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Coach Faiella in his home recuperating from recent knee surgery
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Sometimes, fortunate things happen because of unfortunate circumstances. Jim Faiella is a prime example of how a person can turn difficulty into a rewarding opportunity for himself and countless others.
As one of the top members of the track team at Trinity High school in the late 1960s, Faiella was diagnosed with degenerative arthritis of the knees. The discovery was made following a meet in South Park. “It kind of ended my running career,” he said. He was a junior in high school at the time.
Faiella concentrated the rest of his athletic energy on high school golf, where he became the medalist for the team, and after graduation, attended the University of Notre Dame, where he majored in accounting. It was after graduation from college that Faiella made the decision to return to the running track, only this time as a mentor and coach.
“I graduated in 1976, was laid off from my first job in 1977, and was really looking for something to do,” he said. A visit back to Trinity High School brought him into contact with Gerald Chambers, who was then coaching the girls’ track team. “I just began helping out with some things, and it got my interest going for coaching.”
He recalls conversations with Chambers in which the two men talked about the lack of available information on girls’ track records. There was plenty of data available on boys, but no one had assembled anything on the girls. “I had time on my hands, and so I agreed to do it,” Faiella recalled. Faiella compiled all of the girls’ rankings for the WPIAL, and began making them available through Trinity.
The love of competition and sports led him to take over a manager’s job for a Colt League baseball team the next summer. “I got involved in doing that because of my knees,” he said. “With two knee operations, I was done athletically, and all I could really do was coach. And it kind of mushroomed from there”
Faiella took his professional career to Fairmont Supply Company of Washington, where he later retired, but his involvement with youth sports, especially girls’ sports continued to increase.
By the early 1980s, Faiella was serving on the coaching staff of the Trinity girls’ track team, coaching a middle school track team, managing his Colt baseball team, coaching a girls’ softball team, serving as a volunteer race director for the American Cancer Society’s annual race, as well as continuing to develop and maintain girls’ track records for the WPIAL. His newest venture into sports was yet to begin.
Along with several other coaches, Faiella helped organize the Trinity Washington Interscholastic Softball Teams, known as TWIST, in 1983. “We were still under the Youth Baseball League, and me and about four other people decided to break away from baseball and start our own league,” he says. “We had 225 girls signed up in the first year, and we had the lease for the field at Washington Park.”
The sport became so popular that a second field was developed within a year, and several more followed. Today, the TWIST program has six fields available for girls who come not only from the Trinity and Washington areas, but from other school districts as well. The program now involves more than 700 girls in both fast-pitch and slow-pitch leagues, ranging in age from four to 19.
Faiella spent 22 seasons managing the Fairmont Supply 12-and-Under team, while serving on the TWIST board and as league treasurer. He retired from the routine in 2003, primarily because of problems with his knees, but returned again this past season on a fill-in basis. “We were short a manager for fast-pitch ball, and I got back into managing the Twelve-and-Under team.”
Faiella’s loyalty has always been to Trinity, where in addition to coaching the girls’ cross-country team, he also announces the football games and wrestling matches, and can be found lending a hand to the coaching staff for most any sport. He delayed a complete knee replacement for both legs until the conclusion of the cross-country season, in order to not miss an event.
“He’s a true friend of girls’ sports, and of all sports at Trinity for that matter,” says Gerald Chambers, a former athletic director at Trinity, and now president of the Board of Education. “He helped me numerous times in the past working at wrestling tournaments and track meets as a volunteer. When he worked as a coach he would cash the checks and give the money back for banquets and things like that for the kids. He didn’t have any relatives or children in the program, and he had no selfish reasons for doing it other than the fact that he enjoyed doing it.”
Faiella’s sister, Debbie Costello, says part of his devotion to helping student athletes achieve success is because of his own set of circumstances. “I think Jim’s devotion to coaching is through his running career that was cut short,” she says. “He is able to fulfill his own dreams through coaching and teaching the kids.”
Trinity athletic director, Edward Dalton, agrees. “If you were to cut Jim Faiella, his blood would truly be blue and white,” he says. He has a true love of the kids and a true love of the school. He always puts himself in second place when it comes to sports and Trinity.”
Faiella plans to spend the remainder of the winter months completing a rehabilitation program from his off-season knee surgery. He should be ready just in time for the beginning of the girls’ softball season in the spring, and the beginning of a new round of work for the upcoming track and cross-country seasons at Trinity.
“I’m going to leave my options open as far as TWIST Softball,” he says. “Obviously, I’ll stay active as treasurer and be part of the board, but we’ll see how things go as far as coaching. As for track, I plan to still be there as a WPIAL official to start races.”
“When you can’t compete, coaching gives you the opportunity to be part of the excitement and to participate in a sport by helping out,” Faiella says, when asked why he does what he does. “When I was growing up and playing, there were a lot of volunteers and coaches there for me, and this is my way of giving back.”
