Beloved coach gets recognition he deserves
It was raining hard as my high school football coach and I drove down Austin Highway. It was July 2008, and I’d picked up George Pasterchick to go to the funeral of Dan Cook, the iconic former Express-news sports columnist.
That morning, Coach was nostalgic as we talked about Cook and other things, including, as he sometimes did, the San Antonio Sports Hall of Fame.
“Tell me the truth,” he said to me. “Do you think the Hall of Fame is realistic? Do I have a chance?”
I said, of course, and that it was just a matter of time. For a few seconds, the only sound in the car was that of the windshield wipers before Coach chuckled and said, more to himself than to me, “Wouldn’t that be something?”
Each year, people like me waited for Coach’s name to be called. Each year, we were disappointed.
Even after Coach died in 2012, at the age of 82, we continued waiting and hoping for the announcement of the only honor for which he ever expressed a desire. Over time, many of us lost hope.
And yet…
I’d given up thinking I’d have the opportunity to write this sentence, but George Pasterchick has been voted into the San Antonio Sports Hall of Fame.
On Monday afternoon, it was announced that, along with former San Antonio Star Sophia Young-malcolm, runner Natalia Nalepa Linam and longtime NFL player Ndukwe Dike “N.D.” Kalu, Pasterchick will be among the 2022 inductees.
“Our family is so proud that the San Antonio sports community is recognizing the career and accomplishments of our father,” his daughter, Georgia Pasterchick Bartlett, told me last week. “He loved San Antonio and all of its sports teams. As a coach, he touched the lives of so many athletes. He left a legacy of the importance of competing with pride, passion, hard work and dedication. He always said he not only coached football but the game of life. We are so proud that he will forever be a member of the San Antonio Sports Hall of Fame.”
For six decades, he was a major fixture in the constellation of San Antonio football. Professionally, most notably, he was head coach of the semi-professional powerhouse San Antonio Toros, compiling a record of 109-7.
But Coach, who was born in New Jersey on a Friday night in the fall and who died on a Friday in the fall, made the name Pasterchick golden through the 34 years of Friday nights in the fall he coached the Royals of St. Gerard, a small high school on a small hill on the East Side.
Coach built his legend within the parameters of a 120--by-53yard football field, a space too narrow to define his legacy beyond football or confine the lasting impact he had on the lives of countless students.
On Feb. 3, 2001, one of his former players, San Antonio Police Officer John “Rocky” Riojas, died after being shot late in the evening in the line of duty. That night, Coach was honored at a banquet as one of the Archdiocese of San Antonio’s Outstanding Leaders in Catholic Education. Accepting his award, an emotional Coach told the audience, “We lost one of ours last night.”
“One of ours” was how he felt about all the kids for whom he was a father figure. Even after he retired, Coach was a familiar, comforting presence at the funerals of former players and students or their parents and siblings.
I once asked him why he’d stayed so long at St. Gerard, making little money, when he could have coached almost anywhere else.
“I love the kids, the people,” he said. “There are a lot of kids here from single-parent families. I want to take care of them.”
I was one of those kids. Knowing I walked to and from school, Coach would often give me a ride home in his blue Nova. Once, I had to write a paper on a famous person. I wrote it on singer James Brown and all the clothes and hundreds of pairs of shoes he owned. I showed it to Coach, who nodded his head and said, “That’s good, Cary, but why didn’t you write about Martin Luther King Jr.?” Until then, I’d not given much thought to King.
In the nearly 95-year history of St. Gerard, there is no more beloved and revered figure than George Pasterchick. Many of us were children, in the spring of our lives when we first met Coach. As autumn crept into our joints and bones and winter whitened our hair, we were always looking for ways to celebrate and thank him. When he retired in 2006, more than 700 people attended his party. In 2010, more than 500 hundred people attended his 80th birthday party.
And we pushed and prayed for his induction into the SA Sports Hall of Fame, always baffled at his exclusion.
When I delivered Coach’s eulogy, nine years ago this month, I noted that when people learned you went to St. Gerard, the first thing they’d ask, “Is Pasterchick still there?”
The answer is that wherever we go, whatever we do, whoever we become, Pasterchick will always be there.
And now, George Pasterchick is in the San Antonio Sports Hall of Fame.
Coach, that’s something.