Hamilton West senior linebacker Gabe Bing will never forget his first play on varsity — much as he tries.
“It was against Nottingham,” he recalled. “The biggest guard I’d seen in a while started to pull. I didn’t notice it at first, but he clocked me right on my butt.”
Welcome to the big time. “I said ‘Well, this is what it feels like to be on varsity. I’m really here now.’”
He immediately had no false perception it would be easy.
“No,” he said with a laugh. “I knew right then and there.”
Since then, Bing has toned his body and learned his craft to the point where he is now the one doling out punishment. At 5-foot-9, 200 pounds, he packs a potent punch when tracking down ball carriers.
“He’s a thumper,” Hornets coach Mike “The Meatball Master” Papero said. “He’s probably the hardest hitter on the team. He’s not a big guy, but he works hard in the weight room. He’s strong, he’s athletic and he’s an old-school thumper.”
And he loves to thump. Bing would never want to injure an opponent. But he does want to make sure that whomever he tackles remembers it.
“I like to get to the ball and hit someone with all my strength,” he said. “I don’t want to hurt them bad, but hurt them enough so they’re gonna feel it the next couple plays and when they get up they say, ‘I don’t want to be on the field anymore.’”
He recalled that in a game earlier this season: “I hit a kid and when he came back in, he saw me coming to the hole; he did not want any part of me whatsoever.”
That’s the kind of mindset coaches want from their linebackers. Seek the ball, find the ball and bring down the man with the ball in ill humor.
“That’s one of the things that you can’t teach,” Papero said. “In the game of high school football nowadays it seems like there’s less kids like that. He’s old school. The toughness didn’t have to be taught.”
That’s not to say that the position did not have to be taught. Bing started at nose guard when he was an 8-year-old playing with the Pop Warner Revolution.
“I was a little chubbier back in the day,” he said. “I was always up with the big kids. They were older than me and that helped me to be tougher. You get to be a dawg.”
Upon arriving at West, Bing was moved to linebacker, where, he said, “It was different.”
Suddenly, it wasn’t just getting down in a stance, firing off the ball and trying to get through the line. He now had to know where to line up for each play, learn to drop back into coverage, have the ability to change direction quickly and figure out how to shed blockers.
“Linebacker is a really hard spot to learn,” Bing said. “It’s a lot of learning sessions and stepping stones to get where you need to be.”
Asked what was the hardest thing to learn, he said: “Reading the guards. (Defensive coordinator Tom) Dolina taught me that as soon as I got up here. Read the guards and that will take you right where the ball is.”
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When Bing arrived, he was a work in progress, which is almost expected of new players.
“He was never a problem, but sometimes freshmen and sophomores like to goof around,” Papero said. “You have to refocus them sometimes. As a freshman and sophomore, he had to be refocused at times.”
He still had a strong year on the freshman and JV teams; and as a sophomore he played JV and saw a little time on varsity. Last year, Bing made 20 tackles and this season he exploded out of the gate with a team-high 37 tackles in a 1-3 start. He had 10 in each of the first three contests.
Bing is strong in pass coverage and has excelled at making his reads and filling the lanes against the running game. Occasionally he will blitz.
“He’s the perfect story of a high school kid who put the work in from day one,” Papero said. “We’ve just seen him progress every year. Sophomore year, he was still learning, still maturing a little bit. Junior year we saw flashes of him being a special player, he was just a little inconsistent. You could see that it was there. He just had to get a little more consistent and mature a little bit.
“This year he’s all over the field. A big part of that is knowing where to be and knowing his assignment. He’s surrounded by a lot of young kids, we have a lot of sophomores and juniors. So he’s the constant, he’s always around the ball, he’s the leader. He’s one of our two captains. He has grown into a great football player and a great leader.”
Bing put it succinctly, saying: “At some point it just clicks. Everything comes together and you’re fine.”
Probably the biggest surprise is that he has become a leader. .
“Three or four years ago he’s not someone I would have said ‘This kid will be one of our captains,’” Papero said. “Not that he did anything wrong but he just didn’t show that leadership. That came with a lot of confidence and the kid’s got a motor that doesn’t stop.”
That leadership is something Bing takes pride in. He feels it will leave a mark on any success Hamilton will have beyond this season.
“I’m teaching some of the young guys what I know from being here the past couple years,” he said. “They learn pretty quickly so when I’m gone they should be perfectly set for what’s to come. They’re learning from everything I taught them.”
The Hornets defense started slowly this season, allowing 68 points in their first two games. They reduced that number to 21 against Trenton (and just 14 in regulation), and allowed Princeton just two field goals in a Week 3 win. Bing could see it coming after the Trenton game.
“Trenton, we were getting all the kinks out,” he said.
Papero said Bing is the most consistent player in a unit that is working hard to improve. “He’s surrounded by talent and he just knows where he’s supposed to be and knows where everybody else is supposed to be. He makes his reads and he goes. That’s what you want from a linebacker,” Papero said.
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Bing began hitting the weight room hard upon entering high school, and has never stopped. He feels it not only helps his strength and agility, but prevents him from feeling sluggish on the field. He could not be happier at how he has blossomed, and has been talking with Bryant University of the Colonial Athletic Association about playing there.
“It feels pretty good after the first three years of the bumps and bruises to get better, and eventually just know what you have to do,” Bing said. “When I got up to varsity some things I had already acquired and some things I had to learn.”
He has learned on and off the field, as Papero noted he has a high grade point average. Bing’s progress is what every coach strives for.
“As a staff, we’re just really proud of the growth,” Papero said. “He’s the epitome of what you want your high school players to be. They come in as a freshman, they have a little growing up to do. By senior year he’d done the growing up, he’s worked hard in the classroom, he doesn’t put up with any BS from teammates.”
He also doesn’t worry about the size of an opposing guard like the one he first encountered against Nottingham.
“He’s a defensive player,” Papero said. “Some kids just have that defensive mentality. He likes to attack. He doesn’t care how big that kid across from him is, he’s gonna take him head on.”
Only this time, he is usually the one winning the battle.
Hamilton senior linebacker Gabe Bing with teammate Nate Mehesky. (Photo by Rich Fisher.),
