Mar 17, 2019 8 min read

If one was to look up “basketball lifer” in a dictionary, there is a chance that a picture of Phil Stewart would accompany the definition.

When Stewart finished the 2017-18 season as an assistant with the California girls basketball team, it concluded a half-century as a coach for the man known by friends, coaches and former players as “Stew.”

“Following the 2017-18 season, the girls I had started with at Cal in seventh grade were graduating,” Stewart said. “It was also the conclusion of my 50th year in coaching. At age 72, it seemed like an appropriate time to call it a career.”

Stewart has long been a fan basketball and it started in his childhood.

“I started going to games to watch my brothers play at a very young age,” he said. “I remember listening to Ohio State and West Virginia basketball games on the radio with my father. Most pictures of me as a boy, I had a ball in my hands.”

Stewart played football, basketball and baseball in high school at Fort Frye High School in Beverly, Ohio.

“I had outstanding coaches who provided an example of the influence a coach could have on lives,” he said. “My high school coach, Carl Hamill, went 90-15 in five seasons including a 26-1 record and a Final Four state tournament my junior year.”

It was while in high school that Stewart began paying attention to a young coach who would go on to become a basketball legend.

“When I was in high school in the early 1960s we only had three TV channels and one of them carried Atlantic Coast Conference basketball on Saturdays,” Stewart explained. “Dean Smith was starting his career as the head coach at North Carolina and I became fascinated with his innovations and style of play. Seeing them (Smith and his high school coaches) convinced me that I wanted to be a basketball coach.”

In 1965, Stewart enrolled at California State College and played for Vulcans coach Myles Witchey.

“Coach Witchey and Coach Hamill were teammates at West Liberty,” Stewart said. “That is how I ended up at Cal. In 1967, we won Cal’s first PSAC West championship.”

While student teaching at Donora High School there was a job opening at Monessen for a Social Studies teacher and junior high basketball coach. Stewart applied and was hired, starting his half-century as a coach.

Stewart had a busy 1968.

“That was a significant year in my life,” he said. “I graduated in May, got married in August, I began teaching in September and started coaching in November,” Stewart said.

After three years as the junior high coach and 10 years as the varsity assistant, a new road opened up for him.

Stewart had remained close to the Vulcans’ program and would often go to practices when former Farrell legend Eddie McCluskey was coach, and then when Tim Loomis was head coach.

In 1982, Loomis offered Stewart a job as an assistant. He returned to his alma mater while continuing to teach at Monessen.

Stewart continued in both roles until the 1985-86 season, and during that four-year run, Cal won its first PSAC championship and earned its first NCAA Division II tournament appearance.

In the fall of 1986, Loomis left to become an assistant at Penn State and Jim Boone was hired as the coach at Cal.

“I was asked to come in as Cal U’s first full-time assistant coach,” Stewart said. “After finishing the first semester at Monessen in January 1987, I came to Cal as an Athletic Academic Advisor and full-time assistant basketball coach.”

Did Stewart have any trepidation about leaving a tenured teaching position?

“It was a difficult position, but it was one that I never regretted,” Stewart said. “In my 14 years at Cal, we had many successes.”

During Stewart’s run, the Vulcans won six PSAC West titles, five PSAC championships, appeared in seven NCAA Division II tournaments, five NCAA Sweet 16s and a pair of NCAA Final Fours while compiling a record of 307-126.

In 1996, Boone took the head coaching job at Robert Morris. Stewart applied for Boone’s job but was not hired, so he took a teaching job and became head coach at Belle Vernon Area. he coached there until retiring from teaching in 2003.

In his seven years at Belle Vernon, the Leopards won three section titles, made the WPIAL playoffs five times, reached the PIAA playoffs twice and was the top-ranked team in the state.

During Stewart’s tenure at Belle Vernon, James Protin was as an assistant for five years and is grateful for his time with Stewart.

“Stew was one of the best teachers of the game that I have ever been around,” he said. “He was a mentor and a good friend to me at a time in my life when I needed both.”

Though Stewart retired form the classroom, he did not leave the hardwood.

“I remained active in basketball,” he said. “I worked summer camps, coached youth league teams as well as both boys and girls teams at California Middle School.”

In 2012, Stewart received an intriguing phone call to help a group of seventh- and eighth-grade girls from California in a traveling league in Pittsburgh.

“We finished second in the league, which was primarily made up of predominantly 6-A schools,” Stewart said. “The following year, (coach) Chris Minerd asked me to help with the California High School girls program.”

In the five years that Stewart helped Minerd, the Trojans made the WPIAL playoffs each season and reached the PIAA playoffs four times. California had a 93-30 record during that stretch.

“I am very appreciative of the time that I was able to work with Coach and we had five great years,” Minerd said. “I used to tease him that he has coached longer than I have been alive, but I tried to learn as much as I could from him. He made my job easier by helping with practice and preparing game plans and the team loved having him around.”

Minerd, who is California’s athletic director, said they had the good cop and bad cop role.

“I was probably jealous because he always got to be the good guy, but as the head coach, I had to be the bad guy,” Minerd said in a joking tone.

“He had a great career and I am happy that I got to spend a small part of it with him.”

Stewart also coached in the Budd Grebb Memorial Basketball League – a high school summer league that is based in California – for four years and led two of his teams to championships.

Though Stewart wasn’t on the sidelines this season for the first time in 51 years, he attended many of the Cal U games and nearly all of the California boys games – his grandson is a member of the team – and several California girls games.

Stewart was even able to make to Winston Salem, N.C., to catch his beloved North Carolina Tar Heels play Wake Forest.

“It has been a relatively smooth transition, however, there are many things I miss,” he said. “I miss practices and teaching the game that I love, I miss the competition and challenges of preparing for and coaching in the games. Probably most of all, I miss the energy and enthusiasm of the players.”

Stewart was able to coach his son, grandson and granddaughter and listed that fact as well as the many accomplishments his teams had as his favorite moments.

He did not hesitate when asked what his greatest accomplishment was.

“I would hope that I have had a positive effect on the hundreds of players that I coached,” he said.

Stewart said his biggest disappointment was not being hired to take over at Cal when Boone left in 1996.

“I have always wondered if I could have been a successful head coach at the collegiate level,” he said.

Now, without having to commit time to practices and games, Stewart has started a new hobby.

“Now that I am free to come and go as I choose, I have read a lot and started working on my family genealogy,” he said.

Stewart is thankful for the number of people that helped shape him as a coach.

“After 50 years, I am so thankful to so many people, including the players I have coached and the coaches that I coached with,” he said. “But most of all, I would like to thank my family for all the sacrifices they made and the things that I missed: my son, Philip, and my daughter, Kelly, my grandchildren, and my wife of 50 years, Emmilou, who has been to hundreds of games traveling through all kinds of weather. I could not have had a greater supporter.”