Stan Wegrzynowicz remembers the disappointment he felt when he didn’t make the De La Salle basketball team.
The Christian Brother who conducted the tryouts had posted the names of those who did on his office door.
“My name wasn’t on the list,” said Wegrzynowicz. “He came walking by. I asked him why. ‘Because you’re not good enough,’” the Brother said.
“I told him: ‘But that’s why I tried out: to learn.’”
That episode sparked a resolve in Wegrzynowicz for the rest of his life: to learn to be good enough at whatever he tried.
He was good enough in a nearly two-decade coaching career in the Catholic High School League to merit induction into the CHSL’s Hall of Fame in 1978, and after his coaching days to help turn around one of Metro Detroit’s popular social welfare organizations on the brink of financial disaster into solvency.
Wegrzynowicz graduated from De La Salle — then situated on the edge of the landing strip at Detroit City Airport — in 1954, where he ran track and cross country and was an All-City football selection at right guard and linebacker, though a mere 5-feet-8 and 134 pounds.
He aspired to play football for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, but thought better of it standing in the shadow of athletes appearing twice his size and opted for track and cross country, while earning an accounting degree.
For the next 15 years, Wegrzynowicz coached football, basketball and track at a handful of Catholic high schools, most of which have disappeared from the landscape: De La Salle (since relocated to Warren), St. Joseph’s, Cathedral, Harper Woods Notre Dame and, the last nine years until 1973, at Holy Redeemer, “where I felt the most comfortable.”
He also coached at Wayne State, three years as assistant football coach and seven years as assistant track coach.
“I knew I didn’t know enough about the basic principles of coaching, about how to find out what the kids could do, so I was willing to ask questions. It became my passion,” Wegrzynowicz said.
The St. Joseph’s football team practiced at Belle Isle. “I’d see this guy out there who was pretty good kicking a football. So I asked him to teach my kids,” he said. The same went for his track and basketball squads; asking for help was his M.O.
“I was learning as I went along,” said Wegrzynowicz, with both he and his athletes gaining more knowledge and self-confidence.
To supplement his coaching and teaching income, Wegrzynowicz spent six years running the summer youth camps for the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. He eventually became director of the society’s store operations, a position he held until resigning in 1993.
The two-fold challenge facing him was declining numbers at the camps — dwindling from an average of 400 kids in the camps’ heydays of the ‘70s and ‘80s to an average of 75-80 in recent years — and the SVdP stores “who were just getting by. When I came there, we had no money in the bank.”
“Vincentians are wonderful people who help those in need, but they are not money raisers,” Wegrzynowicz said. “There was a need for a bigger vision to realize the Society’s potential.”
So, he employed the same learning strategies he did in coaching.
“It took time, but I started asking questions, about why we were doing things the way we did. Isn’t there a better way? So I talked to the Salvation Army, to the Volunteers of America, and asked them about how they ran their groups,” Wegrzynowicz said.
What he heard was: run it like a business.
Wegrzynowicz managed the stores under what he calls the “inspired leadership” of individuals such as the late Ray Bierman, the UAW negotiator for Ford Motor, and other enthusiastic members of the board of directors. They “righted the ship” through restructuring the Society’s internal operations.
Now 78, Wegrzynowicz can reflect on his lifetime of service: “Yes, I was good enough,” he concluded.
Don Horkey is a freelance writer.
