What’s In a (Hockey Coach’s) Name?
Hey, why did The Old Coach have difficulty finding a place to post an entry like this? Actually, I guess, because it’s partly personal, and because it doesn’t really fit in any other category, so I’ll take the risk…
Okay, you may or may not find this all that interesting. Yet, my last name brings the occasional question, while the spelling of my nickname seems to raise more than a few eyebrows. Monikers aside, there’s a thought (or even two or three) in here for other coaches (and maybe even for some business types).
– Dennis Chighisola
Let’s dispense with the last name first… No, it’s not Native American, nor is it Polish. Despite my studying in the old Soviet Union, I don’t have personal ties there, and I am not Russian. That vowel at the end gives it away to some. Yes, my dad’s side of the family came here to the US from Italy prior to the turn of the last century.
Next, many of you might be surprised to learn that 1) I never intended to be a coach, and 2) my first coaching stint wasn’t with an ice hockey team.
You see, I was just out of high school when an old chum asked me if I’d help him work with a 13- and 14-year old baseball team. That’s right, baseball. (Some old-timers around my hometown have said I was one of the best in that sport. Of course, I’d have my late dad to thank for that, since he had great success coaching on the diamond.)
That season of chasing my buddy and our team around the local Pony League circuit included a little fun AND some anguish.
The fun part should be obvious — as in my getting to hang with other athletes, and in my getting the chance to stay active with a glove, bat and ball. (At the same time, I was also playing shortstop for the local semi-pro ball club.)
If there were problems — and there surely were, I’d say that the first one had to do with me not liking the assistant’s role. Oh, I loved my buddy, but I didn’t agree with many of his managing decisions, and I’d have preferred to practice a whole lot more than we did. The second difficulty stemmed from us coaches being too close in age to the young guys in our charge. I mean, my friend was 19, I was 18, and our players likely felt they weren’t that much younger. Slightly connected to this was the fact that we coaches made a huge blunder by letting the kids call us by our nicknames. Yes, this made them feel all the more our equals (or nearly so).
Now, if there’s one thing I’ve learned about myself, it’s that I’ve always noticed things like I’ve just mentioned. In other words, I made a mental note, telling myself that I didn’t like being an assistant coach. And, IF I ever planned on coaching again — which I didn’t, I’d surely want to find a way to deal with that respect issue.
Just a few years later, a funny thing happened on my way home from an Army base in Fort Sill, Oklahoma… A younger brother was playing back home in the local Little League, and that’s where an odd chain of events begin… For, one night at the ballpark, the manager of my brother’s team asked my dad if he could replace him as manager. The young guy, also an old high school chum of mine, explained that he’d just been drafted, and he was leaving for his Army training assignment within a few weeks. My dad had to politely refuse the offer due to his work schedule. But, my new wife happened to be standing nearby that night, and she promptly offered, “Dennis will be getting home just about when you’re leaving, and I’m sure he’d love to do the job!” So there I was, something like 2000-miles away, worrying about lots of more important things, and not knowing I was soon going to be a baseball manager.
As fate would also have it, I was handed a team that was loaded. I mean REALLY loaded. So, we trounced most of the league as I got my feet wet.
Now, skipping back a few paragraphs, remember that I suggested how I learned a few lessons from that single Pony League season? Well, I was no longer someone else’s assistant, and that suited me just fine. As for the respect thing, or as a way of slightly distancing myself from the players, I introduced myself to them on the very first day as “Mr Chighisola”. No “Dennis”, no “Chick”, no anything but “Mr Chighisola”.
Just briefly let me say that my teams continued to win, and I found that I actually liked teaching (errrrr… coaching). I liked it so much, in fact, that I remained on the job (if we can call it a job), and my teams won the title almost every year for a decade. Let me also say that I remembered and applied a lot of lessons from my days as a young athlete. I found myself doing things like my dad had, even copying his way of focusing on what mattered most. I frequently used stations, owing to my old high school football coach, one of the state’s very best. And, although the sports differ a lot, I’m sure I slipped-in at least a few things from hockey. Of course, that approach has stayed with me, almost 40-years later, as I continue to borrow from the best coaches in other sports.
Oh, while I was still very young, and shortly after I’d started with that baseball team, I was asked to also help with a local hockey club. But, my climb up that ladder — including my ditching of an engineering career and studies in favor of a Physical Education degree — is fodder for yet another VERY long story.
Getting back to the history of my name… As a few early seasons came and went, I found that new players were struggling with the long version. (How could I blame kids when their parents had difficulty pronouncing “Chighisola”?) So I just shortened it at some point, henceforth introducing myself as “Mr Chick” (or “Mr Chic”). Ya, you want to know about that missing “k”, huh?
Well, somewhere out there in the world is a seamstress (or whatever) who hung that “Chic” tag on me. Oh, my high school football jacket was supposed to arrive with “Chick” on the sleeve. But, it surely didn’t. I sensed my dad was a little steamed at that, and he even suggested sending it back. I, on the other hand, was 17-years old, and I could live with the missing “k” so long as I could continue parading that jacket up and down the school corridors right then.
Of course you know that all my different team jackets had to ultimately have the same name on the sleeve. So, the next and the next and the next all proudly displayed the new spelling somewhere. And so did my first coaching jackets and warm-up suits as I began working on the ice.
Finally, it seems to be a long standing tradition here in The States (but not so in some other countries), that the guy with the whistle is called “Coach”. (I’ve been to coaching clinics where one call of, “Hey, Coach!” in a hallway is cause for 120 cases of whiplash!) That in mind, when it came time for me to introduce myself to new hockey players, it only made sense that I’d do it as “Coach Chic”.
So, as the late, great Paul Harvey would say, “Now you know the rest of the story.”
