Expand<\/a><\/p>\nTony Blaisure admits he is a competitive person. He was that way when he played basketball and baseball at Elk Lake High School and when he played basketball at Lackawanna College.<\/p>\n
But when his playing days stopped, he needed something to stoke his competitive fire.<\/p>\n
Coaching and officiating do that.<\/p>\n
For more than 40 years, Blaisure has been on the sidelines at Elk Lake as a coach and administrator. He also has been on the field officiating high school and collegiate games.<\/p>\n
That longevity and dedication makes Blaisure the 54th recipient of the Joseph M. Butler Memorial Award. It was presented to him Thursday night at the 76th annual Times-Tribune Athlete of the Week Awards Ceremony at Lackawanna College\u2019s Peoples Security Bank Theatre.<\/p>\n
Created in 1973 for the late Scranton Times sports editor who started the Athlete of the Week program in 1950, the Butler Award recognizes individuals for their contributions and service to scholastic and collegiate sports.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was always into athletics and I had some great teachers and coaches at Elk Lake, one of them being Mike \u201cRed\u201d Wallace,\u201d Blaisure said. \u201cHe got me very interested in them.\u201d<\/p>\n
After graduating from Elk Lake in 1979, Blaisure took a year off, then went to Lackawanna College. He considered becoming a physical education teacher, but that didn\u2019t work out. Instead, after graduating in 1982, he returned to his high school alma mater and became the pitching coach for the softball team.<\/p>\n
In 1986, he took over as head coach and has held the position since. Blaisure has 620 wins, 17 league titles and 15 district titles.<\/p>\n
He also coached junior high boys basketball for five years, then five years of JV boys basketball with Ron Kropa before becoming head girls basketball coach from 1993 to 2004. In that capacity, he won 199 games, two league titles and six district championships.<\/p>\n
Blaisure also spent 25 years as Elk Lake\u2019s athletic director, taking over when Charlie Rushefski \u2014 the 1989 Butler Award winner \u2014 retired.<\/p>\n
As if that wasn\u2019t enough, he also became an official. He has been a PIAA basketball official for 37 years, PIAA football official for 28 years and a women\u2019s basketball official at the NCAA Division II, III and junior college levels for 26 years.<\/p>\n
Being a coach and an official gave him a unique understanding and perspective of both jobs. He said the key was learning how to communicate with officials as a coach and vice versa.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the biggest obstacle officiating any sport,\u201d Blaisure said. \u201cWhen I was coaching, I wasn\u2019t as tough (on officials) because I knew they were out there doing the best job possible. You communicate with those officials in a different way when you\u2019re a coach and an official at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, he admits to occasionally having to\u00a0bite a towel like former UNLV basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian to not say anything inappropriate to officials who were friends and colleagues.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut all in all, because of my understanding of coaching and officiating, there really aren\u2019t a lot of bad stories,\u201d Blaisure said. \u201cAgain, I go back to that big word of communicating. It means so much in coaching high school athletes and officiating whatever sport it is and communicating with the coaches.\u201d<\/p>\n
What Blaisure enjoys most about both jobs is working with the athletes.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs an official, I love the interaction with the players at the high school level and the collegiate level,\u201d he said. \u201cBeing able to talk to them and communicate. Same thing with coaching. I\u2019m able to communicate with them in a different way. When you\u2019re coaching, you\u2019re not going to make everybody happy. But when you see a kid make a good play in whatever sport you\u2019re coaching, it brings a smile to your face to see a kid do something that they didn\u2019t think they could do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Besides coaching and officiating, Blaisure also played many years for Hannon\u2019s Bar of Scranton in the Scranton Tavern Modified Softball League.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust seeing how good I could be on their team,\u201d Blaisure said. \u201cThey were such a good program, participating in many state tournaments and national tournaments. Just to be able to stay active and doing something I really love and enjoy. That\u2019s really competing as a player, as a coach or as an official.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last summer, Blaisure considered retiring after his 40th year. But every year, he gets players who ask him, \u201cPlease stay. Please stay.\u201d So he returned.<\/p>\n
His wife Terry came up with a solution.<\/p>\n
\u201cI talked it over with her and here\u2019s what she said to me,\u201d Blaisure said. \u201cYou can coach as long as you want as long as you\u2019re still having fun and your health is still good. When one of those two things go, then let\u2019s make a decision. I said, \u2018Fair enough.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Until then, the competitive fire in Blaisure will continue to burn.<\/p>\n
Joseph M. Butler Award winners<\/p>\n
1973: Jerry Burke<\/p>\n
1974: Marty Reap<\/p>\n
1975: Robert Spagna<\/p>\n
1976: Richard F. McNichols<\/p>\n
1977: Mike \u201cRed\u201d Wallace<\/p>\n
1978: Bill Gerrity<\/p>\n
1979: Bob Klenk<\/p>\n
1980: Joseph Pusateri<\/p>\n
1981: Jack Kelly Sr.<\/p>\n
1982: Emil Hordesky<\/p>\n
1983: Andy Cerra<\/p>\n
1984: Jim Davis, Valley View<\/p>\n
1985: Elio Ghigiarelli<\/p>\n
1986: Jim Davis, Nanticoke<\/p>\n
1987: Julius Prezelski<\/p>\n
1988: Roy Davis<\/p>\n
1989: Charles Rushefski<\/p>\n
1990: Bob Gilbride<\/p>\n
1991: Tom Nageli<\/p>\n
1992: Jack Farrell<\/p>\n
1993: Frank Pazzaglia<\/p>\n
1994: Charles Mecca<\/p>\n
1995: Joseph Castrogiovanni<\/p>\n
1996: Jack Henzes<\/p>\n
1997: Les Richards<\/p>\n
1998: John Diven<\/p>\n
1999: Robert Mellow<\/p>\n
2000: Mike Ognosky<\/p>\n
2001: Bob Bessoir<\/p>\n
2002: Janet Finn<\/p>\n
2003: Jerry Preschutti<\/p>\n
2004: Jerry Wasilchak*<\/p>\n
2005: Glenn Moskosky<\/p>\n
2006: Lou Camoni*<\/p>\n
2007: Guy Valvano<\/p>\n
2008: Rich Chulada<\/p>\n
2009: Joe Lalli<\/p>\n
2010: George Werthmuller<\/p>\n
2011: Tom Smith<\/p>\n
2012: Jack Kelly<\/p>\n
2013: Bob Coleman<\/p>\n
2014: Richard Notari*<\/p>\n
2015: Sandra Spott<\/p>\n
2016: Ken Bianchi<\/p>\n
2017: Nick Donato<\/p>\n
2018: Mark Rinaldi*<\/p>\n
2019: Mike Cerra<\/p>\n
2020: Vince Fedor<\/p>\n
2021: Robert Simons<\/p>\n
2022: Phil Tochelli<\/p>\n
2023: Al Callejas<\/p>\n
2024: Ann Marie Simons*<\/p>\n
2025: Joy Pilosi<\/p>\n
2026: Tony Blaisure<\/p>\n
*-elected posthumously<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Elk Lake softball coach Tony Blaisure shakes hands with long-time assistant coach Mike Murphy after his 500th career…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":228513,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[7804,305,178,180,179,726],"class_list":["post-228512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-athlete-of-the-week","tag-high-school-sports","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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