Long before For Squirrels ever stepped into a recording studio or set foot on a national stage they were just a group of kids trying to do their part to build something at Tarpon Springs’ brand new East Lake High School. According to soccer Coach Mark Lange, that mattered more than anyone realizes.
There was no established tradition at East Lake, in large part because the school had only opened 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 to meet. Just a fledgling soccer program filled with kids who were overlooked, underestimated, rough around the edges and trying to find where they belonged.
Coach Lange, who was only 23 at the time, often joked that soccer was viewed as “the communist sport” at their football-driven school, but for Jack, Bill, Travis, and the rest of the young players, that field became something much bigger than sports. It became the crucible where lifelong bonds were forged.
Coach Lange remembers Jack Vig as chaos and determination wrapped into one human being. “Jack the Ripper,” he called because of how 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 while remembering that Jack only had one speed: full throttle, which was also how Jack was described when he hit the stage as the frontman of For Squirrels only a few years later. But underneath the humor there was admiration.
Jack never held back from anything or anyone he loved, and that spirit spread through the entire team. Coach Lange said one player eventually coined the nickname “The 11 Brothers,” because that’s what the team became. On the field, every player depended on the next to survive. If one stopped fighting, the whole team suffered. Thus the boys learned accountability, sacrifice, loyalty and resilience to their team long before they ever wrote songs as a band.
Coach Lange also spoke deeply about Bill, who was the band’s bassist, but also played piano and in the school band, which gave him the skills he used to help structure their 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, the Coach still calls it one of those moments in life you never forget.
The boys had made their mark on East Lake High School’s new soccer program, and the bonds formed on and off the field carried with them to the University of Florida, where Bill and Travis — graduating Class of 1990 — roomed together before making room for Jack after he walked the stage as part of East Lake’s founding graduating Class of ‘91.
The dorm room which they shared evolved into 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, it’s what did Jack Vig, Bill and Travis did 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.
A home video taken by tour manager Tim Bender shows them kicking a ball around in an open field next to the studio – just like old times – maybe to calm the nerves or perhaps as an ode to how it all began.
What makes their Coach’s reflections so profound 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 and seeing 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 making music.
There’s also something incredibly human in the way he remembers all of the boys. The stories he tells aren’t polished rockstar mythology. They’re real. Dumb teenage pranks. Long bus rides. Exhaustion. Near accidents. Laughter. The kind of memories that become priceless after time passes.
He 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 was the only one awake and yelled loud enough to snap him back into reality.
In hindsight, Coach Lange almost viewed that moment as foreshadowing — 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 he, Bill, and band manager Tim Bender would meet while returning home to Gainesville on Sept. 8, 1995.
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.
While Coach Lange has many fond 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… 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.”
All three were pronounced dead at the scene in Midway, Georgia while Travis, and drummer Jack Griego, were rushed to the hospital with injuries they miraculously survived. 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 for release. Bill and Tim were only 23, the same age as Coach Langue was when he first met the boys, and Jack was just 21.
“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 speaks of 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 school was not. Once Travis and Jack Griego recovered from their injuries, they endeavored 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, did not have to look far to fill out the band’s lineup. He recruited former East Lake Eagles teammates and close friends 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 larger 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.”
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 following is a heartfelt tribute to Jack and Bill written by Coach Lange.
The For Squirrels Project was made possible through the generosity of countless individuals who shared their memories, experiences, and stories about For Squirrels and Subrosa. This project is dedicated to the bands we loved, the music that continues to inspire us, and the fans whose passion has kept their legacy alive.
Project by: Chris Shortt and Jim Flynn
Collection of articles written by: Jim Flynn
Collection of articles edited by: Connor Schwake
Photography: Tim Bender, the Bender family, Lance Mercer and friends of the bands
Website courtesy of: Rich Booth
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