Page 14 - Fall 2019 Rochester Athletics Newsletter | University of Rochester

Always a

Yellowjacket

Baseball team rallies to

honor one of its own

Dave Capucilli ’99 loved baseball. He played as a “Dave touched all of our lives—none of us will ever forget
young boy, throughout high school, and then as second him and how nice, humble, and extremely funny he
baseman for the Yellowjackets. He was the heartbeat of was,” says Donahue. Dave’s obituary echoes this, with
the University’s baseball team from 1995 to 1999, say his words felt by all who knew him: “Dave did not just live
teammates who played alongside him for four years. his life . . . he embraced it with contagious enthusiasm as
evidenced by his large circle of true friends. When you
“Our team wasn’t the strongest to start,” says Ryan
Donahue ’99. “On the plus side, that meant a lot of us got were with Dave, he made you feel like you were the most
playing time. If we’d been a bit better that wouldn’t have important person in the world.”
been the case.”

As a team, they got better. By their second year together,
the team was winning half its games. By their junior and
senior year, the men won their conference, which would
not happen again until 2019. “It was an amazing time in
our lives,” adds Donahue.

After graduation, teammates Donahue and Capucilli
lived together in Queens. Donahue had a job in finance
and Capucilli went to law school. “We started our
lives together.” In the summer of 2013, Capucilli was
diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a blood cancer that
develops in the bone marrow. He passed away in 2013,
just one month after diagnosis and four months after
getting married to the love of his life, Kristin Kolich.
To honor Capucilli, his former teammates purchased a
locker in his memory, in the baseball locker room in the
Boehning Varsity House (see below).

The Capucilli memorial
plaque and locker (center) in
the Boehning Varsity House

14 ROCHESTER ATHLETICS FALL 2019