Dom Rosselli’s legacy

Dom Rosselli’s legacy

Almost every athlete has a horror story about a coach.

Most of those stories can be traced to a coach forgetting that his first job isn’t to win, it’s to teach his athletes how to play. If he does that, the winning will take care of itself.

And a really good coach teaches his athletes how to live — most effectively through his own good example. And if he does that, what his athletes take away from a game — win or lose — will pretty much take care of itself.

We began by saying that almost every athlete has a horror story about a coach. The glaring exception to that would be those athletes who played basketball, baseball or football for Coach Dom Rosselli at Youngstown College, Youngstown University and Youngstown State University.

The rare exception

Rosselli’s athletes may have had bad memories about high school coaches, and the many who went on to play after college may have had run ins with coaches in the pros, but Dom Rosselli established a standard that few coaches will equal, and none will exceed. There are no horror stories to be told about Rosselli.

Rosselli amassed 1,000 career wins in basketball and baseball over a 38-year career, which is one way of measuring him. The only other man to be associated with the college for such a long time and in such an intimate way was Dr. Howard Jones, the first president of Youngstown College.

It is safe to say that no one in the university’s history managed to develop the number of very personal relationships with hundreds upon hundreds of students that Coach Rosselli did. Those relationships began before the students ever arrived on campus during recruiting trips, and lived on for decades — generations in some cases — after the student-athletes graduated.

Dominic Louis Rosselli Sr. died Tuesday at the age of 93.

A life well-lived

He left behind a large and loving family, and a larger legacy among those he coached in sports and tutored in the art of living a good life. Not the good life as defined by money, possessions and luxuries, but a higher quality of life that is defined by hard work, dedication and respect for family, school, God and every man, woman or child a person meets.

Dom Rosselli was a teacher, not just of his athletes but of everyone who had the privilege of knowing him.

There is a statue of the coach on YSU’s campus, and bronze can be expected to survive for a very long time. But the values that Rosselli instilled in the people he met will be handed down from generation to generation, an influence that will go on virtually forever.