Bluhm Continues Building on Trenton Tradition in 5th Decade as Coach
By
Keith Dunlap
Special for MHSAA.com
December 22, 2022
TRENTON – What Tom Bluhm likes about wrestling also happens to correlate perfectly into what his program at Trenton has been about as of late.
“It’s one-on-one,” Bluhm said. “You can’t hide and you can’t make excuses. That’s what I’ve always liked about it.”
Excuses aren’t in the vocabulary of the Trenton program that’s been presided by Bluhm for going on 46 seasons.
Last season, the Trojans went 22-9, solid on the surface but incredible when considering Trenton had only 14 wrestlers on the team and forfeited just one weight class.
Again, Bluhm and his group weren’t interested in excuses. They just forged ahead with what they had.
“There’s no planning for it,” he said. “It’s just something that happens. It makes it tough to run practices. It’s not like you have a room of 30 or 40 guys where you can group them into three based on weight and get after it.”
Numbers haven’t traditionally been a problem for Trenton under Bluhm, who said his 1978 team had 100 wrestlers competing for spots on varsity and 50 freshmen.
In recent years, the lack of a program at the middle school level has negated opportunities to develop a feeder system, so Bluhm just hopes for the best when tryouts come around in November.
Bluhm said it’s become an increasing scenario where athletes come out for the wrestling team who have never before wrestled in their lives.
Bluhm said one example was a sophomore who came out for the team last year, quickly learned the sport and ended up winning 36 matches.
“His mother supposedly called the AD last year saying he needed something to do because he was driving her crazy,” Bluhm said. “So he came out for wrestling.”
Nolan Diroff, a senior who primarily wrestles in the 189-pound weight class, but has also wrestled at higher weights, said the limited number of wrestlers on the team rarely comes up as a topic.
“I can’t really say that anybody has complained about not having a lot of people,” he said. “Nobody on the team complains when they get moved around in the lineup. We wrestle where Coach needs us to wrestle. We do whatever he says to try and win matches.”
Diroff said in a strange way, having a limited roster has made who is on the team better wrestlers because it has forced them to be versatile athletes who can compete at multiple weights.
“He’s kind of built us up to realize that and wrestle wherever he needs us,” he said. “He tries to get us as many matches as possible. It makes us better wrestlers and makes the team better.”
This year, there is a slight increase in the numbers.
Bluhm said there are 17 out for the team, including the first girl wrestler during his tenure.
“She fits right in,” Bluhm said. “She gets in there and does everything the boys do.”
Bluhm entered this season fourth on the MHSAA all-time coaching wins list for wrestling, carrying an 812-416-2 record with five seasons at Taylor Center before taking over at Trenton beginning with that 1977-78 winter.
Despite the struggles with numbers, Bluhm still very much gets a lot out of coaching after more than five decades.
He drives a little less than an hour to Trenton and back every day from his home in Northville, and said he’s stayed at Trenton out of his love and respect not only for the kids, but their parents.
“He tells a bunch of other stuff and random stories,” Diroff said. “Never ones that you really roll your eyes at. They are always enjoyable and shows you how long he’s been around.”
And when Trenton wrestles this season, the Trojans will do what they always do: Fight on with no excuses.
“I enjoy coaching,” Bluhm said. “I’ve always said show me some rules, and I’ll play.”
Keith Dunlap has served in Detroit-area sports media for more than two decades, including as a sportswriter at the Oakland Press from 2001-16 primarily covering high school sports but also college and professional teams. His bylines also have appeared in USA Today, the Washington Post, the Detroit Free Press, the Houston Chronicle and the Boston Globe. He served as the administrator for the Oakland Activities Association’s website from 2017-2020. Contact him at [email protected] with story ideas for Oakland, Macomb and Wayne counties.
PHOTOS (Top) Trenton wrestling coach Tom Bluhm coaches Connor Charping during the 2016 Individual Finals. (Middle) Bluhm and current wrestler Nolan Diroff stand in front of the program's record board. (Top photo by High School Sports Scene; middle photo courtesy of Nolan Diroff.)
Scislowicz Selected to MHSCA Hall of Fame After Decades Serving in Multiple Sports
By
Keith Dunlap
Special for MHSAA.com
September 18, 2025
Fran Scislowicz admitted he went back and forth about what to say in his speech as he was inducted into the Michigan High School Coaches Association Hall of Fame on Sunday.
But as the time approached to deliver it, he just harkened back to what was a principal trait during his coaching career: making sure everything was about others and not himself.
“It was a neat experience to be able to say thank you back,” Scislowicz said of what he primarily said in his speech in front of family and friends, including a brother who drove from Colorado for the ceremony. “I can’t find a head coach that doesn’t have that village behind them to support them in so many different ways.”
Scislowicz certainly had a big village throughout a long career in several sports at Rochester Adams. He was the head varsity softball coach for 37 years before retiring from that post in 2024, the head girls basketball coach for 23 years before retiring in 2013, the defensive coordinator on the varsity football team in the late 1980s and early 90s and this season is in his 28th year serving on the chain gang at Adams’ football games.
In this modern age, it’s not easy to find coaches who stick around one school in one sport for a great length of time. It should be noted that the two other coaches from the Detroit area who were inducted Sunday – Troy basketball coach Gary Fralick and Richmond softball coach Howard Stuart – fit that bill perfectly as well.
But having a coach stick around in several sports for such a long time is even rarer, which made Scislowicz an obvious choice to be inducted.
A retired elementary physical education teacher in the Rochester district, Scislowicz developed the dream to teach and coach as a youth while attending practices and games his older brothers were involved in.
“I go, ‘If I could be a physical education teacher during the day and then coach after school, that would be wonderful,’” he said. “I kind of had that passion and idea to do it really young.”
The highlight of his coaching career on the field came during the 1993-94 school year, when both his Adams girls basketball and softball teams made the MHSAA Semifinals. It was the only time those programs made the semifinals during his tenure, and they did so over a span of months.
“I was told back then by some wise, veteran coaches, ‘Fran, you don’t realize how hard it is to do what you just did, and you might never get back,’” he said. “And we didn’t.”
Scislowicz is listed among the state’s winningest coaches on the diamond with a record of 803-487 from 1988-2024. But if his original ambitions had played out, he wouldn’t have had long careers coaching softball and girls basketball at Adams.
While serving as the football team’s defensive coordinator under then-head coach Jack Runchey during the late 1980s and early 90s, he thought he was next in line to become the program’s head coach.
But in 1991, the girls basketball program was a blossoming state power in need of a leader, so Scislowicz gave up football to focus his fall seasons (girls basketball was played during the fall then) on hoops.
More important than his coaching on the court or field was his faith-based mentoring off of it.
Scislowicz to this day is actively involved in the area’s Fellowship of Christian Athletes organization and put together regular meetings before school for students and athletes to attend.
In the end, that’s what he hopes his biggest coaching legacy remains.
“We had a saying that you don’t have to be great to serve, but you have to serve to be great,” he said. “We really tried to give back to kids that way, by serving and doing that way. The wins and losses were going to take care of themselves. It’s the impact of seeing what kids are like at 30, 40 or 50 years old. As I’ve been around one community, trying to be a difference maker is what I enjoy most.”
Keith Dunlap has served in Detroit-area sports media for more than two decades, including as a sportswriter at the Oakland Press from 2001-16 primarily covering high school sports but also college and professional teams. His bylines also have appeared in USA Today, the Washington Post, the Detroit Free Press, the Houston Chronicle and the Boston Globe. He served as the administrator for the Oakland Activities Association’s website from 2017-2020. Contact him at [email protected] with story ideas for Oakland, Macomb and Wayne counties.
(Photo courtesy of Fran Scislowicz.)