Reflecting on Ken Misiak’s career
Many years ago, in one of the movies made about show business, a successful star was reminding a young tyro with Broadway aspirations that every light along the Great White Way represented a broken heart of someone who tried to get there before and never made it. It’s the same in any field, especially sports. You name it. Many make it to the top, but many, many more fall by the wayside, their hopes dimmed and hearts broken.
Experience is a harsh teacher, demanding much and sometimes giving little in return. Success never comes easy unless you are the squire of a double-dealing politician.
But the road to honest success is always a rocky one, each block representing somebody who tried ahead of you and never made it. Someone who went down trying but left an experience for you to profit by so that your way might be just a step or two easier.
Sports success comes even harder because there are so many little intangibles involved, not to mention big opponents.
Talent, schedule, good health of the participants, ability, reserve strength and leadership are the little assets that play big roles in sports success. Sometimes a coach can have two or three of these assets in his lineups, sometimes four or five, but still missing the one little factor that leads from average to championship. And then there comes the one time when every factor fits into place, and you go from success to complete success.
These might have been some of the thoughts in Ken Misiak’s mind as he headed home after his Geibel Catholic High basketball team presented him with his 700th all-time win as a head coach.
The road to those 700 wins was a long one, sometimes a bit bumpy, sometimes a smooth run, but through it all, Misiak had to be thinking about those early days at Connellsville Immaculate Conception High, before Geibel.
He has never coached anywhere else. It was IC when Ken was hired for the 1959-60 season, and when the present high school was built the name was changed to honor Fr. Geibel.
Ken once recalled, “I had graduated from Bethany College and was working in the Uniontown Recreation Dept. for John (Bus) Albright who had played on Uniontown’s 1925 state championship basketball team and coached at Uniontown.
“He became sort of an overseer of mine, interested in what I did, and he later told me that there might be a teaching job open at Connellsville IC. Fr. Augustine Marzhauser, who was then pastor at IC, hired me, and I taught everything, math, history, science, six classes in all, plus coaching baseball and JV basketball. And when Joe Ozag left IC for a position in Maryland, I was named head coach.”
Little did he realize that his troubles were just beginning. IC had no gymnasium of its own, no practice facilities, no home playing site.
Arrangements were made with the Connellsville School District to use the South Connellsville grade school gym for practice, and home games were played at the former Connellsville Senior High, now the Community Center. The IC players walked from the school to South Connellsville every day to practice.
Other times the then Owls practiced at the Connellsville Armory, the YMCA and once at the Salvation Army Citadel gym.
Games were played at the Community Center floor, a site they could never practice on. If other groups wanted to use the SC gym, Misiak was told to go elsewhere to practice. He did. Once he took them to a parking lot, and once with a big game coming up, they went to the Pinnacle Playground in the middle of winter to prep for the game. Another time Misiak drove his players to the Scottdale Armory for a workout.
Misiak almost left IC in 1961 when another position came open, but he was told to be patient, that new facilities were being planned and his own site would be available soon. A couple years later those plans became reality.
Ken often said, “When the weather was nice I would come up here on my lunch hour or other breaks and watch the school being built. When we were getting our own gym, I would come sit in the bleachers, look around and know that it was ours – a place where we could both practice and play.”
For a while, the late Jim (Pete) Hartz was assistant to Ken at IC, but when he accepted a position in the Connellsville system, Ken had to direct both the varsity and JV teams, and as a result one sometimes suffered at the expense of the other.
Then in 1966, Bob Fedorko came to Geibel and was named JV coach, along with his teaching assignments. From that minute on, he and Ken have made Geibel a basketball byword in the WPIAL and state. No two coaches have ever blended together better than Ken and Bob, or as Ken said recently, “We blend like salt and pepper.”
There have been many memories for them, but the greatest come from the 1978-79 season when the Gators were the only undefeated team in any class in the entire state that year and ended the season by demolishing Darby Twp. in the state Class-A finals at Hershey.
Ken often reflected on working with coaches like Abe Everhart, Lash Nesser, Adam Donnelly, Marty Fagler, Horse Taylor and Henry DiVirgilio. He once said, “I would go to games on off nights just to watch those men coach like a bunch of old foxes going against each other, and I learned from them.”
There are memories of other playoff trips. …The 1966-67 team that went to the state Parochial (PCIAA) finals and lost when Scranton Cathedral rallied in the final minute. … Again in 1969-70, at Harrisburg, when Geibel led Reading Holy Name into the fourth quarter, and the latter rallied to win the state title by one point. … And who can ever forget the 1976-77 semifinals when Geibel (now in the PIAA) and Shanksville, battled through a playoff-record four overtimes before Shanksville won 94-92. But Geibel made up for it the following year with its own state championship. … Along the way there have also been a dozen section titles, two WPIAL championships and the great state-winning year.
While Ken has a great assistant in Bob Fedorko, he also has another couple that backed him all the way from the sidelines – his wife, Barb, and daughter Jamie. Ken once laughed, “Barb knows the rulebook as well as the referees and some coaches.”
Of his teams, Ken said “I never had a team here that I felt ashamed to take anywhere to play, and that also has to be tribute to their parents. The qualities I looked for at the beginning are still there.”
Why shouldn’t they be? The players just followed the example set for them – the class of their coach.
Jim Kriek is a Herald-Standard correspondent.