By: Jonathan Szczepaniak | Rochester Post | Published July 31, 2024
ROCHESTER HILLS — Trips to Brandon Township Public Library have become a frequent adventure for Rochester Hills native Fran Scislowicz and his 2-year-old grandson, Stanley.
It’s a new chapter in Scislowicz’s life, but he’s still utilizing the same qualities that made him a legendary coach at Rochester Adams over the course of 37 years.
Scislowicz, a grandfather to three children, is someone that coaches, faculty members, students and players could always count on, trust and have comfort in knowing they were cared for and thought of.
“He was someone I could lean on and that would tell me what I needed to know and not what I needed to hear,” said longtime Adams Athletic Director Jason Rapp, who retired after 24 years at the position in 2020. “He was very supportive of all the programs at Adams. He wasn’t in his own silo. He was a team player all around. He was a source for other coaches because he was established.”
Synonymous with the culture he brought to Adams, Scislowicz has now transferred his attention and passion to his family after hanging it up with the softball program following 37 successful seasons with the Highlanders, compiling a 803-487 record.
Scislowicz’s career achievements as the frontman in the Highlanders dugout is extensive when counting up all the winning seasons and earning a spot in the Michigan High School Softball Coaches Association Hall of Fame, but statistical measurements of success were never what Scislowicz set his focus on.
“When people ask him how his team was, his response was always, ‘Well, they’re good right now, but we’ll see how they are in about 20 years,’” Ryan Scislowicz, Fran’s oldest son, said. “That’s why he has so many longtime relationships with so many of the people he’s coached over the years and talks to them well into the future.”
Long before he was the man everyone at Adams would come to know — whether it was from coaching football for a couple years, boys basketball, girls basketball for 23 years (1991-2014), or softball, Scislowicz was growing accustomed to figuring out any challenge life seemed to hand him.
A 1975 graduate of Madison Heights Bishop Foley, Scislowicz was a three-sport athlete at Foley in baseball, basketball and football — all attached to his name having grown up around two older and athletic brothers, Ken and Stanley.
Scislowicz had his brother Ken as both a baseball coach and health teacher at Foley while also being under the tutelage of Foley head football coach Walt Wyniemko, who Scislowicz said helped him find the right course in life.
“He (Wyniemko) really kind of took me under his wing,” Scislowicz said. “I came from a little bit of a broken background, and coach presented two parts of the road — the good road and the dangerous road. He sent me on the good road more than once. I would say that’s where my love of wanting to serve, teach and help through coaching came from, because I really appreciated what he gave me.”
Scislowicz would then treat his college years like a modern day athlete, entering the transfer portal any chance he had.
His first stop was Albion College to play football and baseball. Next was Macomb Community College for sophomore year. He threw on the Wayne State University hat for junior year, and finally closed the college chapter at the University of Detroit Mercy.
“I don’t know if there’s too many people who went to four schools and graduated in four years, but that’s what happened to me,” Scislowicz said.
Similar to his college journey, Scislowicz’s fast-paced lifestyle slammed the accelerator as the 22-year-old was hired as the athletic director; the baseball, football and basketball coach; and physical education teacher at St. Hugo of the Hills Catholic School in Bloomfield Hills.
“When I got to Hugo, I was hired a week before the football season, maybe Aug. 1, and the football season started on the 8th,” Scislowicz said. “I remember Sister Marian and Sister Margaret hired me on the spot and said, ‘Here’s your keys,’ and there had to be 15 keys on that ring.”
As he played a never-ending guessing game for each key, Scislowicz settled in for seven years at St. Hugo, working around 70 hours a week. Scislowicz said he gives his wife, Nancy, who will be celebrating their 40th anniversary in September, all the thanks he can offer for her patience.
“There was only one superior Coach of the Year, and that was my wife,” Scislowicz said. “For her to allow me to be gone each day, raising three kids that were born in the early 90s when we had them. Her supportiveness and her getting on me, and when you go into marriage you decide who’s going to be the home support and who’s going to be the wage-earner, and Nancy was just awesome.”
If he could handle it at the middle school level, then why not at the high school level? Rochester Adams took full advantage of Scislowicz’s chaotic, yet impressive work ethic when he was hired in 1987.
Scislowicz joined the varsity basketball and football coaching staff in ‘87 before being approached in ‘88 about the head coaching position for softball.
“They actually called me and said, ‘Hey, Mr. Scislowicz, you’re the new softball coach,’” Scislowicz said. “I kind of said, ‘Do you know who you’re talking to? I never coached girls and I’ve never coached softball.’ They said, ‘Well, we remember you offering to help us, and we’d really like for you to help us and pinch-hit for us with softball.’”
Having never coached softball, or girls sports, for that matter, Scislowicz, who was umpiring high school and college softball at the time, transitioned to the best of his ability.
But the softball players who also played girls basketball grew eager to have him on the court, and Scislowicz was again called upon to embark on a coaching journey in uncharted land.
“Once again the same story that never flies, I guess. I never coached girls basketball,” Scislowicz said. “They said, ‘Oh, you’re coaching boys basketball. You can do it.’”
Winning 24-straight games in his first season and reaching the quarterfinals, it’s no secret as to why Scislowicz ended up spending more than two decades on the sidelines.
“Those are some of the girls that are in their 50s now, and I’ve had the chance to go to their weddings and they celebrated with some of my kids and now with my grandkids,” Scislowicz said. “A couple of them came this spring and came into the dugout and wanted to say hi. Those were lifelong memories that when I was teaching that I would tell them that we won’t remember the wins and losses, but your teammates and your coaches, and lo and behold that worked.”
She may not have been part of the 1990s group that saw a Final Four basketball appearance in ‘93 and a semifinals appearance for softball in ‘94, but Scislowicz’s daughter Claire D’Addario, the youngest out of his three children, will always hold the memories of her time at Adams special because of her father.
A 2011 Adams graduate and three-year varsity starter at first base, D’Addario said she cherishes the time she was able to share the field with her father.
“I feel like on the field, I felt more pressure. I know he wasn’t putting it on me, but I felt like I needed to perform really well,” D’Addario said. “It was awesome. Looking back now, I wish I would’ve cherished it more instead of thinking about how everyone saw me as the coach’s daughter.”
Now an adult and no longer carrying the last name after getting married, D’Addario has realized the “Scislowicz” last name carries less pressure and more perks because of her father.
“We seriously can’t go to the grocery store or McDonald’s or anything without someone knowing him,” D’Addario said. “My husband and I just went to a pediatrician a few weeks ago for our newborn daughter, and the lady weighing our daughter was like, ‘You look really familiar. What’s your last name?’ I told her, and then she asked me what my maiden name was, and she was like, ‘Yep, that’s it. You’re coach’s daughter. I have him on Facebook and I see you all over his Facebook.’ It was almost like being a celebrity in the community and it still feels like it when I go back.”
But, courtesy of D’Addario and her husband having their first child, Adelynn, in May and his middle son, Kyle, and his wife having Stanley and a newborn girl, Della, also in May, Scislowicz felt it was finally time to hang up the clipboard and transition into life as a grandparent.
“My philosophy in coaching was always faith, family, and then my sport,” Scislowicz said. “With my grandchildren, I had no idea how God could wire a grandfather’s heart unbelievably different than anything else I’ve achieved or did in my life. That’s how special, between Stan and my two granddaughters, it is. It’s just so unique.”
Stanley, who is named after Scislowicz’s older brother who died in a hit-and-run accident at the age of 21, already has an unspoken bond with his grandfather after having a play named after him for the seventh grade Van Hoosen basketball team this year under the direction of Scislowicz, which went 11-0.
Kyle Scislowicz said it was a moment he’ll never forget when he called his father and told him his son’s name.
“When we had Stanley, I got to call my dad and let him know,” Kyle Scislowicz said. “Safe to say there were some waterworks — he was crying a little bit. He was not expecting it at all, which is the best part.”
Stanley isn’t quite old enough yet to play T-ball, which kicks off at age 3, but he’s already grown accustomed to the game with a smooth swing.
On top of having the impressive ability to play baseball already, Kyle Scislowicz said his son’s baseball IQ is off-the-charts.
“It was funny. He saw one of my old Tigers shirts in our laundry basket, just the Old English D,” Kyle Scislowicz said. “Just the orange English D was on the shirt at the other side of the room, and he goes, ‘baseball.’ I went over there and was thinking to myself how there’s no baseball over there, but then I realized he was already coordinating the Old English D with the Tigers as a baseball team.”
While Fran Scislowicz enjoys retirement before inevitably coaching Stanley’s T-ball team, longtime Adams assistant coach Toni Bisaro will lead the charge as the newly appointed Adams head softball coach alongside longtime pitching coach Bob Kolvedt, who both expect it to be an odd spring season without their leading man.
“He just taught those kids so much with so many life lessons,” Bisaro said. “Just being with him was so inspirational and just everything that I’ve learned and picked up from him. He’s not only a great coach, but he’s also a great human being. It’s going to be lonely. I was basically beside him there. There’s a cool picture there from one of our parents who took all of our pictures, and she was amazing. She probably has 5,000 pictures, but she took a picture of me standing over Fran and that just depicts how close we are as not only coaches, but as friends. It’s going to be different. It’s going to be very, very different.”
“He missed a doubleheader this year and it was just Toni and I, and it was a little weird,” Kolvedt said. “We always bounced stuff off one another, and now he just won’t be there to do that.”
You can’t keep a good coach down, especially when you have the strength of passion and love for coaching as sports that Scislowicz does, but he said it’s time for his grandkids to have the opportunity to fully lean on him.
The list of players and students positively impacted by Scislowicz is immeasurable — whether it was on the field, on the court or in the classroom — but Scislowicz said he can’t thank all of them enough for what they’ve done for him.
“I think they had way more on me,” Scislowicz said. “Their kindness, their acceptability, their receptiveness to tough coaching and changing on the fly and being flexible. There’s so many things that they gave me that I don’t think they realize the love and kindness I felt each and every season. I think the longevity of being at Adams for both sports was because I was being filled up. Everybody thought I was giving, giving, giving there, but I was receiving probably as much, if not more to keep wanting to come back each season.”