Joe reflects on seeing youth players he coached now all grown up
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Fan Twitter brought to you by South Hills Kia Peters Township. Visit them at SouthHillsKia.net. Text line brought to you by Edgar Snyder and Associates, a personal injury law firm where they always say there's never a fee unless we get money for you. Jeff Hathorne going to join us top of the hour. We'll talk about Frambois Valdez and some other pirate things happening. Mix in a little Steelers, mix in a little Penguins. It'll be a potpourri. Bob, in the meantime, I wanted to just mention something here. And it was a sporting event that I went to last night that really meant a lot to me. And I think anybody who coaches out there at any level, women and men who coach sports at any level, I guess if you're doing it the right way, you care a lot about the players and remember everything about them and follow them maybe a little bit and what they're doing with their careers later in their lives, things like that.
So I got invited last night by Rob Travis, the girls basketball coach at Canavan. To go to senior night where two players that I coached when they were very little with my daughter, Viola Tomaszewski, Bella Sizak, coached both of them. They were, I think, the only two seniors last night on senior night. So I didn't make it there until it was four minutes left in the game. But it was just so awesome to be there. And then I got invited down to the little dinner that they had where they're and they have a very small team. There's only like, I don't know, seven or eight kids on the whole team. And the things they said about Bella and Viola that I remembered about what good people they were and things like that.
And just listening to stories from their career. And then I got to say something and it was just so unexpected and That I was there and that I was just like moved by it the way I was because I know I knew them since they were tiny. I knew Viola when she was the size of an ant, Bob, and she wasn't really an athlete in third grade. And then we were standing there in the gym one day and she went running past me. And I'm like, wait a second, that girl's an athlete and she's become a good basketball player. And I feel like in a tiny little bit, I helped her at least get started on that. So it was just a really gratifying and Bella was just,
What personal experience did Joe share about coaching youth players?
So many coaches have players like this that she was 1 million percent every second that she was on the court. It's unbelievable. So I remember those girls, all those girls from Our Lady of Grace that I coached, Caroline, Taylor, and Riley, and all of them. And I was just really, really, really happy to be there. And it made my night, and I'm still thinking about it. And the coach, Rob, mentioned that tonight, They have another game tonight and they're playing in honor of a student who unexpectedly passed away in 2022. And her name was Grace Gaeta. And so they'll wear purple tonight, which was Grace's favorite color. The game's on her birthday tonight. Her number five will be on the bench tonight. And it just – just the whole thing.
It really just – I'm thinking about it a lot.
You know, you have a unique perspective on that. You have a daughter, so you know how this works, and you coached, and they're almost like adoptive kids for you. Yeah. Because you've seen them grow up, and you had certainly an impact on how they have become players and people. So anytime you see that and you see sort of the finished product of where they're headed and what kind of people they are, it's just a huge – Feeling of gratification, right? It really is. Did you ever get to coach your daughters in anything or do any of that? No, I let that for people who knew what they were doing. I really wasn't one of them.
I'm not sure I was one of them, but I volunteered at least.
Yeah, but all that stuff is great. It develops who they are. Uh, you can see character traits emerge, all of this stuff. And quite frankly, it's just like being a parent. You have the same responsibility. It may not be in an athletic field, but you have the same responsibility.
Right.
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