Gene Pingatore, an Illinois basketball coaching legend, wore his heart on his sleeve
And in a state that invented March Madness, that’s saying something.
Pingatore, who died Wednesday at 82, wore his heart on his sleeve and didn’t care whether you liked it or not. He loved his players as if they were his own kids, and that’s why he could be seen throwing up his hands in frustration over mistakes.
That was “Ping,” who was old school before the term was invented.
Back when I covered the Chicago-area high school basketball scene in the late 1980s and early ’90s, Pingatore was well-established as one of the top coaches in the state. He made St. Joseph into a powerhouse in 1978, along with his sensational point guard Isiah Thomas, taking the Chargers to the Class AA title game and creating expectations that would follow him the rest of his life.
Pingatore had 1,035 wins, 13 sectional titles, six top-four state finishes and two state championships and
Pingatore
“It’s not about the 1,000 wins,” Pingatore said after that game. “It’s about all the people who contributed to the 1,000 wins. All the players, all the assistant coaches and the fans that have followed us. They all made it possible. Not me.”
Outside of local high school basketball fans, most probably know Pingatore from his supporting role in “Hoop Dreams,” the brilliant 1994 documentary on two Chicago high school basketball players: St. Joe’s William Gates and Marshall’s Arthur Agee, who had been recruited by Pingatore but had to transfer to the West Side public school when his parents couldn’t afford the tuition.
Pingatore was upset by his portrayal and the inference the school didn’t help Agee because he was less talented than Gates. Pingatore and the school sued the filmmakers, resulting in an out-of-court settlement.
But it was an honest account of the lives of two high school players and their families, and Pingatore’s fiery personality and the heartbreaking story of Agee and his mother helped make “Hoop Dreams” into one of the best documentaries of its era.
The late Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert wrote that “Hoop Dreams” “is what movies are for” and rejected the notion Pingatore looked bad.
“He feels he’s seen in an unattractive light,” Ebert wrote. “I thought he came across fairly well. Like all coaches, he believes athletics are a great deal more important than they really are, and there is a moment when he leaves a decision to Gates that Gates is clearly not well-prepared to make. But it isn’t Pingatore but the whole system that is brought into question: What does it say about the values involved, when the pro sports machine reaches right down to eighth-grade playgrounds?”
Pingatore was very tough on his young players, as many high school coaches I covered in those days were. It was a different era. But he also was quick to shower his kids with praise and showed great pride in their progress, usually saving his most effusive compliments for the player with the most floor burns rather than the Division I-bound star.
He once invited me into the locker room at halftime of a Chargers game to watch him give a pep talk for a potential feature story, then spent the next 10 minutes yelling at his players like a lunatic. They came back in the second half and won, and Pingatore raved afterward about their character and teamwork.
It was a tough love, the kind that went out of fashion years ago. But it was classic Ping.
In the 1994 York Sectional of March Madness, three of the four teams had coaches that had combined for 1,701 wins in 91 seasons. Pingatore was the third among them at the time with 507 wins, behind St. Patrick’s Max Kurland (637) and Lyons’ Ron Nikcevich (557).
Previewing the sectional, I called it the “Young and the Rest Home,” referring to the imminent retirements of Kurland and Nikcevich. Pingatore feigned indignation when I asked him about trying to ruin his friends’ swan songs.
Waving his hands furiously, as he was prone to do, Pingatore had no intention of getting sentimental with the season on the line.
“What, you think I’m going to get nostalgic?” he said.
Pingatore wasn’t close to the rest home; he coached 25 more years.
The Chargers won their first state championship in 1999 and followed up with another in 2015. Pingatore was ready to coach his 51st season at St. Joe’s beginning this fall, and the Sun-Times reported he was coaching at the Riverside-Brookfield Shootout last week, meaning he did it until the very end.
Tributes to Pingatore poured in Thursday on Twitter, including one from Isiah Thomas, who wrote that “meeting you saved my life.”
Being the winningest basketball coach in state history is nice and all. But could anyone ask for a better legacy than that?
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