Cnylink Blogs

Aimless
City Muse
City Scuffle
Downtown After Dark
Figuring it all out
Leahy's Food Blog
Make it Snappy
Newshole
Outbursts
Rambling on
Random Thoughts
Tuning In
Wondering about

Weekly Column: The Job of a Lifetime

Posted by pblackwell | 02/03/09

Should the winter weather decide to behave on Friday night, Christian Brothers Academy and Bishop Ludden will engage in yet another chapter of their “Holy War”, and once again Buddy Wleklinski and Pat Donnelly will be barking out instructions from the sidelines.
The rivalry started in 1963. Wleklinski and Donnelly played against each other in the mid-1970s, then came back to coach at their alma mater a decade later. Since 1987, every CBA-Ludden game has featured Buddy and Pat. They have come to personify the rivalry, as well as their respective schools.
This comes during a season where Wleklinski saw CBA dedicate its home court in his honor, weeks before Donnelly reached the 400-win mark with several of his former players in attendance.
Such milestones aren’t restricted to these two rivals, either. Onondaga’s Larry Behm reached the 300-win mark in December. Tom Blackford, at Fayetteville-Manlius, is closing in on 400 career wins. Hannibal’s Ken Sturges just went past the 450-win mark.
And topping them all, Vernon-Verona-Sherrill’s Al Knapp reached the summit Friday night when his Red Devils beat New Hartford – win no. 520, attained at both Brookfield and VVS, which tied Dave Powers for the most of any Section III coach.
Put together, all these random occurrences create a continual tribute to the work and dedication of the coaching lifer, someone who settles into a job in young adulthood and, like the fictional Mr. Holland, stays in one place, rather than seek higher office somewhere else.
What is it about Central New York that keeps coaches here? Maybe they just emulate Jim Boeheim, the Orange lifer who has now spent more than half his days on earth in charge on the SU hill, a growing anomaly in a college world where coaching transience is the norm.
Then again, you have John Beilein, whose longest stay in one place was nine years at LeMoyne. Beilein has gone from Newfane High School (that’s near Niagara Falls) to Erie Community College to Nazareth to LeMoyne to Canisius to Richmond to West Virginia to Michigan. That’s eight stops in 30 years.
Perhaps it’s just the notion that some coaches find it immeasurably rewarding to teach the game to young teenagers, turning them from boys to men. What’s more, at the high-school level, it’s still more game than business, something that changes once you reach the next level.
Todd Widrick may have found this out. After guiding Westhill to a state championship in 1997, Widrick left a few years later to coach at Cazenovia College. Within a few years, though, he came back to the high school level, turning the Cazenovia High School program around. Widrick is now doing the same thing at DeRuyter.
Widrick, Donnelly, Wleklinski, Blackford, Behm, Bob McKenney, Jerry Wilcox, Tom Cooney – they’ve all formed into a group of wise sages, guiding spirits to a younger generation where the likes of Erik Saroney, Jay Adams and Ryan Dando currently set the tone.
Al Knapp is in front of them, though, a fitting example of lifelong dedication to a single profession, a man who lives to coach.
It all began in Brookfield, a small outpost in the southeast corner of the sectional map. There, Knapp’s Beaver teams won nearly 81 percent of its games, a 233-55 mark that included four sectional titles and a 1983 state championship.
Then, just like Tom Blackford would trade small-school success at Hamilton for large-school challenges at F-M, Knapp left in mid-career for VVS and the yearly gauntlet of the Tri-Valley League, not to mention a tougher haul come sectional playoff time.
Sure enough, the win percentage “dropped” – close to 70 percent now – and just one sectional title, won a decade ago. But there’s also 15 league championships and the eternal respect of every opponent who had to put up with a Knapp-coached Red Devil team that, if nothing else, could play wicked defense.
That’s another common thread among the long-time coaches. They all understand that, whatever trends emerge in basketball, the defensive fundamentals remain the same – stop the other guy, and you’ve got a great chance to win.
Strong stomachs have to help, too. Every high school coach, young or old, can tell stories about how the sheer pleasure of instructing young minds can get blurred by the pressure from parents, alumni, or other forces, visible and invisible, that can increase the stress level and cause premature graying.
This only adds to the amount of admiration we have for coaches that have stayed the course through the decades. Not to mention their families that have to put up with the immense amount of time their husband or father spends at practices or games or on school buses traveling to and from other towns.
So as you watch Al Knapp build upon his new status as Section III’s all-time coaching winner, or as you see Buddy Wleklinski and Pat Donnelly bark out instructions as yet another “Holy War” plays out, take a moment to appreciate their careers.
It’s easy for someone with talent and ambition to move from place to place, forever seeking that perfect situation. For these coaches, the ultimate realization is that the perfect situation is right in front of them.

CATEGORY: Basketball

TAGS: Coaches, high school, long-time, AL Knapp

Permalink