Kyle has been a part of St. Ignatius as an English teacher and coach for 40 years. While he has had great success -- 10 state titles and three national titles over 29 seasons -- that's not what defines him.
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Gus Chan, The Plain DealerChuck Kyle looms large at St. Ignatius High School in Cleveland, where he has led the football team to 10 Division I state titles. The team is playing for its 11th tonight.CLEVELAND, Ohio — The English teacher in St. Ignatius High School football coach Chuck Kyle emerged when he spoke to his team at the start of the week. The Wildcats (12-2) were preparing to face Pickerington Central (11-2) tonight at 7 p.m. at Canton's Fawcett Stadium for the Division I state title.
"You are writing a wonderful story," he said. "So far, you've written 14 chapters, one for each week's game. People have loved to read it, and I know you have loved to write it. But how will the last chapter be written? That's up to you."
But having spent a long time at St. Ignatius -- 40 years as a teacher and assistant or head coach -- Kyle, 61, has written his own story that goes far beyond 10 state titles, three national titles and his 289-67-1 career record over 29 seasons.
Here are a few chapters from behind the scenes:
A humble guy
Chuck Kyle demands precision on the field, but his office is a mess.
T-shirts are piled in one corner, shoes and socks in another. His desk is stacked with VCR game tapes. There's a pack of papers in another corner, a broken pole vault pole against the wall.
Yes, there is a bronzed football on a tee -- for his 250th career victory -- at one end of his desk, but it's nearly lost in a sea of scouting reports and even more VCR tapes. It looks as if he's still moving in or about to begin packing up and moving out.
Former Plain Dealer high school writer and longtime friend Eddie Dwyer said of Kyle: "I've never seen a more successful coach with a less elaborate office. He really is a humble guy."
'It seems like a large closet. There are no vanity pictures or plaques on the walls. It looks like a room shared by three graduate assistants in a small college athletic department.
Dwyer admits, "It's not real neat."
Kyle coaches football and track. He picks up shirts, shoes and shorts left over in the locker room and keeps them -- seemingly for decades.
"I know how it looks," said Kyle. "But I know where everything is."
It appears he does, at least based on the expert testimony of his daughter, Maureen.
"I know there are boxes in that office that he has never unpacked," she said. "But he can find whatever he needs. At home, we call his stack of envelopes with plays written on them, and papers to be graded and other stuff: the 'Paper Blob.' "
His wife, Pat, is an art teacher at St. Ignatius.
When it comes to his office, she said with a laugh, "I know better than to go in there."
Not just a football school
The Wildcats have won 10 state titles under Chuck Kyle since 1988. The most recent was 2008. But last season, their state record of 22 consecutive playoff appearances dating back to 1988 ended.
"We were disappointed," he said. "It wasn't like the end of the world. The boys tried; I can't fault them. I do think it was something the team this season wanted to make sure didn't happen again."
Kyle seems a bit surprised to be in the final.
"I always think my teams can get here," he said. "But I don't recall anyone picking us to win a state title this year. When I saw the draw [for the playoffs] and week after week, we faced teams like Boardman, St. Ed's, Mentor and Toledo Whitmer -- this has not been an easy road."
But they are still on it.
"Of course we want to win a title," he said. "But it's not about always winning a state title. We are not just a football school."
Kyle then talked about the traditional Thanksgiving morning gathering whenever the team is still alive in the playoffs. This year, more than 300 former students and players joined the friends and parents of the current team at the practice field. They stood in the cold, eating egg sandwiches and donuts, sipping coffee -- all free.
To Kyle, that's what the school is about . . .
The past and the present . . .
Players from title teams and teams that didn't win championships . . .
Those who started and those who rarely left the bench . . .
Those who played in college and those who didn't . . .
All together feeling part of one team, one school.
"It's his favorite day of the year," said Dwyer. "I also know that he liked it when the kids sang 'Happy Birthday' to him [on Nov. 22] while standing in the rain at practice."
Not a bad dancer
Chuck and Pat Kyle have four children -- three daughters and one son.
The Kyle file
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PD Here is a look at St. Ignatius' results in football state championship games under coach Chuck Kyle. Entering tonight's final against Pickerington Central, the Wildcats have won 10 titles in 11 appearances.
1988 W, 10-7 vs. Cincinnati Princeton
1989 W, 34-28 vs. Cincinnati Archbishop Moeller
1991 W, 24-21 vs. Centerville
1992 W, 24-14 vs. Cincinnati St. Xavier
1993 W, 38-20 vs. Cincinnati Archbishop Moeller
1994 W, 20-3 vs. Westerville South
1995 W, 41-21 vs. Brunswick
1996 L, 38-30 vs. Lima
1999 W, 24-10 vs. Huber Heights Wayne
2001 W, 37-6 vs. Cincinnati St. Xavier
2008 W, 28-20 vs. Cincinnati Elder
"My father grew up with all boys [the youngest of four sons]," said Maureen. "We were a new experience for him."
How did he handle it?
"He'll kill me if I told you this," she said.
Please, tell it.
"We used to play with Ken and Barbie dolls," she said. "You can imagine all the dolls with three girls. He'd be Ken, and he'd come to the barbecue that we pretended to have."
He played with their stuffed animals. He made up bedtime stories with the animals acting out parts. He sometimes dressed the animals in the girls' pajamas and tucked them under the covers to await his daughters.
"He'd drive my mother nuts because he wouldn't get home after practice until it was right before we were supposed to go to bed," said Maureen. "Then he'd get us all riled up just as my mom wanted us to go to sleep."
Pat Kyle said her daughter, Anne, and Chuck won a daughter/father dance contest at Magnificat High in Anne's senior year.
"He loves to dance at weddings," Pat Kyle said.
Keeping things simple at home
Chuck and Pat Kyle have been married for 36 years. But they have known each other since they were freshmen in high school. He was at St. Ignatius, she was at Nazareth High. They met at a dance at Padua.
Kyle's nickname is Chico, after his boyhood hero Chico Carrasquel, who played shortstop for the Chicago White Sox and Cleveland Indians in the '50s.
"I was told his name by a friend," said Pat Kyle. "I asked, 'What kind of name is Chico Kyle?' He was my first date."
And her last?
"I said he was my first," she said. "We stayed friends for a long time. By our senior years in college, we were dating and getting serious. He was already coaching and student teaching at St. Ignatius. So I knew what I was getting into."
Pat Kyle believes she has missed about 10 games since her husband has been a head coach.
Their oldest child is Dan, a junior high English teacher in San Francisco.
Next is Maureen, a reporter at WKYC Channel 3.
Anne is a studio artist in New York City.
Bridget is a production assistant on the "Family Guy" TV show, and she lives in Los Angeles.
The Kyles didn't take long vacations when the children were young, and now most of their travel is to visit their children.
They have lived in the same Westlake home for 26 years. Pat began teaching art part time at St. Ignatius, and moved to full time in 2002. But no one gets rich teaching at Catholic high schools.
What's the best gift she ever received from her husband?
"A pair of toaster tongs," said Pat Kyle.
What?
"He really did give me toaster tongs," she said, laughing. "But probably the best is when he decided to remodel our kitchen a few years ago."
These are practical people.
"We eat healthy at home," said Pat Kyle. "My son says we don't eat food, we just eat ingredients."
Precision in English, too
This semester, Kyle teaches two classes of freshman English and two for sophomores. He has a fifth class next semester -- senior English. He also fills in as a study hall and cafeteria monitor.
Does he ever feel old?
"No," said Kyle. "I get tired a little faster, but that's it."
Then he paused, taking the question in a different direction.
"We do live in a world that likes to take shortcuts," he said. "I don't like shortcuts."
Then Kyle discussed the beauty of a "clear, grammatically accurate sentence." He talked about "knowing what makes up a paragraph." He talked about how we live in a world where texting and tweeting try to devalue the ability to write.
He tells his students: "You can be different. You can write good, thoughtful sentences and papers. You can do more than just grunt when someone asks you a question. You can even write a grammatical text message!"
He says it with a smile, but the message is clear -- words matter. There is a right way to write.
He'll ask his students, "Is your goal just to hand in a paper, or hand in a good paper?"
He has them spend the week planning a paper, from research to notes to outline to a rough draft to the final product. He admits it's like preparing his football team for a game that week -- one day, one step at a time.
Happy where he's at
Being an English teacher/coach, Kyle said he "feels like a dying breed," especially as he's spent his entire professional life at the same school doing the same jobs.
Most coaches don't teach English. In many schools, they don't teach at all or they teach elsewhere. Budget cuts have changed the educational landscape, making it harder to find teachers who want to or can coach.
"Teaching is just as important as coaching to my father," said Maureen. "He loves Shakespeare and Chaucer. He'll quote them a lot. We used to watch videos of Shakespeare plays, and my father would stop them at certain scenes and talk about what was happening. It was as if he was going over a game film."
"If he hears a line from Shakespeare, he can usually tell you from what play, what act and who said it," said Pat Kyle.
Chuck Kyle was an English major at John Carroll. He had played at St. Ignatius, and his goal was to return to the school as an English teacher and coach. While he was a 1,000-yard rusher as a senior for the Wildcats, he was injured at John Carroll and was already helping coach at St. Ignatius while still a junior in college.
"When I was about 9, I remember hearing my father talking about a college job somewhere," said Maureen Kyle. "He saw that I was scared. I didn't want to move. He said we weren't going anywhere. That was the only time that I even heard him talk about another job. He is very content."
Dwyer said about 20 years ago, Ohio State and Notre Dame had an interest in Kyle as an assistant, but he didn't seriously consider the offers.
"This school has been his life; he's never worked anywhere else," said Dwyer, who writes for the St. Ignatius website.
Or as Kyle said: "This is all I ever really wanted to do. It really is like a small college."
Player rankings rankle him
Kyle said one of the hardest parts of his job is telling some outstanding players and their parents there will be no major-college football scholarship.
"I've had great high school players who just aren't big enough for what the recruiters want," he said. "It's not their fault. And they see kids whose stats don't compare to theirs being recruited because that kid is faster or taller. It's not always fair, but that's how it works."
Kyle wishes more people realized, "There are far more scholarships available for academics than football."
He said some of his players who did receive scholarships from major colleges tell him, "It's become a job, not fun like high school." He says others who play Division III football seem to "really do it for the love of the game."
He hates national recruiting analysts' system of putting stars next to the name of a high school player to rank them.
"I've had kids go from zero stars to three stars in a week because a college offered them a scholarship," said Kyle. "They don't get to know the kids. They don't see them practice. They may watch a game and some tape on a kid -- but they don't know him. Yet, they put stars next to his name."
How much longer?
Kyle seems in no rush to retire.
"I still get anxious and uncomfortable a few hours before games," he said. "I wish I could go tailgate and enjoy it with the fans, let some other coach do it. But the moment the game begins, I'm relaxed."
The nerves and the heart pounding a little faster before kickoff are indications the games still matter.
"I'm definitely not bored by coaching or teaching," he said.
So how long will Kyle continue to coach? No one in his family knows.
Maureen interviewed her father for WKYC this week and asked him that question. He answered by saying that as long as he has the energy and the passion, he'll stay at it.
"It's hard for me to imagine him not coaching," said Pat Kyle. "It's so much of who he is."
To reach Terry Pluto: terrypluto2003@yahoo.com, 216-999-4674
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