MERIDEN – Raymond Fortier, the oldest of them all, was the first to go. Ryan David, the youngest, was gone two days later.
Jim Frederick and Bob Mastrianni passed within 24 hours of each other the following week. A month later, word came that Paul Dorschied had died in Florida.
It was, to say the least, a hard and heartbreaking spring for the Platt football team. Five people with ties to the program, either as an athletic director (Fortier), booster (Frederick), trainer (Mastrianni) or player (David and Dorschied), died in a span of five weeks.
On Thursday night, the group was honored at Falcon Field in a ceremony prior to Platt’s home opener against Amity. Family members were on hand. For the rest of the season, Platt football players will wear an honorary decal on their helmet bearing the initials of the five.
“They were just tremendous people,” said Jason Bruenn, Platt’s head coach since 2007, an assistant before that and a player in the early 1990s. “They all sacrificed and were dedicated to the football program. Each of them were just there. They were there to help people out.”
Said assistant coach Brian Frederick, who has been in the program for nearly as long as Bruenn, “It was five guys who really embodied Platt Panther football.”
“I have a really personal connection with all five guys and they all mean the world to me,” Frederick added.
More than personal: Jim Frederick was Brian Frederick’s father. He was also father to Maloney head coach Kevin Frederick.
Jim Frederick was also very much a founding father of Falcon Field. The one-time Platt Booster Club president was among the driving forces that got the old softball complex behind Washington Middle School converted into an all-purpose turf field complete with locker rooms, concession stand, bleachers and press box. It opened in the fall of 2008 and has been the home field for Platt and Maloney ever since.
“He’s a bulldog,” Bruenn said, still speaking of Frederick in the present tense. “If he wants something done, he doesn’t care who’s in his way. He doesn’t care who he insults or the things he says, and he got it done.”
Fortier, a product of one of Meriden High’s last classes in 1956, arrived at Platt as a math teacher in 1969. He coached cross country and even ice hockey for a spell before serving as Platt’s athletic director from 1989-97.
He filmed the Platt football games well after retirement. Tom Ryan, Bruenn’s predecessor as head football coach, maintains the school’s athletic complex should be named after Fortier.
“Greatest Panther of them all, greatest boss I ever had. He was always there for the coaches,” Ryan said. “The number of kids who would not be in college now if it wasn’t for his great film work. There was no one like Ray. No one loved Platt like Ray. No one. I was there 27 years. I’m an expert at that.”
Mastrianni, a Southington native, was an expert on sports medicine. The certified physical therapist was Platt’s trainer while Ryan coached. His work wasn’t limited to the Panthers. He was also trainer for the Southington and Bloomfield football programs. He would also tend to athletes from other schools and other sports.
“Bob Mastrianni saved more athletes, got more athletes on the field, that never would have played,” said Ryan, counting among them his son Bo, who suffered a displaced knee cap in Platt’s season opener his senior year, yet never missed a game. “Bob was the best. He was a genius in his own way. He was relentless in the pursuit of finding the right thing for a kid. And he never let his ego get in the way of a diagnosis. If he knew somebody who could do it better than him, that kid went to that person.”
Mastrianni’s daughter Leslie Flood was at Thursday’s ceremony. “I think the lesson we all took away from my dad is to help other people, because that’s what he spent his whole life doing,” she said.
As for Dorschied and David, they both played for Ryan – Dorschied an undersized defensive end on the 1997 team that reached the state Class M final, David as quarterback and safety for Ryan’s final teams of 2005 and 2006.
“We went to a state playoff because of guys like him,” Ryan said of Dorschied, adding, “Ryan David was one of my favorite guys to coach. He was so earnest. He wanted to do everything to perfection. No one does football to perfection, but he tried.”
David was only 35 when he died on April 15. Dorschied was 45.
Brian Frederick was a teammate of Dorschied’s and he coached David. He made sure the 2026 cast of Panthers knew about their predecessors, as well as Fortier, Mastrianni and his own father, before they took the field Thursday night.
“I talked to the guys in the locker room,” Frederick said. “I talked to them about serving others and sacrificing for the greater good – the team, the program – and I think all those guys demonstrated that. So we want to honor them tonight, pay our respects and, hopefully, they can see and feel us tonight and know how much we appreciate them.”
The message resonated with the Platt players.
“The memorial that we had today, we played for them,” said junior Justice Antunez, who returned a late onside kick to seal Platt’s 28-12 victory. “We played for the people beside us. We played for the people that came to the game. We played for all of those people.”
This article originally published at Platt football honors five program pillars lost in heartbreaking five-week span.