BOB O’CONNOR: “He’s dedicated his life to St. Joe’s.”
Wolf leaving large legacy
Coach, teacher and 42-year AD guided Marauders through a golden era
Joe Wolf remembers being a heartbroken, 105-pound freshman in the fall of 1953, tempted to walk away from St. Joe’s for good.
Fifty five years later, he’s ready to follow through on what he couldn’t do back then.
“I had already gotten my No. 10 jersey from the JV football team — a beat-up, hand-me-down thing that I was so proud of. But I got cut a few days later and was absolutely devastated,” said Wolf, who is leaving St. Joe’s after spending the last 42 years as athletic director. “I asked the coach if I’d done something wrong and all he told me was that if I drank a cherry soda I’d look like a thermometer because I was so skinny.
“I was so embarrassed that I couldn’t even get on the NFTA bus for the ride back home to Cheektowaga. I just kept walking and walking, right across the course at Grover Cleveland and all the golfers were yelling ‘fore’ at me. But at that point I didn’t even care if I’d gotten hit with a golf ball.
“When I got home I had tears in my eyes and told my dad that I wanted to transfer to Cleveland Hill. But he said I should go back and try out for the freshman basketball team, and that if I didn’t make it, then I could transfer at the end of the school year. Well I made it and the rest is history.”
Indeed it is. St. Joe’s, which opened in 1861, isn’t named for Joe Wolf. It only seems that way.
When Pete Schneider, who has been Wolf’s assistant for the last four years, takes over officially July 1, he’ll have some huge shoes to fill.
Wolf has been the AD at St. Joe’s for as long as Joe Paterno has been the football coach at Penn State. He’s been on the job while eight different presidents have run the country.
Teams from St. Joe’s won 273 championships on Wolf’s watch, including 31 Supremacy Cups for overall athletic superiority in the Monsignor Martin Association during a given school year. Two of his coaches (Dick Bihr and Bob Ivory) and two of his players (Bill Hurley and Phil Scaffidi) have been inducted to the Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame.
When he took over as AD in 1966, the school had six sports and 12 coaches. Now there are 16 sports and 73 coaches on the Kenmore Avenue campus. A new athletic complex, complete with an artificial surface, should be ready for use Aug. 1.
“I think a big part of his success is that he has been able to adapt as society has changed,” Schneider said. “He’s gone from being that iron-fisted coach to understanding that as the generations change, you have to adapt in terms of dealing with the parents and their concerns. One of the great lessons I’ve learned from Joe is adaptability.”
At St. Joe’s, the 68-year-old Wolf has been an athlete, a teacher, a coach and the longest-serving administrator in the history of the MMA.
“He bleeds maroon, so to speak,” said Bill Fitzhenry, who was Wolf’s varsity football coach at St. Joe’s.
Wolf was a running back on the 1955 team that defeated archrival Canisius for the first time in 24 years and a member of the undefeated ’56 squad that started the school-record, 33-game winning streak.
“Every week in practice my role was to be the star back on the other team,” Wolf said. “I wasn’t much of an athlete. I got into a lot of the games only because we overran everybody. But I was on the bench so much that they called me the judge.”
“He was a very popular guy and one of the key seniors on that 1956 team,” the 80-year-old Fitzhenry said. “Everyone liked him and he always had a big smile on his face, even though he’d get knocked around on the scout team. His personal stardom was not his first goal, he always wanted to make the squad work.”
Wolf received his bachelor’s at Niagara and earned a master’s in education at Canisius in 1967. But by that time, he had been back at St. Joe’s for five years.
He spent 24 years teaching St. Joe’s students American history, business law and physical education and says he still prefers an evening watching the History Channel to a live professional sports event. One statistic he’s most proud of is that only three of his students ever failed a Regents exam.
As a coach, his varsity baseball teams won more than 130 games and a pair of Georgetown Cups in 13 seasons while his junior varsity football squads produced a 94-7-4 overall mark and eight unbeaten seasons.
He was inducted to the St. Joe’s Sports Hall of Fame in 1996, 10 years after being named the school’s Man of the Year. Last year he was selected the state Catholic High School Athletic Director of the Year.
“I saw him more as a teacher than a coach,” said Chris Rehbaum, a Saint Joseph’s Collegiate Institute Hall of Famer and member of the Class of 1979. “I remember during my sophomore year I was given permission to miss some football practices because I was going to play in a lacrosse tournament. When I came back to school I got screamed at by [then-head football coach] Tucker Reddington. I was in tears and ready to quit football. But it was Joe Wolf who pulled me aside and talked me through it. That’s the kind of guy he was for me.”
His father, Jerome “Bud” Wolf, who died at age 47 in 1961, was a CYO basketball coach who also had a huge influence.
“He did it for nothing because he loved working with the kids and he’s the one who got me started,” Joe Wolf said. “He taught me not to holler at a kid for making a physical error. He taught me that the great ones are the ones who don’t make the mental errors. Even the great ones make physical mistakes.”
The demands of overseeing an ever- growing athletic program led to Wolf leaving coaching and the classroom in 1985 — the same year he spent six days in intensive care for treatment of ulcers.
“He’s a teacher No. 1,” said St. Joe’s wrestling coach Pete Kennedy. “It takes a special person to work with kids and his longevity is amazing just on its own. But the fact he’s done such a good job of it all that time is absolutely incredible.”
Stability, starting with Wolf, is what separates St. Joe’s from many other local athletic programs.
“He’s dedicated his life to St. Joe’s,” said football coach Bob O’Connor, who has been on the staff since 1975 and is one of just three head coaches at St. Joe’s since 1954. “You just don’t find many guys who can do it like that for such a long period of time. I think stability is such a big part of our success because it gets to the point where you almost know what the other guy is thinking.”
Basketball coach Mark Simon, who has been on the staff since 1979, said the Manhattan Cup his team won last winter was special because of Wolf’s impending retirement.
“We were totally committed to winning that one for him,” said Simon. “We really wanted to send him off that way. He always allowed me the freedom to create the program we have in place now. He’s been a true coach’s athletic director.”
Baseball coach Rick Mariano, who graduated in 1970 and played for Georgetown Cup-winning teams in ’68 and ’69, credits Wolf for his decision to get into coaching.
“I’ve used quite a bit of what he taught me through the years,” Mariano said. “He’s had a big impact on my whole life, not just coaching. He was my favorite coach and part of the reason I came back was to do a good job for him.”
Many of Wolf’s coaches and former players will be on hand at 6 p. m. Thursday for a “Celebration of Achievement” retirement party at Samuel’s Grande Manor in Clarence.
After that, Wolf’s plans include exercising more regularly and spoiling his five grandchildren — who range in age from 5 to 11. One of his few regrets is that all the long hours on the job kept him from giving his three children (43-year-old Tom, 41-yearold Joe and 38-year-old Kristin Goss) the same amount of attention he gave his athletes and coaches.
“My wife of 45 years [Judy] told me it was my decision” when to retire, Wolf said. “But she also reminded me that I’ve given them 46 years of my life and that nobody but me will ever really know how much time I’ve put in on the job. She told me that I’ve paid my dues.”
The clincher was probably a note that hung on Wolf’s book case, written Jan. 21 by 11-year-old Drew Goss that lovingly detailed his grandfather’s importance in his life.
“Before that, I never really realized I had that much of an impact on my grandchildren,” Wolf said, his smile growing ever wider. “That kind of sealed the decision for me.”
And ended a golden era at St. Joe’s.
