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This article demonstrates how one coach can change a child's approach to life. Beat the Streets coaches are doing the same thing --inspiring their wrestlers on a daily basis, allowing the wrestlers to buy into a way of life that will help them succeed in the future.
BY ROBERT CASSIDY
bcassidy@newsday.com
Original article posted here. Be sure to check out the video clip!
Joe Spinola was sure these kids hated him. He had taken over a group of ragtag junior high school wrestlers and had challenged them in a way no one expected. Sometimes a wrestler might surrender his lunch during practice. Some would leave the mat crying.
All left the gym exhausted.
But they came back, day after day after day. In 1978-79, the wrestling team at Woodland Junior High School in East Meadow had lost all nine of its matches. The following season, there was such little interest in the team or the program that no one stepped forward to coach the group. Finally, Bob McClellan, one of the school's shop teachers, said he'd take the team. Although he knew nothing about wrestling, McClellan thought the kids deserved a season.
So he contacted Spinola, a former East Meadow High School wrestler he knew who was putting himself through law school, and asked for help.
The arrangement was that McClellan would be on hand, acting as a figurehead to satisfy the school, but the 20-year-old Spinola would do the coaching.
"I was coaching these kids, but I was still a kid," Spinola said. "I had my studies and my team, and that's all I cared about. I may not have been mature enough to understand the nuances of educating and coaching, but I tried to be everything that I thought a coach should have been. It was all still fresh in my mind. I saw the way other coaches did things, and I thought I'd do differently."
Differently?
On a Saturday, he would start practice at 9 a.m. and the wrestlers wouldn't arrive home until 5 p.m. On a Sunday, he might schedule a pickup game of basketball. He was building camaraderie, but he also was improving their conditioning. He might halt a practice to lecture them on the importance of schoolwork. In fact, one of his rules was that if you weren't passing your classes, you couldn't wrestle on his team.
"The thing that is burned into my mind is my parents coming up to the school to look for me at 9 o'clock at night," said Bill Germano, 41, a chiropractor who now lives in Smithtown. "We were in the weight room, and I remember a couple of the tougher guys on the team crying. I was on the verge of tears, and once I saw them crying, I just broke down."
Not all the wrestlers wanted to endure the grueling workouts. Early in the season, a few of the more-established members of the team tried to fight the system. They argued, they protested, and they soon found themselves with their afternoons free.
"I was very clear, it was my way or you are off the team," Spinola said.
McClellan, who has since died, looked at Spinola and asked, "Are you crazy?" Spinola had kicked the two most talented wrestlers off a team that had very little talent. But Spinola gave these kids so much more. He gave them hope. "I felt every guy had ability, you just had to find it," Spinola said. "Anybody can be good. It's a question of what you are willing to do to get good. I told them, great athletes aren't born, they are made. I told each one of them, if you work hard, you can achieve your goals."
When you are 13, sweating, crying and every muscle in your body is aching, it is hard to see the payoff in such words. But during those long hours, Spinola developed a bond with his wrestlers. He'd yell and scream, but he'd also get down on the mat and do pushups right alongside them. After practices, he'd regale them with tales of the great collegiate wrestlers, such as Nick Gallo and Gene Mills, he'd come across during his career at Hofstra.
"When my parents found me that night in the weight room, they were so relieved because they thought something terrible had happened to me," Germano said. "On the ride home, I could tell they were concerned. They said to me, 'Ya know, if this is too hard, you don't have to do this. Do you know what you are doing?' I said, 'Yeah, this is great, I can't wait to come back tomorrow.'"
Slowly, all the wrestlers started to come around.
"It really wasn't going so well until the first match," Spinola said. "We were wrestling Wantagh, and we destroyed them, 44-12. From that point on, the kids bought into everything I was talking about."
It's been 27 years since Spinola coached them for that lone season. In May, the former junior high wrestlers -- now doctors, accountants, teachers -- reunited at an East Meadow restaurant. All but two of the 15 wrestlers showed up, and the evening was a tribute to the man many still call coach.
"I wouldn't miss this," said John Kirk, who traveled from Fort Lauderdale. "That season meant so much to all of us. I had to be here for Joe."
From mat to the bench
ALL RISE! The honorable Joseph P. Spinola, Supreme Court judge, has entered the Calendar Control Part 1 courtroom to dispense with the civil calendar. As a wrestler, Spinola was tenacious. As a coach, he was intense. As a judge, he is, well, smiling. On the bench, Spinola is cordial, friendly and accommodating. He is less taskmaster, more referee. Once the calendar has been set, he moves across the hall to Nassau County Supreme Court, Part 21 to continue hearing cases.
"As a judge, he's very consistent and very fair," said Glenn Sabele, an attorney with the Long Beach-based Elovich and Adelle. "He understands the problems you have as a trial attorney because he was a trial attorney. He was excellent, he had a common-man approach, so juries liked him."
Spinola, 48, grew up in East Meadow. When he was 11, his father, Salvatore, a New York City police officer, died while trying to rescue someone trapped in a sewer. That left his mother, Phyllis, to raise Joe, Ralph, who would wrestle at Syracuse, and his sisters, Domenica and Antoinette. After his father's death, Joe immersed himself in sports to fill the void.
"I really didn't have anyone to look up to except for my mother," he said. "My mother was one of those moms who made you feel you could do anything. She always made us feel we were as good as anyone else. Because of that, I never felt intimidated by anyone or anything."
Spinola graduated cum laude with University Honors from Hofstra and then graduated from Hofstra School of Law in 1983. From there, he began a winding journey to the bench. His expertise is civil law, and he began as an associate and then moved up to trial lawyer at some of Nassau's best civil law firms.
A self-made career
In 1997, he founded Spinola & Mirotznik, P.C., where he remained an active litigator until January 2003, when he was elected District Court judge. A year later, running on the Conservative Party line, he was elected to a seat on the Supreme Court. His term expires in 2017.
"He's not a creation of the political system," Sabele said. "He got to the bench without politics. He never had anyone backing him."
The Honorable Joseph P. Spinola was sure these kids had forgotten him. He coached them for only one season. After failing to win a match the prior year, Spinola led Woodland to an undefeated, 8-0 season. It was a glorious year, indeed, but most of those kids had gone on to achieve greater athletic success.
"That season was unbelievable," Spinola said. "I cannot believe what those kids did. But then I forgot about it. I got busy with my life and my career, and that was it."
Or, so he thought. Every once in a while, a letter would cross his desk from one of those wrestlers. The theme was always the same, thanking him for making a difference in their lives.
"I really didn't think I did anything for them," he said. "I tried to prove that my coaching philosophy was good. I did that for me."
A special team member
A few years ago, Spinola was having work done at his East Meadow home. When the contractor completed the job, Spinola was arranging to meet for payment. "It's on me," he was told.
"Why?" Spinola asked.
"Because of what you did for my brother when you coached at Woodland," came the answer.
The contractor was Bobby Madden, and his younger brother, James, wrestled for Spinola as a seventh-grader. But that wasn't the sibling to whom Madden was referring. Another brother, Tom, was diagnosed with spina bifida as a child and was never able to participate in sports. Spinola saw Tom Madden hanging around the gym and named him team manager. As he did with each kid on that team, Spinola overlooked the negatives and focused on the positive.
"Initially, I'm not sure we all understood that," Germano said. "At that age, when you don't understand someone's circumstances, you shy away from it. But at the end of the season, Tom was one of the guys, cracking jokes along with everyone else. Joe never told us to treat him any differently."
"He brought me from the outside looking in and he made me part of the team," said Tom Madden, 43, an accountant for Nassau County. "Because of that season, I was able to make friends that I kept from high school and beyond that." Tom Madden was there alongside all the wrestlers at the reunion in May, cracking jokes about the old days. Some of the men came from as far away as South Carolina, Florida and Colorado. They came to pay homage to the man who put a group of boys on the path to manhood.
"Joe was like God, he was Superman to us," said Michael D'Antonio, who retired from the Air Force. "He was the ultimate leader. I excelled in the military, and it's because of the discipline I learned that season."
"He taught us from day one that hard work pays off," said Joe Strycharz, 41, who came in from Ho-Ho-Kus, N.J. "I think all of us still live by that. Even though he was with us for a short time, he planted a seed in all of us."
Copyright 2007 Newsday Inc.
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