Long before For Squirrels ever stepped into a recording studio or onto a national stage, they were just a group of kids trying to help build something brand new at East Lake High School. According to soccer Coach Mark Lange, that mattered more than people realize.
There was no established tradition, in large part because the school opened in Tarpon Springs, Florida in 1987 and Jack Vigliatura, Bill White and Travis Tooke were part of the founding student body. No championship banners. No legacy waiting for them. Just a young soccer program filled with kids who were overlooked, underestimated, rough around the edges, and trying to find where they belonged. Coach Lange, who was just 23 at the time, often joked that soccer was viewed as “the communist sport” at a football-driven school, but for Jack, Bill, Travis, and the others, that field became something much bigger than sports. It became the place where lifelong bonds were forged.
Coach Lange remembers Jack Vigliatura as chaos and determination wrapped into one human being. “Jack the Ripper,” he called him — not because he was polished or graceful, but because he attacked everything with relentless intensity. Jack ran through life exactly the way he played soccer: arms flying, body breaking down, heart completely committed. Coach Lange laughed remembering that Jack only had one speed: full throttle (that’s also how Jack was described when he hit the stage as the frontman for For Squirrels only a few years later). But underneath the humor was admiration. Jack never held back from anything or anyone he loved.
And that spirit spread through the entire group. Coach Lange said one player eventually coined the phrase “The 11 Brothers,” because that’s what they became. On the field, every person depended on the next to survive. If one player stopped fighting, the whole team suffered. They learned accountability, sacrifice, loyalty, and resilience together long before they ever wrote songs together.
What makes Coach Lange’s reflections so powerful is that he never describes them as future celebrities. He describes them as young men who genuinely cared about each other. They weren’t driven by ego. They weren’t obsessed with becoming famous. Even years later, after hearing their music, influenced heavily by the likes of R.E.M. and Nirvana, and seeing their album – Baypath Road — sitting inside a Tower Records in Tokyo, Coach Lange said the thing that hit him hardest was realizing “My boys made it.” Not because of money or success — but because the same kids who built a brotherhood on a dusty soccer field had somehow carried that chemistry into music.
The boys made their mark on East Lake High School’s new soccer program, and the bonds formed on and off the soccer field carried with them to the University of Florida, where Bill and Travis – East Lake High School graduating Class of 1990 — roomed together before making room for one more – Jack Vigliatura – when he walked the stage as part of East Lake’s founding graduating Class of 1991.
The dorm room in which they shared ultimately served as a lab to learn instruments, write lyrics and eventually create songs under a flurry of band names that eventually settled on For Squirrels — because if nobody else would listen to their music, at the very least they would play for the squirrels often seen around Gainesville.
There is no doubt that soccer made a profound impact on most of the band members. In fact, what did Jack Vigliatura, Bill and Travis do to pass time on an overcast morning in late-1994 while waiting for the doors of
Mirror Images Studio to open so they could record their self-funded, debut album, which featured songs like Flagboy, Go On Up and Kill the Birds? A home video taken by tour manager Tim Bender shows them kicking around a soccer ball in an open field next to the studio – just like old times– maybe to calm the nerves, perhaps as an ode to how it all started.
Coach Lange spoke deeply about Bill, who was the band’s bassist, but also played piano and helped structure the songs. Bill wasn’t always the star player. He wasn’t guaranteed minutes or recognition. But Coach Lange remembered a moment that perfectly captured Bill’s quiet confidence and belief in himself. During a close game, Bill looked at Coach Lange from the sideline and said, “Put me in and I’ll score.” Coach put him in. Bill scored the game winner. Decades later, Coach still calls it one of those moments in life you never forget.
There’s also something incredibly human in the way Coach Lange remembers all of them. The stories aren’t polished mythology. They’re real. Dumb teenage pranks. Long bus rides. Exhaustion. Near accidents. Laughter. The kind of memories that become priceless after time passes.
Coach Lange recalled a high school soccer trip through Alligator Alley when another coach unknowingly drifted into oncoming traffic while the players slept in the van during the night. Jack Vigliatura was the only one awake and yelled loud enough to snap him back into reality. In hindsight, Coach Lange almost viewed that moment symbolically — Jack protecting the people around him even in complete chaos.
The story of Jack quite possibly saving the lives of the people in that van carries a cruel and eerie irony given the fate lead singer Jack Vigliatura, 21, bassist Bill White, 23, and band manager Tim Bender, 23, would meet in a tragic tour van accident on a Georgia interstate while returning home to Gainesville, Florida on Sept. 8, 1995.
All three were pronounced dead at the scene in Midway, Georgia while guitarist Travis Tooke,23, and drummer Jack Griego, 28, were rushed to the hospital with injuries sustained in the accident that they miraculously managed to survive. It happened on their way home from a performance at the CBGB in New York the night before and just one month before For Squirrels’ album Example was set to be released by Sony 550.
While Coach Lange has many great memories, a few still haunt him, including the day he received the call in Tokyo that delivered devastating news.
“I got a call from Ms. Jean Alexander, Ryan Alexander’s mother. She was kind of like the Team Mom for the soccer team,” Coach Lange recalled emotionally. “She called me to tell me there had been an accident and that Jack, Bill and their tour manager didn’t make it. I just remember crying. That was a tough moment. You like to remember the good moments, but that was a really tough one.”
When Coach Lange talks about their music, he doesn’t talk like an industry insider or critic. He talks like someone who saw the roots before the world ever noticed the branches. He said their lyrics touched him because they were intelligent young men with depth and emotional awareness far beyond their years. Teachers respected them. Coaches respected them. Their peers gravitated toward them. They weren’t burnouts stumbling into luck. They were thoughtful, passionate people who formed a brotherhood and created honestly from the heart.
While their friends and bandmates were tragically gone, the brotherhood that was formed in high school was not. Once Travis and Jack Griego recovered from their injuries, they decided to carry on with the band in honor of their friends and because their passion for music was still burning. Travis, who took over as lead singer, didn’t have to look far to fill out For Squirrels. In fact, he recruited former East Lake High School soccer teammates, close friends and amateur musicians Andy Lord and Mike Amish, who took on the impossible task of filling the voids left by their For Squirrels friends. They eventually helped For Squirrels transition into Subrosa.
Coach Lange, who is pictured in the top left row of the team’s soccer picture, still carries them with him today. He tells the story of For Squirrels to his current players because he believes the world desperately needs reminders of people who lived for something bigger than themselves. He tells young athletes that these were kids who worked relentlessly, who loved deeply, who created together, and who impacted people decades later because of the way they treated others.
Coach Lange said something that perfectly captures who they were:
“When you have the type of passion and synergy they had, the world is your oyster and you can make it whatever you want,” said Coach Lange.
To Coach Lange, the tragedy was never simply about unrealized fame or wondering “what could have been.” The heartbreak was losing genuinely extraordinary young men who were still becoming who they were meant to be. Yet somehow, through the music, the stories, the friendships, and the people still speaking their names decades later, they remain forever young.
“They’re not gone,” Coach Lange said. “They’re still here and forever young in my head and heart.”
The below image is a heartfelt tribute to Jack Vigliatura and Bill White, former Eagle Soccer players from 1987-1991, who tragically passed away in 1995. It reflects on their contributions to the team, the memories shared, and the significance of their time with East Lake Soccer, highlighting themes of sacrifice, camaraderie, and resilience.
-Written by Christopher Shortt and James Flynn of The For Squirrels Project
Story is from the forthcoming composite novel, “The Immortal Dog and Pony Show” – the tragic and inspiring story of For Squirrels – told through the people who lived it. Contact ForSquirrelsProject@gmail.com .
