DiVirgilio remembered fondly by players, fellow coaches
Fayette County athletics lost a coaching legend with the passing of former Frazier coach Henry DiVirgilio. He died on Sept. 3 in Delmont.
DiVirgilio held the Commodores basketball head coaching position until he retired from coaching in 1984. He took one season off in 1978-79. He served as interim Superintendent of Schools until a replacement could be found. He also served as assistant high school principal, junior high principal and junior/senior high school principal before retiring in 1985.
DiVirgilio also coached baseball and football, but it was basketball where he left his mark. He retired with 457 wins in a 30-year career that included coaching the Commodores to the WPIAL Class B title in 1969 — the only WPIAL basketball title in the school’s history.
“I was just a young coach when I first met Henry and I was impressed with the way he handled his teams,” former Geibel Catholic boys basketball coach Ken Misiak said. “As I got older, we got very competitive against each other and I probably respected him even more because we played the games on the floor and we respected each other as coaches and what we were trying to do and I always respected Henry for that.”
Former Mapletown coach Buddy Quertinmont also tangled with some of DiVirgilio’s Frazier squads.
“He beat me my first year at the Pitt Fieldhouse in the first round of the WPIAL playoffs,” Quertinmont recalled. “Henry was very involved in the game and he was into the game. I played against him as well when I was at Point Marion. He was a very good disciplinarian, he was well thought of.”
DiVirgilio’s coaching record included one WPIAL Title, a PIAA runner-up and a WPIAL runner-up. He won 11 section titles.
“The man who did a lot because I used to go to all of his coaching clinics was Ed McCluskey from Farrell,” DiVirgilio said in a previous Memory Lane column. “He was a real influence for me. He was great. I enjoyed him so much.”
Those who played for DiVirgilio remembered him fondly.
“Coach DiVirgilio was responsible for everything that happened to me,” Steve Stolarik said. “Not only did he get me to come out and play, but he mentioned to me a couple of times toward the end of my senior year that there were college scouts in the gym. One I remember in particular was a scout from Cornell coming and I had no ambitions or ideas of going on to college. We couldn’t afford that.
“I hadn’t taken the SAT test because I hadn’t planned on going to college. Henry drove me down to Pittsburgh where they were giving the test. He told me to take the test and said I would do fine. He said ‘You are going to go to college somewhere.’ Waynesburg was interested and he had connections with Buzz Ridl at Westminster and we took a drive up for a visit and I went up and felt much more comfortable at Westminster and it was a much better setting for me.”
“He was like a grandfather figure,” former guard Joe Lafko, currently the head coach at Hampton, said. “He was in his early sixties at that time and 1984 was his last year as coach. One thing that stood out to me about Coach DiVirgilio is that he never really got excited and never raised his tone with us. He was critical at times and there were times when we needed to be reprimanded, but he was always very calm and he was in control.”
DiVirgilio orchestrated Frazier’s march to a WPIAL title in 1969.
“He had the intestinal fortitude to use as many as four black kids at a time and that didn’t go over too well back then. It just wasn’t popular in the town,” former player Wes Ramsey said. “Plus, he instituted the man-to-man defense and we would have never gotten out of the section if we played zone defense back then. We didn’t start anybody over six feet and he took the same defense that Eddie McCluskey used at Farrell and brought it to Frazier. His training regimen really had us in shape. He made us do things in practice that, in the games, when other teams were dragging in the fourth quarter we were still going at it. He was one heck of a coach. He was an innovator.”
DiVirgilio was buried Saturday and his own words looking back at his storied career serve as a fitting epitaph.
“When kids say that I had a positive influence in their life that makes me feel good,” DiVirgilio stated. “That was worth a lot to me. I wouldn’t change anything. I made the right choice.”