Mourning Those Who Contributed Much

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.)