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Holy Ghost Prep’s legendary coach Tony Chapman retires after 45 years

03/13/2023, 6:00pm EDT
By Joseph Santoliquito

By Joseph Santoliquito (@JSantoliquito)
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Tony Chapman, Holy Ghost Prep’s iconic coach, has decided after 45 years to do something with his longtime pal and assistant coach, Bruce Simon, that they promised each other they would do if they had the time — watch more high school basketball.

Chapman will have more time now.

He announced his retirement last week, leaving Holy Ghost Prep as one of only six high school basketball coaches in Pennsylvania history to reach the 900-win plateau, closing his career with an amazing 928-351 record.

In 45 years as the head coach at Holy Ghost Prep, Chapman’s teams have won 23 Bicentennial Athletic League (BAL) titles, nine District One championships, and two Eastern state titles, reaching the PIAA state finals in 1999 and 2004. In January 2019, Chapman, a 1971 Holy Ghost grad, had his uniform No. 20 retired, becoming the first in school history to achieve that honor.


Holy Ghost coach Tony Chapman retired after 45 seasons. (Photo: Courtesy Holy Ghost Prep)

The gym at Firebird Fieldhouse is named after him, the Chapman Arena.

Chapman, 69, belongs on that narrow pantheon of area legendary coaches with Lower Merion’s Gregg Downer, Neumann-Goretti’s Carl Arrigale and Plymouth-Whitemarsh’s Jim Donofrio.

“For more than 40 years, we have been blessed to have Tony Chapman at Holy Ghost Prep,” said Holy Ghost president Gregory J. Geruson, a 1979 HGP grad, in a statement released by the school. “The success that Tony has enjoyed as a coach and the number of young men’s lives, he has impacted is truly remarkable. His commitment to our Spiritan mission, his love of his athletes, and the respect he has earned from so many is a testament to his character and his actions.”

Chapman had been contemplating retirement the last few years. He thought this was the best time.

“Being with my family is right there at the top,” said Chapman, whose first season at Holy Ghost was 1978-79 when he was 24. “My energy level has been down, and just being a little more distant between the kids and myself with my age. It’s not like when I started out, when I could have been their older brother or their father, now I’m their grandfather. So, it is a little different.

“Coaching is part of me, but the decision was not as hard as people may think. When your energy begins to fade, you know it is time. It is time for someone else to do this. Someone younger with a little more energy, who could do it better.”

For decades, no one did it better than Chapman. In 45 years of coaching at Holy Ghost, Chapman had only one losing season. When they were refurbishing the Firebird Fieldhouse 17 years ago, some students passing through the gym noticed a four-foot stretch of faded hardwood in front of the HGP bench. It had eroded through time to a worn sepia tone, darker in contrast to the rest of the hardwood basketball court from Chapman pacing and stomping his heels.

Chapman, who will remain at the school in his role as Holy Ghost Prep’s dean of students, said he did not want to cheat his players and cheat himself. He felt that if he could not fully commit his whole self into coaching, he would step down. The signs came in his waning energy level. It was becoming more of a chore to run practices and coach than the genuine joy he derived from coaching when he began.

“I didn’t feel as in-tuned as I was, and the game has changed, and for a period of a time, I did change,” Chapman said. “The kids changed, too, and they’re still teenaged kids, but because the game changes, the kids change. You reach a point where you have to keep evolving, and evolving, and evolving, you reach a point where you realize, this is the end.

“In the fall, I’d like to help out on the periphery, but once winter comes, I’m staying home. It is funny, because through all these years, I have a good friend, Bruce Simon, who has been an assistant with me for about 35 of my 45 years coaching. We always talked about going to local games that we would never have been able to go to, because we were coaching. We are both retired now. I may see more high school games than when I was coaching. We are both really big basketball fans. That is a major part of it.”

Chapman was very close last year to retiring. But he was talked into another year by both his wife, Jane, and daughter, Katie. No one tried to talk him out of it this time.

“I’m very comfortable with retiring,” Chapman said. “Time will tell if I’ll really miss coaching. If I could just stay a little involved, so it’s not a cold-turkey type of thing, I’ll be fine. I would like to help out on the periphery during a summer league game and talk to the new coach, breaking down the good things and the bad things.

“I will respect whoever winds up being the next coach here, and if the last thing the new coach would want is me involved in any degree, I can totally understand that. If it’s agreeable, I would still like to help. Basketball is a part of my life, that will never change.

“I’ll miss the relationships with the players and coaches. A lot of people put a lot of years in that program. We had committed people, and building those ties and relationships, you become close. I’ll miss that. I’m still at the school and I’ll still see the students, but you don’t know the students overall as you do 15 kids that you’re coaching every day.

“That aspect I will miss, too. The wins and losses are super important when you are young. As you get older, the personal stuff becomes more valuable than the wins and the losses. When I first began this, I didn’t think I would be coaching 45 years. It’s been a blessing.”

The Rest of the PA 900-Win Club

1. The late Renzie Huffman (1,255 victories as the girls’ and boys’ basketball coach at Mercer High School and Clintonville High School).

2. Ron Insinger (1,064 wins and counting at Loyalsock High School, including 98 wins as the girls varsity basketball coach).

3. Speedy Morris (1,035 combined victories at Roman Catholic, Penn Charter, St. Joseph’s Prep, and La Salle University men’s and women’s basketball).

4. Mike Kopp (1,010 girls basketball wins and counting at Allentown Central Catholic and Notre Dame High School in Bethlehem Township).

5. Aaron Straub (notched his 900th win at Elk County Catholic High School on January 16, 2021).

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Joseph Santoliquito is an award-winning sportswriter based in the Philadelphia area who began writing for CoBL in 2021 and is the president of the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be followed on Twitter here.


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