http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/hschool/2007/08/28/2007-08-28_proud_papa.html
Proud Papa
Colon scales back at South Bronx
BY IAN BEGLEY
Tuesday, August 28th 2007, 12:59 PM
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Frank Colon has coached at South Bronx for the past 29 years, but will scale back his duties this fall. Colon will coach baseball, but won’t be on sideline for soccer and basketball.
Frank Colon has coached at South Bronx for the past 29 years, but will scale back his duties this fall. Colon will coach baseball, but won’t be on sideline for soccer and basketball.
Frank Colon spent last week basking in the sun at an all-inclusive resort in the Dominican Republic. He sat poolside, he said, and had people waiting at his beck and call at a five-star hotel on the beach in Punta Cana.
Still, the longtime South Bronx HS dean couldn’t completely enjoy himself.
“I had people serving me food, waiting on me all day,” Colon said. “I lived like a king for one week, but it wasn’t a good feeling.”
The “good feeling” Colon was missing in the Dominican will come on Thursday, when he enters the halls of South Bronx HS Campus. Colon, who turns 60 on Sept. 9, felt uncomfortable being coddled in the Caribbean because he has spent the last three decades of his life trying to serve students.
Colon has been at the school on St. Ann’s Avenue since 1978, a year after it opened, He launched the soccer and boys and girls basketball programs, as well as the softball program, and he’s coached the baseball team for the past 20 years. This year, though, Colon has decided to scale it back. Colon is giving up his duties as soccer and basketball coach, though he will continue to coach baseball next spring.
Colon was a physical education teacher for 26 years before he became dean four years ago. As the face of the Phoenix, he has seen the school’s student body evolve from a predominantly Latino composition to its current multi-cultural mix. He has survived the hiring and firing of a dozen principals and seen funds come and go, but there’s one constant that has kept Colon feeling good every fall: the students.
“If I can touch these kids’ lives, I’m making a difference,” Colon said. “That’s what keeps me going: the opportunity to make a difference.”
Students at South Bronx call Colon Papa, which translates in Spanish to Pope. Colon may enjoy an elevated status, but those who know him say he’s also down to earth.
“He doesn’t wear a tie and he doesn’t try to separate himself from the kids,” said South Bronx soccer coach Chris White. “He has an incredible way of communicating with these kids … the bottom line is, he’s a father figure to a lot of them.”
One reason Colon has survived in South Bronx for the past 30 years, according to White and Phoenix basketball coach Douglas Porter, is his ability to relate to students.
“He grew up in the Bronx and he didn’t have an easy upbringing,” Porter said. “He overcame a lot of obstacles – the same obstacles that our students face. So kids look up to him and think, ‘You can come from difficult and modest means and still do well in life.’”
But Colon puts it in simpler terms: “My job is to keep that school cool. I’ve been at it for 30 years, and as you get older, you get calmer. I’m gonna be 60 years old and it took a long time for me to get my act together, but now I have that wisdom.”
When Colon speaks to a troubled student or ballplayer, he speaks from experience. He can talk to them about their neighborhoods because he knows them well.
Colon split his childhood between the McKinley Houses and Forest Houses, both on Tinton Avenue and less than a mile from South Bronx HS.
Colon graduated from Taft HS and earned a baseball scholarship to Manhattan College. He graduated from Manhattan in 1969, and joined the National Guard. He worked for Liberty Mutual as a claims adjuster for a few years after college, but decided to switch careers and was hired as a teacher’s assistant at Jane Addams HS in 1977. He took courses Baruch College in the summer of 1978 to earn certification as a teacher and was hired at South Bronx that fall. Colon volunteered to coach the soccer and basketball teams that fall. In 1988, he took over the baseball team and later coached his son Frank Jr., who went on to play at Stony Brook University and in the minor leagues.
Colon has sent scores of players to college on scholarships in the three sports, and coached Yankees minor league pitcher Humberto Sanchez. He’s also had to attend the funerals of a few students, including Manny Pichardo, in 1990, after his starting left fielder was shot after an argument in school.
“There’s a lot of stuff that happens out here,” Colon said. “And we got used to living that crazy life and thinking it’s normal.”
But Colon says the school is safer than it has been in the past, partly because South Bronx was divided into a campus consisting of Urban Assembly School for Careers in Sports, Mott Haven and New Explorers. Colon could have retired five years ago, but said he doesn’t see that day coming anytime soon.
“Frank is an institution at South Bronx,” athletic director Lou Schlanger, who has worked with Colon for more than 20 years, said earlier this year. “He’s done incredible things here.”
For the first time in 30 years, he won’t be on the sideline when the soccer team opens at home against Kennedy on Sept. 10. Chris White will take over as head coach (Colon and White served as co-coaches the past two seasons), and Doug Porter will take over as basketball coach.
But Colon said he couldn’t bring himself to give up his position as baseball coach. He will also still serve as dean, and though some have speculated that this is his last year at South Bronx, Colon didn’t sound like he was ready to retire.
“Being at South Bronx gives me a purpose,” he said. “I’m very lucky because I have the opportunity to touch kids’ lives, and that’s something I don’t want to give up.
“I have a lot more to give.”
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Hats off to Colon, Frank (MC1969)!!
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Dear John,
Frank is a member of the Class of 1969.
Mike
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