City of Basketball Love

Owen McCue (@Owen_McCue)
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Keith Mondillo really didn’t need another coaching gig.

Gwynedd Mercy’s women’s head coach since 1995 (and athletic director since 1998) was plenty busy. He was content just keeping the book for his son Chase’s travel hoops teams in the offseason. 

Then about nine years ago, his wife, Jennifer, suggested he might as well just coach that team too — and for the last nine years he’s been Chase’s biggest fan during the winters and head coach during the summers.

The Mondillos’ tenure as player-coach is coming to a close later this month. Chase, a rising senior at Pope John Paul II, and his Eastern PA Elite 17U teammates are in their final AAU season.

“It’s my wife’s fault that I’m coaching him,” Keith said, “because in third grade she was like, ‘Why don’t you just coach his travel team? You do the book at every travel game?’ So I started coaching his travel team in fourth grade and then AAU started.”

After coaching Chase’s ICBA youth travel team in third grade, Keith reached out to Mark Hermann, whose son Alex, now starring at Methacton, played against Chase and his teammates. The two decided to put an AAU team together.

There is a good chunk of the original group and those from the early years still around, including Chase and PJP teammates Caleb Zavertnik and Dom DeMito, Alex and Methacton teammates Anthony Daddazzio and Preston Hull as well as Phoenixville’s Max Lebisky and Malvern Prep’s Tyler Kenney.

“We just feed off of each other,” Chase said. “And we’re not afraid to get on each other either. We’ve been playing with each other since fourth grade. We’ll yell at each other, tell them what’s wrong. It’s tough love.”

The Eastern PA Elite group also includes Boyertown’s Brent Rath and Octorara’s Thomas Falls. Kenney and Falls are the only non-Pioneer Athletic Conference players on the squad. There’s certainly some trash talk during the high school season, particularly against Frontier rivals Pope John Paul II and Phoenixville, who face off twice a year.

It’s a group local enough that they played 3-on-3 and 4-on-4 pick-up games on the Mondillo’s backyard court during COVID. 

They play unselfishly and connected. The group advanced to the 17U Gold bracket at the Hoop Group’s AC Jam Fest and claimed the 17U Silver championship at the Summer Jam Fest in Manheim to complete an impressive  8-1 week.

“There was no master plan. It was just something that developed,” Keith said. “We’re unique where all our kids are from the same neighborhood. It’s kind of fun when we play against teams that  are from a larger area or they have a bigger organization.”

“We have one press break and one inbounds play and they just kind of feed off each other,” Keith added.“If one kid doesn’t play well, there’s two or three kids that pick them up.”

Keith has his own team to coach during the winter, but he said he is able to watch most of Chase’s games at PJP. He can schedule practices around PJP’s schedule and had just a few conflicts this past season when their teams played on the same day in different locations. (Two years ago both he and Gwynedd men’s coach John Baron were often in the stands at Golden Panthers games watching their sons play)

He saves his coaching, however, for the summer, describing himself as the dad who sits in the stands and doesn’t say a word.

“I know when I’m coaching in college, I can’t hear anyone from the stands,” Keith said. “He’s not gonna hear me if I’m screaming or yelling. That’s (PJP coach) Brendan (Stanton)’s responsibility at that point. As a coach after 30 years of coaching, I’ve realized you have to hand them off and I let their coach do their job.”

Chase noted there’s plenty of instruction waiting for him when he gets back to the house.

“Oh I don’t hear the end of it … well when I get home,” Chase said.

Chase is unsure what his future plans are but he’s still interested in playing college hoops somewhere, noting Moravian as a school he’s talked to. He averaged 6.7 ppg and knocked down 27 threes for the Golden Panthers last season.

His college coach father, who won a District 1 title at Archbishop Kennedy High School and captained the Arcadia men’s basketball team, sees him as a player who could certainly help a program after steadily improving over his career. 

“He’s definitely gotten physically stronger. He’s definitely stronger than I was as a player when I was his age,” Keith said. “He does everything really well. He handles the ball really well against pressure. He rebounds well. He reached a lot today, which I wasn’t happy about, but just like all these other kids, they’ve all grown. 

“I get on him, he probably thinks more than anyone else but I really don’t. I think I treat all of them equally. He’s a complete player. He can handle, he can shoot and he can defend and he’s a team player. His problem is he’s too unselfish — and I’m talking as his dad.  He’ll give up a 12, 13-footer for a kid who has a layup. I’m like, ‘Why didn’t you shoot that?’ and he’s like, ‘Dad, we got a layup.’”

“Two points is two points, and whatever I can do to win, you gotta do what you can,” Chase added.

Chase tore a ligament in his foot during one of PJP’s open gyms this spring that put him in a boot for two and a half weeks. The Golden Panthers games at Philly Live were his first return to the court after the injury.

He said he is finally starting to feel like himself out on the court physically, making the right reads, playing tough defense and hitting shots when he finds himself open.

“Mostly my jump shot,” Chase said of the part of the game he’s working on the most. “There’s always room to improve and stuff. Defensively, I think just getting stronger helped with that. I had an injury during the year. I’m still recovering from that but playing wise I’ve obviously gotten a lot back into my game.”

Chase is closing in on his final time playing for his dad after nine summers. Though he knows the coaching won’t fully end when he returns to PJP to finish out his senior season and possibly play at the next level, it’s an experience he will certainly miss.

“It obviously still hasn’t hit yet,” Chase said. “I feel like it’s gonna hit when we’re finally done. Him coaching me since I was little, it’s obviously going to feel weird when the season’s done and it’s back to high school ball. He’s a good coach. He does his thing well. He’s also a good dad.”