Last week in the Dispatch I gave my personal take on life behind the bench with the legendary Coach Al Semenza....FOR THE LOVE OF BASKETBALLThe announcement of Coach Al Semenza’s retirement on Wednesday wasn’t totally unexpected. Being close to the Blue Devils basketball program, I knew Coach Al struggled with the decision all year long with if he would return or if he would resign following the 2008 season.
So for those of us close to the program, it wasn’t a total shock. Not like it was in 1993 when Semenza resigned at his alma mater before taking the Wyoming Area job.
After coaching the Warriors for two years, fans in both Lackawanna and Luzerne counties got to know Semenza as a boisterous, passionate, and intense competitor. I am sure most opposing fans would call him obnoxious.
But Semenza is so much more. He is a teacher, a big brother, a second father, and more importantly, a life-long friend to his former players who choose to have that relationship with him.
I have known Coach Al since I was 9. He was 22 and in his first year coaching when I became an unofficial member of his staff.
My first job was to record the fouls of each player on the old-time scoreboard in the Old Forge gym. The late Mr. Vince Tomasetti – who kept the clock – and former OFHS athletic director Vince Baron gave me that job.
Every home game, I would sit behind the bench with this metal box on my lap registering fouls on the scoreboard. It started my career with basketball.
While doing this job, I also intermittently handed towels and water bottl
es to Semenza’s first group of players. Guys like Paul Fumanti, Chris Jones, Mike Mucciolo, Jim Smicherko, and Craig Carey.
I watched as Semenza turned a 2-20 team into one that would win 50 games over the next four years, appear in three district title games, and win a D2 title in 1985.
I was hooked. I was falling in love with basketball. It’s speed. It’s precision. It’s intensity. All because of Coach Al.
After a few years of this, I slowly took over the scorekeeping duties. By the age of 13 or 14 I was on the book fulltime for the Blue Devils, watching Semenza coach guys like Kyle Parker, Joe Slusark, and Mando Sallavanti.
The wins didn’t come as easily as the previous few seasons, but Semenza coached just as hard – sometimes willing his team to victories from the sideline.
I learned during this period that while Semenza expected perfection from his players he also knew they made mistakes – as did his scorekeeper.
One night in Lakeland, a few of the players switched jerseys without me knowing. As a result, when the game started, we were assessed a technical and the Chiefs got two free throws as a result of my error.
Knowing I was embarrassed and feeling like an idiot because of my mistake, Coach Al played if off as if it wasn’t important, instead of ripping into me as if I had just not come up with a rebound. I deserved it no doubt, but maybe I was just lucky because the Blue Devils won that night despite my mistake. Maybe coach would have been waiting for me after the game.
As I became old enough to think of playing for Coach Semenza, I realized that basketball wasn’t a sport I could succeed in. A short, fat Italian-Polish kid isn’t exactly built to play hoops.
So I stayed on the sidelines and watched and learned the game from afar as my friends played and learned with Coach Al.
I wasn’t really that close to Coach Al during my high school years. He was a young man still – only 32 when I graduated – and had his family.
But on the night of my graduation, I learned something about him that I hadn’t seen in his intense style of coaching or even was able to comprehend at my age. He was all about his players.
A few of my friends – who were all basketball players – decided to go visit Coach Al at his house after graduation ceremonies. So I decided to tag along.
They were going to have some fun and bust chops. Why I went I have no idea. But what I saw was that Coach Al was just one of the guys. He treated his players – now his former players – as if they were his family, his sons. He invited us in for a bit, told some stories and told us to keep in touch.
I don’t know if he remembers this – it was 1989 – but that moment had a great impact on my view of him, and what he truly was about.
I learned more from him the next few seasons as I became more involved after a two-year absence when I went away to school. My brother was now playing for him, and my dad served as an assistant coach.
I started tagging along to scout games, and attended a few practices. I was starting to pick up the game a bit, seeing things as a coach would. I was 21 and started to think about what it would be like to coach basketball. I was watching Mike Lucarelli, John Mucciolo, the late Tony Marseco and my brother, Rob Notari soak up Coach Al’s knowledge and use it to win on the basketball court.
After my brother’s senior season – a district championship season – Coach Al decided it was time to leave the Blue Devils. His son Stephen was 3, and he and his wife Janice had just become the parents of their daughter Aleca.
The basketball family at Old Forge was in shock. And I was very upset. I was just starting to really learn the game, and my mentor was leaving. What even made things tougher was Coach Al was going to be coaching somewhere else. His resignation at Old Forge wasn’t because he was getting another job coaching somewhere else. But after his resignation, the Wyoming Area job opened and he became intrigued with the challenge of coaching at a big school and took
the job.
I felt as if Al had turned his back on us – the Blue Devils. But as I got older, I understood his reasons for leaving, and moving on to WA.
A year after he left Old Forge, I decided I was going to give coaching basketball a shot. The freshman job was open, and I applied and received the job. I quickly turned to Coach Al for guidance. I had picked up some basics from him in just watching over the years. But I needed drills and practice plans and everything else.
He was more than happy to help. He let me pick his brain about philosophy, offense, defense, and everything else.
A year later I returned the favor. He needed a scorekeeper for a district playoff game while he was at WA. I obliged. The Warriors won the game and with the victory, advanced to the district playoffs for the first time in who knows how many years.
I became an unofficial fan of WA that night, and continued to be amazed at how Semenza was able to get his team to play for him – and how that play always united a community. Coach Al had become somewhat of a folk hero at Wyoming Area in just two short seasons, Warriors fans to this day still tell me about how good they would be if Coach Al had just stayed.
Semenza’s stint at WA was short, yet memorable. He decided to leave the Warriors to put his efforts towards making his home-health business successful. During that year off, I continued to seek his advice on basketball as I tried to get my freshman teams to respond to me as his varsity team’s responded to him.
He also gave me my first real job out of college with his agency as an outreach coordinator despite my pleas with him that I really had no idea what an outreach coordinator did.
But he was not worried about that, I was now a part of his family and he did what he could to help me. I wasn’t a former player, but that didn’t matter to him. I was dedicated to the sport he loved, and that was good enough for him to bring me in.
Semenza returned to the Devils’ Den the next season when the job became available, and boy was I excited. I was finally officially a part of his staff and soaked in everything he had to offer.
My freshman teams were always competitive after the first few years, and eventually we competed for and won a league title. The success was a credit to him and all of his teachings.
As players like Russ Giglio, Ben Pritchyk, Frank Biancardi, Johnny Yanniello, and Andrew Bennie came through the program and put the Blue Devils on the Class 1A map on the state level, my friendship with Semenza grew. I was at practice everyday learning; on the road scouting teams, and spending more time with the basketball staff than my own family.
I had become a decent basketball coach under his guidance, and the memories I have because of his mentoring are priceless.
I stopped coaching in about 2003 when my job would no longer allow for the time that is demanded of to be committed to Blue Devils basketball. But I really never said goodbye to Semenza and the Old Forge basketball program.
The coach allowed me to remain close, keeping the door eternally open as he has with all of his players that choose to return to say hello or offer assistance. So as the days of Jared Yanniello, Jim DeStefano and Stephen Semenza came to a close the past two seasons, those of us close to the program knew that the days of Coach Al standing on the sidelines, leading the Blue Devils were probably coming to an end as well.
As much as I and the rest of the Old Forge basketball family tried to prepare for that moment – Wednesday’s moment when he called and said he was resigning – there is nothing one can do for that type of moment.
So while Coach Al begins the search for a new chapter in his life – he admittedly has said that Old Forge basketball is the only thing he knows – those of us that have played for him, worked for him, and most importantly, learned from him, I for one can say that I will always keep the door open for him and his family in my life as he has for me. It’s the least I can do.
I am now 37 and Coach Al is 50. For the past 28 years our paths have been intertwined around basketball. What the next 28 years brings to us, only the future will tell. What I do know is that I love the game of basketball because of Al Semenza, and I am sure I am not the only one.
For all his teaching, guidance, advice and friendship, I say with the utmost reverence and respect, thanks for everything Coach Al!
You will surely be missed.
