Remembrances: Bill Spaletto a Hoffman Estates' Original Who Left Quite a Legacy
School's First PE Chair, Coach, Passed Away New Year's Day; Palatine's Bobbit a National Champion at South Dakota State; Mundelein Stars Make MVC Impact
Bill Spaletto had some sage advice for Gerardo Pagnani and Roger Kalisiak when they arrived at Hoffman Estates in 1975 to begin their careers in high school education and athletics.
And their success - Pagnani as one of the state’s best soccer coaches and Kalisiak as a highly respected athletic trainer - was a reflection of Spaletto’s influence. Spaletto, who was Hoffman’s first physical education department chairman and a gymnast and coach at Northern Illinois University, passed away on New Year’s Day at age 81. Services were held on January 7.
“He was a great person to be around all the time and he always thought of the kids first,” said Kalisiak, who retired from Hoffman in 2007.
“He was a special, special person,” said Pagnani, who started the boys soccer program at Hoffman. “He was all about the students and all about the kids. The first thing he told me is, ‘You’re here to help kids. That’s what we went into teaching for, on and off the field.’
“I still remember that. He was always trying to help people on and off the field. We’re here for them and that’s what I loved about him.”
Spaletto also coached track, gymnastics and golf at Hoffman before retiring in 1994. Spaletto was a Chicago Public League pole vault champion at Austin on the city’s West Side.
Spaletto coached the pole vaulters at Hoffman. Kalisiak recalled a track meet where Spaletto was true to his word about helping kids even if the methods might have been frowned upon - particularly today - by some administrators.
“It was getting dark and he had brought along one of those Coleman lanterns,” Kalisiak said. “The kids were having a hard time seeing the pole vault box to plant the pole so he fired up the lantern on this gray, early evening. He left it sitting there and set up a little reflector that he built around it.
“It shined right on the box, so when the kids came down the runway they could see the box and where to plant the pole. He would go the extra mile for kids.”
Spaletto was the co-captain of his Austin track team, a member of the National Honor Society and regarded as the outstanding senior in his graduating class of 1959. He specialized in the still rings in gymnastics for NIU Hall of Fame coach Hubie Dunn and spent three years as an assistant gymnastics coach for Bob Ferguson at Conant.
Spaletto returned to NIU as a professor, and was an assistant to Dunn and then head coach in the now-defunct men’s gymnastics program, before going to Hoffman. It was in DeKalb where Kalisiak’s professional life was ultimately altered from taking a gymnastics class taught by Spaletto and working as a student athletic trainer.
Kalisiak received his bachelor’s degree at NIU in 1973 and came back to be an assistant athletic trainer and work on his master’s degree. He got a note that Hoffman, the newest school in District 214 and the Mid-Suburban League, was looking for an athletic trainer and he wrote them a letter suggesting three students who were graduating.
Kalisiak wound up getting called for an interview and was offered the job. He originally figured he would stay at the college level but he told his wife Cathy it was probably worth giving Hoffman a try.
“I went in over the summer and bumped into Bill and said, ‘What are you doing here,’’ Kalisiak said. “He said, ‘I teach here and work here.’
“Bill never said anything but I could tell, I’m sure he saw my name on a list and said we need to interview this person.”
Pagnani, who was born in Italy, emigrated with his parents to Edmonton, Alberta in Canada and eventually landed at Eastern Illinois University to study and play soccer. He had the daunting task of starting a new program in an unfamiliar area but recalled that Spaletto “helped me and said, ‘Go for it and do the best you can.’”
Pagnani was at Hoffman for five years before he moved to Fremd, where his teams won state titles in 1984 and 1997 and finished second in 1993. He continues to carry Spaletto’s influence as an assistant coach for Steve Keller in the boys and girls programs.
“I love teaching and love kids and he told me, ‘The kids in your PE class are like your sons and daughters,’” Pagnani said. “That’s why I call them my soccer sons and soccer daughters. Like the PE sons and PE daughters, there’s a connection where you want them to do well and help them as much as you can.”
Kalisiak said Spaletto exemplified a spirit where Hoffman wasn’t afraid to try new things in its early years such as building a climbing wall or teaching introductory scuba diving classes before the school’s pool was built.
“Bill was a bit of an innovator,” Kalisiak said. “He was a good person and he always kept kids No. 1.”
National Championship Return for Jesse Bobbit
Former Palatine football star Jesse Bobbit couldn’t have timed his return to the South Dakota State University program any better.
Bobbit joined the SDSU staff last February as safeties coach and recruiting coordinator focusing on the Chicago area. Now he’s a national champion after SDSU beat North Dakota State to win the Division I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) championship last Sunday.
Bobbit was a Daily Herald All-Area player at Palatine. At SDSU, he played linebacker and was a team captain and second-team all-Missouri Valley Football Conference selection. Bobbit taught elementary school physical education and was an assistant high school coach for two years in the Omaha, Nebraska area, was a graduate assistant in 2019 at SDSU and then spent two years on the coaching staff at Washington State.
Mundelein Stars Making Missouri Valley Impact
It was a big night Saturday for Drake’s Conor Enright and Southern Illinois’ Scottie Ebube as the redshirt freshmen and former stars and teammates at Mundelein helped their teams to victories in the race atop the Missouri Valley Conference.
Enright came off the bench to score all of his career-high 13 points in the first half as Drake (14-5, 5-3) routed Bradley 86-61 in a matchup of the MVC presesason favorites on ESPNU. Enright went 3-for-5 from 3-point range and had 2 rebounds in 20 minutes. The 6-foot guard has impressed with the energy he has given the Bulldogs and is one of six players to appear in all 19 games (with 3 starts) - averaging 17 minutes, 4.3 points and 2 rebounds.
The 6-10 Ebube made the most of his 5 minutes in SIU’s 69-57 win over Illinois State with 7 points and 3 rebounds. His 3-point play off a miss just before the intermission buzzer cut the deficit in half as the Salukis (14-5, 6-2) continued their trend as a second-half team that included a comeback earlier in the week at Indiana State (13-5, 6-1). Ebube had 9 points and 6 rebounds in a season-opening win over Little Rock but a hand injury kept him out nearly two months. His first game back was against Drake and Enright on Jan. 4.
Indiana State has a half-game lead on SIU and Belmont in the MVC. Drake and Bradley are in a four-way tie for third with Murray State and Northern Iowa. Enright and Ebube will see each other again Feb. 11 when SIU visits Drake.
Maxing Out Last Week With Lakers
Former Rolling Meadows star Max Christie’s rookie year with the Los Angeles Lakers took a turn for the better last week when he made his first two starts against Denver and Dallas.
Dan Woike, a Hersey grad who covers the Lakers and NBA for the Los Angeles Times, wrote that Christie found out he was starting against Denver about 40 minutes before tipoff and texted his mom, “Catch me in the starting lineup.”
It was a good catch as Christie scored 14 points on 6-for-8 shooting and had 3 rebounds in 26 minutes. He had 7 points on 3-for-6 shooting and 5 rebounds in 29 minutes against Dallas.
Woike wrote, “Since the Lakers have hit their biggest stretch of injury problems, players like Christie (and others) have stepped into new roles and performed well.”
Cam Christie, Eidle Among Illinois McDonald’s All-American Nominees
Rolling Meadows and Hersey have another big-time hoops connection with Cam Christie and Katy Eidle among the 27 players from Illinois who were nominated for the McDonald’s All-American Games on March 28 in Houston. The list will be cut to 24 boys and 24 girls on January 24.
Meadows’ Christie, who is headed to Minnesota, is one of 11 boys nominees. The Michigan-bound Eidle is part of a girls group that includes Big Ten recruits in Carmel Catholic’s Jordan Wood (Michigan State), Libertyville’s Emily Fisher (Maryland) and Benet’s Lenee Beaumont (Indiana).
Jaguars Kicker Experienced IHSA Playoff Heroics
Riley Patterson’s 36-yard field goal to cap Jacksonville’s incredible 31-30 playoff comeback Saturday night over the LA Chargers wasn’t the first experience with postseason heroics for the 2017 Edwardsville High School grad. According to the Edwardsville Intelligencer, Patterson also kicked a 27-yard field goal in overtime to give Edwardsville a 23-20 win over Oak Park-River Forest in the first round of the Class 8A playoffs in 2016.
Patterson is 30-for-35 on field goals with a long of 49 yards for the Jaguars. They picked him up a day after he was released by Detroit in late August. Patterson was 13-for-14 on field goals and made all 16 of his extra points as a rookie with Lions in 2021.