Toting a Two-Man Tune : Raphael, Garner Can Sing Their Own Praises as Kennedy High’s Melodious Football Duo

Eleven guys trot back to the Kennedy High huddle, en masse, when the biggest mass on the team busts out in baritone verse.

Alas, there is competition.

A discordant tune is piped in from the flank, prompting a frown from the former and less blather from the latter.

“Whenever I’d sing just a little bit, he’d tell me to shut up,” said tailback Elijah Raphael with a laugh. “So I would. I had to kiss up to him.”

Smart kid. Craig Garner, a 6-foot-2, 280-pound offensive lineman, was charged with clearing the way for Raphael. Without Garner’s help, Raphael would have been knocked flatter than a tune in the key of X-major or O-sharp.

Last fall, the pair composed Kennedy’s sayonara sonata. Garner would punch a hole in the defense and Raphael would follow his lead--to the tune of a single-season school-record 2,070 yards and 28 touchdowns.

Both will play for the West team tonight in the Daily News All-Star football game at Birmingham High at 6.

Garner and Raphael could be the first two ever selected for an all-star game that could sing the National Anthem beforehand, then go about busting chops with equal proficiency. Both were actively involved in high school music programs and are as well known on campus for play acting as for play action.

Sometimes, the line blurs. Garner briefly tried to convince football Coach Bob Francola to allow him to sing the anthem before the school’s homecoming game last fall, but the coach rejected the idea because he wanted Garner to concentrate on the game, not on what follows “Oh say can you see?”

Garner had done it before, it seems. As a junior, he climbed the ladder to the top of the cramped seating area behind the Kennedy baseball backstop, grabbed a microphone and busted out a delicate, a capella version of the anthem before a key game against San Fernando.

Just your average, close-to-300-pounder capable of the lightest of musical touches. Garner might be the closest thing to a renaissance man on the Kennedy campus.

“Oh, man, I was involved in so many activities that it’s amazing I got out of high school,” said Garner, who hopes to play at an area junior college in the fall.

To begin with, Garner knows how to play several instruments, including the tuba, trombone, trumpet, saxophone and bass guitar. He also played drums for the school pep band, which could have put him in Dutch with his teammates, if not his teachers.

At school football pep rallies, Garner would sit in on drums with the pep band while his teammates gathered as a group. Garner wore his jersey while playing, though, so nobody seemed to mind too much.

In the classroom, though, Garner routinely was found hammering away on the desktop, pounding out the beat to favorite songs ranging in scope from Metallica to obscure jazz numbers. He pounds on books, walls, helmets, you name it.

“I get in trouble a lot for that,” Garner said.

Ah, the familiar refrain: Garner, knock that off and go run another lap. While he might drum to the sound of his own marching, he was a rock when it counted. Garner started 37 consecutive games for the Golden Cougars--every game for three seasons.

“He walked into school as a sophomore and straight into the starting lineup,” Francola said.

Raphael, on the other hand, was the classic understudy. Playing in front of him for two seasons was Ontiwaun Carter, who set Northwest Valley Conference records that Raphael would break 12 months later. Carter graduated in 1991, opening the door last fall for Raphael, who helped lead Kennedy into the City Section 4-A Division semifinals.

Both Garner and Raphael are sonic youths, the products of oral and aural backgrounds. Garner’s father played in the Air Force Band, his mom plays the sax and his brother plays keyboards. Raphael’s older sister Ruth attends a performing arts college in New York and the tailback attended Hamilton High for its music magnet program as a freshman.

“If football hadn’t worked out like it did, I would have gone in that direction,” said Raphael, who plans to study broadcast entertainment in the fall at Washington State, which awarded him a football scholarship.

Ask either player what the score is and the response is just as likely to be “Beethoven” as it is “36-zip.”

The trouble is, sometimes there’s not enough oxygen to go around. Both players are about as shy as a streaker and just as stripped of inhibition. If these two had a favorite sandwich, it would be ham and cheese.

“I used to sing so much, it got on everybody’s nerves,” Garner said. “In the locker room, before practices, during practices. . . . “

To be sure, both are center-stage guys. As a junior, Garner played the lead role in a school musical production called “The Fantastics.” In the storyline, Garner wins over the girl in a love triangle, but decides to let her go.

“I played the older, wiser one,” Garner said with no small degree of self-satisfaction.

Raphael last year starred in a Kennedy production called “Mighty Mites,” in which an introverted girl becomes overly absorbed in a world of comic books.

“I was the hero,” Raphael said.

Compared to the mastodonic Garner, “Mighty Mites” could have been Raphael’s autobiography. At 5-9, 170 pounds, Raphael wasn’t the biggest kid on the field but certainly was one of the quickest. He led all area City rushers in yards, touchdowns and carries (309, or nearly 24 per game), surprising some with his durability and ability to run inside.

The pair have proved that you can’t always tell an album cover by its jacket--or evaluate a player based on size.

“If you are a musician, you can appreciate any type of music,” Garner said.

Said Raphael: “If it sounds good, it sounds good. I don’t like or dislike something just because it is or isn’t popular.”

All of which underscores the pair’s motto: Just because it’s non-traditional doesn’t mean it isn’t worthwhile.