Staskowski Finds New Home at DeLaSalle
By
Tom Markowski
Special for Second Half
December 30, 2016
WARREN – A passion for hockey runs through the Staskowski family.
Craig Staskowski grew up in Sterling Heights playing the sport. For the past five seasons he’s been the successful varsity hockey coach for Rochester Unified, and his eldest son is named after Cam Neely, the former Boston Bruins star forward.
Staskowski, 42, is the vice president of the Michigan High School Hockey Coaches Association, and next season he’ll begin his two-year term as president.
But juggling responsibilities at work and home often leaves little room for outside interests such as coaching. The increasing demands of coaching, notably a growing time commitment, are taking their toll on many coaches in all sports.
Staskowski knows this all too well. He knew, eventually, his stay in Rochester was to be short-lived. His place of business and his home are in Macomb County, and traffic is most often a nightmare going west into Oakland County during peak travel time.
“It’s such a commitment to coach,” he said. “The drive after work was 30 or 35 minutes depending on traffic. I was able to make it work, but how long can you do that? I have two boys, and both will play hockey.”
This past spring Staskowski saw an opportunity he couldn’t pass up. The varsity coaching position at Warren DeLaSalle opened, and Staskowski was hired in May. As difficult as it was to leave Rochester, here was a chance to remain in coaching for years to come.
All in all, Staskowski and his wife, Lindsay, couldn’t be more pleased with the move. His place of business is a mile and a half away from DeLaSalle, and the drive to Mount Clemens Ice Arena where the Pilots practice is a 10-minute drive from his home.
The Staskowskis have two sons and the eldest, Cam, is 8 years old and in his second year playing travel hockey in nearby St. Clair Shores.
“I absolutely have more time to spend with my family,” Staskowski said. “It’s way more convenient. It’s a long-term commitment for me.”
Convenience wasn’t the only factor. Staskowski is a competitive person, and he’s intent on building the program at DeLaSalle to where it can compete on the same level as other members of the Detroit Catholic League like Birmingham Brother Rice, Detroit Catholic Central, Orchard Lake St. Mary’s and U-D Jesuit.
Staskowski’s teams at Rochester won four Oakland Activities Association Red titles and twice reached Division 1 Regional Finals.
“Athletics is a big part of the equation at DeLaSalle,” he said. “They’ve have success in other sports. I would like our hockey program to be as good, or better, than those at C.C. and Rice. We want to win a regional and state championship. And so far we’re doing pretty well. We haven’t lost a game in regulation. And we beat U-D for the first time since 2011. And we beat them twice.”
The rivalries within the league are fierce. A team’s success is a measuring stick for how well it can compete at the state level. Staskowski graduated from Sterling Heights High, located a few miles north of DeLaSalle, and one of his best friends in high school was Don DeDonatis, who had two RBI in DeLaSalle’s 14-2 victory over Grand Ledge in the 1993 Class A Baseball Final.
“I always had great respect for the Pilots,” Staskowski said. “One of my assistant coaches, Tom Taylor, is a DeLaSalle alum. Our sons are best friends and play on the same travel team.
“I don’t know what it is about DeLaSalle. It’s something different whether it’s an all-boys school or what. The kids are polite. They’re really good kids. I know the football coach (Mike Giannone). He works at the school, and I’m sure we’ll get to know each other better.”
Giannone just completed his first season at DeLaSalle after he too left a successful local program at Macomb Dakota.
Greg Esler is the longtime basketball coach at DeLaSalle. Esler also cut his teeth coaching at another school (he left St. Clair Shores Lake Shore after the 1993-94 season) before coming to DeLaSalle. Even though Esler said times have changed, one factor remains constant.
“Kids want to be disciplined,” he said. “Whether it’s in a public school or private. There’s so much more going on now with the students with cell phones and social media. The communication is different.
“Giannone and I have a great relationship and we believe we should share kids. There’s so much specialization going on now. (Giannone) has been to our practices, and the kids know we have a good relationship. I’ve met (Staskowski) a few times. All of us want to win. If you have a good program and demand respect, you’ll be successful.”
DeLaSalle was 7-2-1 heading into its holiday break. A Dec. 9-10 trip to Marquette resulted in a loss and a tie, both in overtime.
The Pilots are led by senior left wing Thomas Hernandez, who had 30 points heading into the break. Senior Greg Pine is the center on the top line, and the two are not only best friends, but live next door to one another.
Splitting the duties in goal are junior Brandon Compton and sophomore Andrew Grewette, both of whom were on the junior varsity last season. The top defenseman is junior Jordan Kovacs.
“Pine and Hernandez compliment each other so well,” Staskowski said. “Jordan has been outstanding. You can put him out there against any line.
“I don’t even like to mention individuals because we have a great deal of depth. Yeah, we have that good line, but you have to have depth. Depth is a big part of being good.”
Tom Markowski is a columnist and directs website coverage for the State Champs! Sports Network. He previously covered primarily high school sports for the The Detroit News from 1984-2014, focusing on the Detroit area and contributing to statewide coverage of football and basketball. Contact him at [email protected] with story ideas for Oakland, Macomb and Wayne counties.
PHOTO: Craig Staskowski (middle, standing) directs his new Warren DeLaSalle hockey team during a game this season. (Photo courtesy of the Warren DeLaSalle hockey program.)
Port Huron Unified Providing Opportunity
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
December 4, 2019
Growing up in Yale, Trevor Sugars never thought about playing high school hockey. He bounced around Sanilac, St. Clair and Lapeer counties finding house leagues to stay involved in the sport he loved, as Yale didn’t have a team.
But a year ago, thanks to an expansion of the Port Huron Unified cooperative team, a new option arose, and Sugars has taken full advantage.
“This is great for Yale because we get to come out and have a hockey team, and younger kids can get into the sport of hockey,” said Sugars, a junior defenseman. “They’re able to go further without having to pay all the money for AAA.”
Three players from Yale and six players from St. Clair join the 11 from Port Huron in donning the Big Reds jersey this season. It’s the fourth that Port Huron has collaborated with East China School District – St. Clair and Marine City – and the second it has collaborated with Yale. The collaboration has given players from those schools an opportunity they wouldn’t otherwise have, while saving the Port Huron program.
“I went to a coaching clinic before the season started, and we actually had a roundtable about unified hockey programs,” Port Huron coach Ben Pionk said. “It was kind of interesting, because we all had one common theme. Most of us were all there for survival. That’s why we’re unified. A lot of the teams were in the same boat. Some of the other unified programs, they have like seven schools and you’re getting two kids from each school just to make a team. Honestly, it was all for survival, and that was solely ours. It wasn’t to build a superpower team; it was to make sure we had a team we could even put on the ice.”
Pionk has been at Port Huron for two decades, most of which spent coaching a team solely from his school. But numbers began to dwindle not long ago, threatening the future of the program.
“I can’t remember what year it was, but we had tryouts and I had eight kids standing here,” Pionk said. “I went to our former athletic director and talked to him and said, ‘What do you want us to do here? You really can’t put a program on the ice.’ We actually started the season that way and then we picked up a few more; I think we ended up with 12 that year. We got through the year, and kind of the next year was the same way. You go back four or five years and people weren’t working a lot, so what are you going to do? Are you going to play hockey or pay your bills?”
Not only was it hard to be competitive with so few players, but Pionk was worried about the safety of his players, who were forced to take longer shifts. He said he knew there were players in St. Clair – a school that had a program through the 2012-13 season – so Port Huron became a unified team for the 2016-17 season.
It didn’t happen overnight, but the team has now nearly doubled in size.
“Even after the first year or so of being unified with St. Clair, we still weren’t getting really good numbers,” Pionk said. “We just found that a lot of the older kids down there had been with their teams, and at this point they were established where they were and didn’t want to leave to come play high school hockey. They would love to have played high school hockey but didn’t want to leave at that point. Through Port Huron Minor Hockey’s help, they knew there were a couple kids in Yale who had kind of aged out and weren’t going to have anywhere to play, so we kind of approached their school about it and next thing you know, we had Yale as well. Now, a few years into it everybody knows we’re unified and the kids are coming out. We have 17 skaters and three goalies this year.”
The six players from St. Clair this season make up the biggest group Port Huron Unified has brought in from another school besides Port Huron High. While they may have grown up expecting to one day be Saints, they’re grateful for the opportunity they now have.
“The high school experience is so much fun,” said Duncan McLeod, a junior defenseman from St. Clair. “It’s just fun to play for something – something big.”
While players from out of town are excited about a newer opportunity, those within the program are excited to see their team growing again.
“My freshman year, my sophomore year, we were really struggling on numbers,” Port Huron junior Kevin Schott said. “It was tough having to double shift a lot and pretty much play wherever Coach needed you to play. This year I was really excited to hear that we had a lot of kids coming from St. Clair and Yale – some better skating kids that I knew had played travel. So, I was really super excited to see that we were going to have a full and deep team this year.”
With all the new faces and multiple schools combining to create one team, not a lot of the players had played with one another prior to high school. That hasn’t been an issue, though.
“We all came together real quick, because we all know how to play hockey – we've all been playing hockey for at least four years,” Sugars said. “We all know our positions, got together and figured it out.”
This year’s team has already enjoyed as much success as any of its unified predecessors. The Big Reds opened the season with a pair of wins, eclipsing last year’s win total (one).
“We’re trying to be at least .500 this year,” Sugars said. “I wanted to be the best Yale high school team, but we already did that.”
A flu bug hit the team right before Thanksgiving, which didn’t help during a busy week. But even sitting at 2-3, there’s optimism about the season and the future, as without a senior on the roster, there’s a possibility everyone could come back next year.
“It’s looking positive for the year,” McLeod said. “We have a good team going.”
Paul Costanzo served as a sportswriter at The Port Huron Times Herald from 2006-15, including three years as lead sportswriter, and prior to that as sports editor at the Hillsdale Daily News from 2005-06. He can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Genesee, Lapeer, St. Clair, Sanilac, Huron, Tuscola, Saginaw, Bay, Arenac, Midland and Gladwin counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) Port Huron Unified’s Noah Gunderson (19) is among Port Huron High School students who help make up the program again this winter. (Middle) Duncan McLeod, a St. Clair student, controls the puck. (Photos by Jeremiah May.)