George Wadlin’s 24-year coaching career at PW came to an end on Friday night. Tom Kerrane covered both basketball and golf teams coached by Wadlin for the Times Herald from 1990-2012.
By Tom Kerrane
Plymouth Whitemarsh High School assistant boys basketball coach George Wadlin has never been officially credited with one win for the Colonials' program. His basketball head coaching record at the school stands at 0-0.
Yet, ask anyone on whose staff Wadlin served, or the players who have come through the program since Wadlin first appeared in the fall of 1990, and they will tell you Wadlin has more wins than can be ever be counted, more favors owed to him than can ever be repaid.
In fact, if the counting of them would ever have been done, Wadlin would have been the one doing the counting. Keeping track of the program's history was just one of the many tasks he has taken on during his 24 seasons with PW basketball.
To understand the true value of an assistant basketball coach like Wadlin, one needs to only look at the odometer of his car, once in November and again at the end of the season. There is little doubt that nearly all of those miles were accrued going to and from various high school basketball gymnasiums.
To understand his value as the head golf coach at PW, something he did since 1999, one can simply sit back and watch at the end of each day at either the district or league golf championships, as Wadlin packs up and carts several trips worth of materials to his vehicle, often the last one to leave the course.
And to understand his importance in the lives of the many players he coached during his career, one only needed to be at Colonial Elementary School on January 31, when Plymouth Whitemarsh hosted Norristown in basketball. Before the game, Wadlin was honored for his nearly 24 years of service to the school, and after all the kind words were said, the gifts were presented and the plaque of recognition was read, Colonials head coach Jim Donofrio asked if any people who had played under Wadlin could come on the court for a photo.
More than 40 players in two different sports, dating from the very recent to those from more than 20 years ago, assembled on the court to express their appreciation. The group even included Norristown head coach Mike Evans, who was a student at Norristown back when Wadlin was an Eagles assistant before coming to PW.
“(That) night was special,” Wadlin said, not lost on him being the fact that the night ended in a 57-44 PW win and the program clinching its 15th league title during his tenure on the bench. “All the things that flew through my mind during that. I'm going to miss the times with the coaches, the ball boys, the players.
“The night was indescribable. Seeing all the players come back. I also got a really nice text from a former player late Friday night that meant so much to me.”
This group -which included some players who looked like they could lace it up that night and still play, and a couple who looked like one good sprint down the court would have been plenty of exertion for the night - all expressed the true value of an assistant coach like Wadlin – a man who some people in the bleachers might not have even known by name until then, but someone whose value to the PW boys basketball and golf teams cannot be measured.
“It was two decades of guys here,” PW head coach Jim Donofrio said. “They know him and they love him. He is that teacher and coach who does it for bigger reasons than wins and losses. George just cares so much about you becoming a better person.”
“I know this means a lot to George,” said Anthony Minor, who played for PW until graduating in 2007 and returned to honor his former coach. “He means a lot to the program, and you could see that here with how many people showed up for him. He is PW, the embodiment of PW.
“A lot of what he does goes unnoticed to many people, but not to us. Anyone who has ever played for him, been a student of his, they understand what a great person and coach he is.”
Wadlin decided this would be his final year at PW as he will retire from teaching and coaching. His career as the PW golf coach ended back in October. His tenure as the Colonials assistant boys basketball coach stopped Friday night, when PW lost to Wissahickon in a District One Class AAAA playback game. His teaching schedule will stop in June.
At 62, he will not miss the 36-mile commute from his Delaware County home to PW each day, or leaving the house by 6 a.m. each morning and, during basketball season, not returning home until late at night. And he will certainly appreciate the added time he will now have with his four grandchildren. But he will miss the players and coaches, the excitement, the competitiveness.
“I've had a good run,” Wadlin said. “I really have. I've enjoyed everything from A to Z.
“Now that I'm retiring (from teaching), I can't be that coach in the building anymore. I don't think it will be the same. I had a real strong feeling to do it this way. I've had a great run, but I'm ready to move on to the next phase of my life.
“I'll miss all this around here. But I can walk away knowing there has been a lot of good stuff here.”
His great run came out of nowhere back in 1990. He was a volunteer when he arrived at Norristown in the mid-'80s. He stayed with the Eagles until 1990, when they won a district title. That summer, he was doing some shopping in King of Prussia when his coaching career took a dramatic change.
“There's a point walking into the mall where you break off and could go either right or left,” he said. “I decided to go left and I ran into one of the parents of a (PW) player. He told me about this, that they were going to hire a new (assistant) coach.”
Wadlin applied for the job and Hank Stofko hired him. Donofrio jokes that Stofko handed Wadlin an eight-page document that day, a detailed job description of what is expected from an assistant coach for PW basketball, “and it's like George has followed it to a 'T' since that day.”
While a teacher at PW, Wadlin then found out about a possible opening for the golf position. The current coach, fellow physical education teacher Jeff Hovis, was contemplating his retirement, and Wadlin asked to be a volunteer coach for Hovis' last season. When Hovis retired, Wadlin took over the team. The PW golf program thrived under Wadlin. From 1999-2013, the team went 161-54-5 overall, winning seven Suburban One League titles.
Meanwhile, the basketball program won 522 games with Wadlin on the bench, including 15 league titles. He was there for Stofko's final year, then all seven seasons with Al Angelos and the last 16 with Donofrio. He experienced two PIAA Class AAAA state championships, one in 1997 with Angelos and the second in 2010 under Donofrio.
“I got to learn so much from him,” said Chuck Moore, a player on the 1997 team, an assistant coach with the 2010 squad and now the head basketball coach at Coatesville. “To be honest, I didn't know how funny he was. When you get behind the scenes, when you're not playing for him and you're coaching with him, you get to see the true characters of some of the guys. He is one of the funniest guys I know.
“With that, combined with the wisdom after being around so long, he is a father figure to all of us. He really is. He has touched a lot of guys here at PW.”
After a couple years as an assistant at PW and itching to become a head coach somewhere, Wadlin did apply for several openings, one at Norristown and also at North Penn and Phoenixville. A finalist for each, alas he was not hired. As he thought about it afterward, he recognized his true role.
“George is an old-fashioned assistant coach who protects the head coach, who does so many of the little things that have to get done,” Donofrio said. “He does some things so that I can do the Xs and Os and psychology. He is my mentor, he is my sounding board. He is always there for me.
“He knows the role he needs to take. He'll go and scout games for six hours in the snow, and then load all the game footage so we have it. I don't know how many young guys who want to get in this understand. His wife, Jill, is the prototypical coach's wife. He's off for the day to go scout games, brings his lunch and he's gone all day.”
Wadlin is old-fashioned, and likes things done a certain way. One thing he cannot stand are scuff marks on the basketball court, so much so that he made a long pole with a tennis ball on the end of it which he uses to remove the scuff marks on the floor at PW. He'll go up and down the court looking for spots. One day with a few weeks to go in this season, he was going around the court during practice, removing all the marks he could find. He looked up, only to see several other assistant coaches laughing at him.
”I asked what they were laughing at,” Wadlin said. “They said, 'We're just over here thinking about all the jobs that aren't going to get done next year when you're gone, and that is definitely one of them.'”
Wadlin is not sure what next year holds for him, but for Donofrio, coaching without his longtime assistant and confidant is something he has yet to fully accept.
“I am trying not to think about that,” Donofrio said. “With all he does, there are not a lot of guys like him left. I have great assistant coaches, but his attention to detail is off the charts. He is invaluable. When I so much as think about him not being here next year, I panic.”
With 24 seasons under his belt, Wadlin has plenty of memories from his time at PW, both from the golf team and the basketball team. The kids he met along the way stand out the most to him, the ones who needed a little tough love from time to time to get them going, and the ones who simply needed a coach to keep them going.
When asked to pick one moment that stood out, Wadlin thought for a bit, before narrowing it down to a few minutes in 1997, maybe his saddest moment and his most pleasing, all coming together.
“In '97, when we won the state championship, I looked up in the stands and my father wasn't there,” Wadlin said. “He had passed away and never saw that moment. I really wish he had been here still to see that.
“Then, a few minutes later, under the stands when (PW athletic director Charlie Forster) greeted me and told me how important I was to that team, those were huge moments for me. I don't know if he ever knew how much that meant to me right then.”
If there was something Wadlin took from the past 24 years, a nugget he could offer to younger coaches and those who might want to join the coaching ranks, it was that coaches have to be workaholics.
“Stofko was one, Al was one, Jimmy is one,” he said. “We're all dedicated to whatever we do. You have to put everything into whatever it is you do. You still have to find a good balance between this and family, too, though. When you come here, you work hard, but when you go home, you work hard on that, too.”
There will be a lot more time spent at home for Wadlin come June. And by next basketball season, he has no idea where he will be. But there is one thing he is really looking forward to, something that was brought home to him recently.
“My grandson said to me the other day that this means he can't go to any more basketball games,” Wadlin said. “I told him that this just means he can sit with me in the stands.”
That could end up being one of the biggest wins for Coach Wadlin.
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