Every town needs men like Jack Shingle

Over a lifetime of coaching youth sports, Jack Shingle molded and mentored generations of young people.

Every town needs men like Jack Shingle.

They are not necessarily that people who dominate headlines. They just dominate lives. In Shingle’s case, that would be young lives.

Over a lifetime of coaching youth sports, Shingle molded and mentored generations of young people in the Upper Darby community.

Shingle died last week at the age of 72. His loss will reverberate throughout Upper Darby and beyond, in the hearts and minds of every kid this tough, no-nonsense coach touched.

Shingle, who also served for two decades on Upper Darby Township Council, was a hands-on kind of guy. He was not afraid to get in a kid’s face when he felt the youth was in danger of straying from the straight and narrow.

Don’t believe it? Ask any of the kids he coached. They know now what they didn’t know then – what kids often don’t know, that there is a wisdom out there beyond their years. Shingle possessed exactly that kind of wisdom, and was quick to share it.

Shingle’s roots in Upper Darby sports run deep. He was a fixture on the local CYO football scene that is legend in Upper Darby. Yes, the same kind of programs that produced players like Penn State star and Heisman winner John Cappelletti. He was closely affiliated with the St. Laurence program for years.

Shingle brought that football mentality to his “other” job. No, not as a township official. Shingle for years served as truant officer for the Upper Darby School District. He took the job seriously. A lot of kids no doubt made it to school as an easy choice when the opposite meant possibly dealing with Shingle. He was not afraid of knocking on a few doors to determine where a youth who was supposed to be in school actually was.

Shingle used his longtime affiliation with CYO Sports as a springboard to take over an Upper Darby High football program that had fallen on hard times. When Shingle came on board in the late 1980s, it marked a turning point for the struggling program.

No one knows that more than current coach Rich Gentile.

“We didn’t win at all,” Gentile remembered of the struggles before Shingle took the reins. “Football was a joke. If you went back and put a point to where it turned around and became a winning program … it was when he became head coach.

“When he became head coach there were like 15 kids in the whole program. He went to houses, walked through hallways and spoke to kids (to recruit players).”

Being the school district’s truant officer likely helped. Shingle showed not only that he was concerned about where kids were and what kind of trouble they might be getting into, but also that he cared for them, both on the football field and off. Shingle’s gruff exterior his a deeply caring man who wanted nothing but the best for his young charges.

He was a huge proponent of education – not just athletics – as the ticket to a solid future, and he was not shy about lamenting the funding disadvantage that districts such as Upper Darby struggled against every year.

Kids in Upper Darby did not have the zip code that afforded them things that other districts could offer.

They did have Jack Shingle, however. That kind of caring and tough love showed in the “enthusiastic” way he went about his duties as truant officer.

“He cared about the kids as a truant officer and wanted to find out why they weren’t going to school, if there was a problem that they had,” Gentile remembered.

Every town could use men like Jack Shingle.

In Upper Darby, he will be near impossible to replace.

Every town could use men like Jack Shingle.