, I thought that ship had sailed,” Cabral said of his induction. “In my younger days, it was something I was excited about and felt like it was warranted as any young athlete believes. When it was told to me, it came at a surprise dinner party.
"I think the immediate thing was a feeling of validation from my peers, who remembered and respected me as a person and player from 30 years prior. It was a proud moment for my family. I’m honored to be getting inducted with so many people who were not only great athletes but great people. I want the people that are in the Hall of Fame to know that I’m super respectful of them.”
Cabral returned to California in 1999 and has made his home in Benicia, where he has lived ever since. He and his wife, Brandy, have one child, Angelo Jr., who goes by AJ Cabral and works as a regional vice president for John Hancock Financial.
The elder Cabral also served as the Benicia Rebels Baseball Club director for five years.
Cabral’s journey to athletics began when he grew tired of doing physical labor on his family’s dairy farm.
“I knew that I didn’t want to shovel (excrement) and move cows around,” he laughed. “That was my dad and brother’s passion. My out was sports. Playing all three sports was a passion of mine. I think back to the two-a-days (practices) with football. Putting in the work and pushing my teammates to be the best was something I enjoyed. I got more satisfaction out of helping people around me get better than I did my achievements. Over time, it helped the greater good of the team.
"Looking back, the dog days of summer and running around with my buddies was my early journey. Basketball wasn’t going to be a future. My dad thought football and coming from a football school was a natural progression. But as I got older and talked to people like Stew (at NVC), I knew baseball would be my ticket to the college experience.”
As a Napa High senior, Cabral was team MVP in both football and baseball and garnered Male Athlete of the Year honors to punctuate his career. He was also a team captain in both sports. He was All-Napa County and All-Monticello Empire League as a senior in baseball, where he played catcher.
As a junior in football, Cabral played tight end and linebacker. He caught 10 passes for 128 yards and a touchdown. His main role, however, was run-blocking for an offense that averaged 193.2 rushing yards per game, 259.7 yards per game, 5.2 yards per rush, and 5.4 yards per play with Ben Twitchell as the starting signal-caller. When Cabral was a senior, he was asked by head coach Bob Herlocker to return to the quarterback position he had played as a freshman and sophomore.
Herlocker said in his letter of recommendation for Cabral’s Hall of Fame candidacy that he considered the willingness to switch to quarterback as one of the most unselfish acts he witnessed.
“For me,” recalled Cabral of playing quarterback and catcher, “they were the same because if you look at the positions that I played, it was the ultimate team sport because I was the captain. I was helping get everyone in position and rallying the troops. That’s where my natural personality is. Those two positions parallel nicely.
“The quarterback portion drove the catcher portion. You can’t get too high or too low. As a catcher, Stew always used to tell me, ‘You’ve got to manage those dum dums on the mound because they can barely brush their teeth.’”
Cabral’s shining moment in baseball came as a senior, when he batted .310 with 13 walks and eight RBI and committed just three errors in 143 chances. He also threw out 9 of 30 attempted base-stealers.
For Cabral, the leadership aspects of playing quarterback and catcher served him well both in and out of athletics.
“The lessons I took away were something that I implemented when I took over the Rebels,” he said. “I emphasized (to myself), ‘Don’t run from challenges. Make it about embracing them and working toward achieving goals. There will be a lot of trials and tribulations throughout the process, but it’s better to embrace the challenges versus pointing fingers. I think that’s the biggest life lesson I took away from sports, not just the positions I played. I’ve carried those qualities throughout my athletic career as well as my professional career.”
Cabral’s athletic journey faced a fork in the road after high school.
Since eighth grade, he had experienced an irregular heartbeat. A story published story in the Register in 1992 reported that Cabral’s heart was generating over 180 beats per minute and reached as high as 288. The normal heart rate is 60 to 70 beats per minute.
Cabral was diagnosed with RSVT, or re-entrant supraventricular tachycardia. He underwent a procedure called ablation, which was first performed in 1981. Within a week after surgery, Cabral had returned to sports. Cabral added that during the process, he thought about how Loyola Marymount star Hank Gathers had collapsed and died on a basketball court three years earlier as a result of an abnormal heartbeat.
“I had my first episode during a basketball practice,” Cabral recalled. “I was on medication for quite some time up until my junior year. They told me that at some point I would outgrow the medication and they would figure out the next step, which was to either increase the medication or have surgery. We didn’t want to increase the medication. We decided to go forward with the procedure.
"It was a scary time but also it was about embracing the challenge because you can’t control it. I just had to have a good mindset. There were not many people that had had the procedure done and they didn’t know how my body was going to react to it. Fortunately, it worked and has not been a problem.”
Stewart indicated in his letter of recommendation that he pursued Cabral to come to NVC. Though initially disappointed that Cabral had chosen to go to Oregon State, Stewart told him he would welcome Cabral at NVC if the Oregon State experience did not work out.
True to his word, Stewart was welcoming when Cabral called him upon returning home for the summer and inquired if the previous offer stood.
Cabral blossomed into a first-team All-Bay Valley Conference pick. He was selected for the 1995 Northern California Fall All-Star Game. He was also named to the All-BVC Academic team before earning his scholarship to Southwestern Louisiana.
“I was blessed with wonderful parents that had the foresight to figure out three different ways with three different kids how to get the most out of us,” Cabral said. “They always taught me to be true and honest to myself to a fault. When you tell people the truth today and they don’t like it, they think you’re a bad person. They taught me the opposite."
He said he could not have had the success he had without Southwestern Louisiana head coach Tony Robichaux.
"I was blessed to have such an amazing person. He taught us how to be men and how to be great people," Cabral said. "One of the things I have written on my computer, and I look at it every day, is what he always said: ‘Tough times don’t last, tough people do.’ That’s something I live by today. Between my parents, Coach Stewart and Coach Robichaux, I was blessed with some incredible people.”
Going even further back, Cabral also holds a special place for his high school coaches — Herlocker and baseball skipper Mike Brown, both of whom he will join in the hall of fame.
“Coach Brown is an amazing man,” he said. “He taught me a lot about leadership. He also had Todd Pridy, who has become a good family friend. Brown would slap me upside the head and say, ‘You’re not all that,’ but in the right way. Looking back, I was that young punk who thought I was the best and he would bring me back to reality in a good way.
“Coach Herlocker is one I put in the same vein. He and I butted heads quite a bit and, me being cocky, he knew what was right. He taught me never to get too high or too low. Being a quarterback, super important. Those two men are people I look at as an example. It’s the same in my professional career. If I have a great sales week, that’s great, but I don’t get too high. I also don’t get too low if I have a bad one. You can be happy about success, but failure is right around the corner.”
Cabral had the ultimate man-for-all-seasons appeal. Besides his athletic prowess, he was involved in 4-H, earning a scholarship in the process. He also held down two part-time jobs along the way.
“The best thing that was taught to me was to stay focused and prioritize,” he said. “Your priorities might change. For the weekend it might be, ‘You’ve got to get your homework done. We have a tournament in Yountville all weekend, but if you don’t get your homework done you’re not going up there to play.’ Sacrificing time for whatever needed to be done so that I could get on to the next priority was the biggest thing that helped me stay disciplined.”
Though Cabral and his family live 35 minutes from his Napa roots, he has never forgotten the wisdom he gained there — most notably that success that’s worthwhile has no shortcuts. Cabral credits the success he has enjoyed in life to the working fundamentals he learned on the ranch: Be on time, listen to your boss, etc.
“Those were just stable stakes at our house and my upbringing,” Cabral said. “The biggest thing to add to that is if you’re going to do something, do it with pride. Outside of my college coach, Stew taught me so many life lessons.
"I remember Stew would yell at me constantly because the catchers had to drag home plate and clean it up. If the lines weren’t right, I’d get so mad at him. He’d say, ‘You’re not taking pride in it. You’re just trying to get it done.’ Having that pride in doing whatever you do is something I always take away and instill in my son.”
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