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THE LEGEND Chuck Kyle '69 redefined how to win.

by Connor Walters '09

“Why would you want to do that? You can’t win there.”

That’s what some unnamed person asked English teacher Chuck Kyle ’69 in 1983 as he pondered whether he should apply to become the head coach of the football program.

Kyle had been serving as an assistant coach for 11 years and was already the head coach of the track and field team. He was a product of Wildcat football and believed that working with students as a teacher and coach was his vocation—but leading the program wasn’t necessarily his big dream.

The season prior, the Wildcats finished the season 4-6—the first losing record for the team since 1948. While they played competitively against a strong schedule, Saint Ignatius had never made it to the state playoffs since the tournament began in 1972. The person questioning Coach Kyle’s interest in the head coach role seemed to suggest that Saint Ignatius was a “smart kid” school and, as such, couldn’t produce championship-caliber athletic teams.

“Well, that did it,” Kyle says.

And the rest isn’t just history—it’s legacy: Four football national titles, 11 OHSAA football state championships, two OHSAA track and field team titles, 369 wins, scores of accolades, dozens of NFL and collegiate stars produced, and literally thousands of young men formed by a humble teacher and coach.

“You have this opportunity to show kids if they really love what they’re doing, and they put a lot of energy into it and they put that work ethic into things, good things can happen,” Kyle says. “If you have that work ethic, you have a chance to be a champion.”

Certainly Coach Kyle created champions. And yet, to limit the impact that he has had on Saint Ignatius to just the wins and the awards and the numbers is to miss what he did for the trajectory of the entire institution.

“I think so much of what Ignatius has been able to achieve in the last 30 years has some root in Chico,” says History teacher Dan Corrigan ’78, who has the rare distinction of having had Kyle as a teacher, and then also working and coaching alongside him. “Whether it’s publicity or courage or interest or alumni funding, it allowed us to think big. I think [former president] Fr. Welsh had that thinking, too, and Chico was the first to deliver that to Fr. Welsh’s vision. From the academic side, it raised the education and gave courage to people in other areas of the school’s life to dream big, too, and to achieve.”

Indeed, the 1988 football state championship was just the school’s second-ever in any sport, but as the trophy cases filled up, the success permeated throughout the entire athletic program, to the point where Saint Ignatius has claimed almost 60 regional or state titles and 15 national crowns across the entire Athletic Department.

But that first title was significant. After the state playoff began in 1972, several of the big Cleveland-area schools made it to the four-team tournament, but none had brought home a state championship. By 1988, Kyle’s sixth year at the helm of the football program, he had assembled a terrific coaching staff of gifted teachers and fielded a talented group of players. Corrigan, who was just a couple years into his teaching career and helping coach the defensive line, sensed that the program was poised for greatness.

“I just knew how the classes of ’89 and ’90 were something special,” he says. “There was something about all those guys—I knew something was going to have to happen.”

Saint Ignatius defeated defending state champion Cincinnati Princeton, 10-7, in the title game, and the entire City of Cleveland celebrated the historic victory.

Success fueled more success; boys from all over Cleveland flocked to West 30th and Lorain to play for the great coach. The Wildcats ascended to the peak of high school football, stringing together seven state titles from 1988 through 1995—a stretch that included being named national champions in 1989, 1993 and 1995.

Spanish teacher Nick Restifo Hon. ’19 was Kyle’s longtime offensive coordinator and witnessed the goals and structure that Chico laid out from the very beginning.

“His vision was, ‘We’re not going to lie down for anybody, and we’re gonna play tough, hard football. We’re going to be mentally, physically, and spiritually prepared.’ That has been his mantra since day one,” Restifo says.

Part of building that toughness included hiring Marty Eynon as the weightlifting coach and developing a robust offseason training program. But it also included creating traditions that formed a committed, united team.

“Going to Mass before each game—that was important,” Restifo says. “Fr. Glenn Williams was our chaplain at the time and he would always tailor his homilies to fit, somehow, a Jesuit saint into his homily.”

Indeed, Kyle’s own faith fueled the way he coached. A quote of his adorns the senior lounge: “To say faith has nothing to do with it is absurd.” Throughout his career, he has preached the values of hard work and doing things “the right way,” which grew firsthand from his own understanding of St. Ignatius Loyola’s Prayer for Generosity.

“It wasn’t really used that much in the early days, but I found it a very good prayer,” he says. “Listen to it. It’s pretty good. To give and not to count the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds… you know what I mean? That answers your question. That’s just what you do.”

And yet, Kyle’s bona fides as a football coach were absolutely key to his program’s success.

“He could coach any position on the field,” Restifo says. “He could be a coach of any position on the field, including kickers. He coached the offensive line one year, as a head coach. He was a running back, he could coach quarterbacks, he could coach DBs—that’s what he coached when he was defensive coordinator. He could coach any position and be good at it.”

Kyle wanted his players to be well-rounded men and skilled student-athletes. It’s why he encouraged guys to play multiple sports and also why so many non-football players also gravitated to Gabor Track around Wasmer Field—to be coached by a talented man who was so invested in their success.

Though often overshadowed by the success of his football program, Kyle has led one of the state’s premier track and field teams since 1974—that’s a half century! Under his leadership, the squad won team state championships in 2001 and 2016, and finished as a state runner-up in 2005. He’s guided guys to individual titles and the squad regularly sends large contingents of athletes to compete at the state meet.

Long before he began coaching at Saint Ignatius, Ryan Franzinger ’02, who will succeed Kyle as head football coach after the 2022 season, was one of his acolytes. In addition to being a starter and captain for the 2001 state champion football team, he won the discus at the 2001 state meet, contributing to the team championship.

“Chico has always talked about hard work, and you don’t get anything if you don’t work hard,” Franzinger says. “Go after your challenges. Don’t sit back and let them get after you. Really attack your challenges. Embrace them.”

It’s important to keep in mind that, as he was building and running two incredibly successful high school sports teams, Kyle was still doing the thing that paid the bills—teaching. He and his wife Pat, who was a longtime Fine Arts teacher, were also raising a family of four kids. The care and love that Corrigan noticed in his teacher-turned-coworker-turned-friend is, he says, one of Kyle’s greatest traits.

“He is the best of friends you could ever expect to have, and I think everyone knows that who’s around him. There’s no ego,” Corrigan says. “Chico cares for the kids, the coaches, and especially for his family. He takes things like losses hard, but at the same time he knows it’s time to move on. There’s more to life than a football game or a bad time around the track.”

That should come as no surprise to generations of prospective Saint Ignatius students who participated in the Summer Enrichment Program and read the book that Kyle co-wrote with retired English teacher Mark Hodermarsky in 1997. It was titled, “The Object of the Game,” and instead of any drill, schema or game plan, Kyle wrote about values, habits and faith—as if to say that victories on the field were not as important as wins in forming young men of character.

“I do think that as Jesuit schools talk about excellence, and we’re one of them, the football team should show that, should really represent that and demonstrate that,” says Franzinger. “I think in Chico’s whole career, he has really achieved his mission.”

And in achieving this mission—forming young men in the classroom, on the field, and around the track—Chuck Kyle has also done some other truly incredible things:

He garnered a .779 winning percentage in football (to date), plus 31 playoff births, and countless district and regional titles across both of his programs.

He was the first head coach of the United States junior national football team and led them to an undefeated campaign at the International Federation of American Football Junior World Championship in 2009.

He carried the Olympic torch through Cleveland in 1996 as the country prepared to host the Games in Atlanta.

He turned down offers to coach at places like The Ohio State University and the University of Notre Dame.

He served as Youth Football Advisor for the Cleveland Browns.

He was inducted into the Greater Cleveland Sports Hall of Fame, the Ohio High School Football Coaches Association Hall of Fame, and the National Federation of State High School Associations Hall of Fame.

He received four Ohio Associated Press Coach of the Year Honors, was named National Coach of the Year twice, and was given a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Greater Cleveland Sports Commission.

He earned the Rossing Award for Teaching Excellence in 1987 and the Magis Award—the school’s highest honor—in 2012.

He brought authors like Chaucer and Shakespeare to life for his students.

He led with integrity, class, and hard work by exhibiting each of these himself.

He demonstrated deep love for his family, including his nearly 50 years of marriage to Pat.

And yet, Chuck Kyle would never seek the praise or recognition from any of these things for himself. He would rejoice in what has become of so many of the young men he has coached and taught. He would say that to give greater glory to God through his work with students and athletes has been at the heart of his own vocation.

But, if you were to ask Coach Kyle to describe himself, the victories and successes would only be ancillary to his answer, even though they cover just about everything he has done throughout his extraordinary career. Instead, he might say that he considers himself hard-working, faithful, passionate, prepared; he would tell you that the relationships are among his biggest prizes from his 50 years at Saint Ignatius High School.

And then he might pause, the way he did during hundreds of pre-game speeches, the way a seasoned teacher knows how to get his students to listen closely to the key point in a very important lesson. He would tell you:

“Winning is not a sin! Winning is an earned blessing. Winning with integrity is the highest goal. The belief in God and an afterlife give us a hope for an ultimate victory—eternity.”

Those are the words of a legend, of a coach who was told he could not win, of a teacher who knew he would write the story, of a man with the commitment to see it all through.

Those are the words of Chuck Kyle.

He redefined how to win.

Created By
Connor Walters
Appreciate

Credits:

Gary Yasaki, Al Fuchs '79, Saint Ignatius High School archives