RIP Ed Serdar

[Sparky Guy]

Thank you for taking time to write this stuff down. The history gets lost of someone doesn’t do it. People tend to know very little about softball if it happened before or after their kid was playing.

Sparky Guy, I have always wondered about the origin and what the WOC part of your tagline means. I’ll say that that phrase fits a lot of situations and I have thought about it many times.

He used to post on a local message board using the name Wise Old Coach. That's where WOC came from.

 

[Silver 2200]

Thank you for taking the time to share your story of Ed. I really enjoy reading about prominent softball people from the Chicago area. If you got anymore stories I would love to read them.

I also live in the southwest suburbs of Chicago. My daughter is just starting travel softball journey. She is currently a 10u player. I never met Ed but I have heard people mention his name hear and there.

 

[Silver 2200]

My DD played for the Sharks for 4 years. Everything Sluggers said is true. There were a lot things Ed said you can't print here. One of his favorites was "We treat all our kids the same. Like $hit." Another of his favorites is my tag line when asked about parents over the years.

Two of the things he did WAY before anyone else in the mid-west were the Sharks had their own field with lights and they had their own indoor training facility. The indoor facility was the top floor of an old warehouse that was built at the start of the 1900's. It had support columns every 30 feet, but he made it work. He was the first program to have non-parent coaches in the Chicago area. He was teaching his pitchers IR years before the term was coined. He never named it.

It took me a while to figure him out. His bark was worse than his bite. The reason for the way he treated the players and parents the way he did was two-fold. One was to keep the parents intimidated and inline. The other was to make sure there was NOTHING anyone could say to a girl who played for him that would affect their performance on the field. And it worked. There was nothing anyone could say to my DD on the field that could get between her ears.

I didn't get too much crap from him because I was the guy who fixed anything that broke around the fields. One of my fondest memories of Ed was when he handed me the keys to the entire facility. He grinned, chuckled and then said "You're F'd." It didn't take long to figure out how true the words were. There was always something broken.

Samantha Findlay who played at Michigan hitting the game winning homerun in the championship game and was the MVP for the 2005 tournament when they won the WCWS played her whole travel career for the Sharks. Her younger sister Angela played there. She was also an All-American. Danny Tyler from the first Olympic Team played there. He turned away Michelle Venturella from the first Olympic Team because her dad made too many demands. He had a lot of other successful athletes who played in the WCWS.

I did have a name for him. I called him a Crusty Old Buzzard. He was a force in the softball world. It's too bad Father Time took it's toll on him. He really did a lot to accelerate the level of play in the Chicago area.

Thanks for sharing your story. I don't post often but I do enjoy reading. Based on your screen name I always thought you had something to do with the Orland Sparks. I was wrong. Now I will assume you are an electrician. Probably wrong about that also. lol.

 

[sluggers]

A story Ed proudly told me about one of his players:

Suzy (not her name) got a scholarship to a college in one of the Power 5 conferences. After a loss, the head coach rips the team a new one, and chews out the entire team. When she gets done, most of the team is tearing up. Suzy listens politely. When the coach is done, Suzy stands up and heads off. The coach says, "Suzy, how come you are not crying? The team lost!" Suzy says, "Are you crazy? I'm not going to cry over a f****** softball game." Suzy transferred after one season.

 

[Sparky Guy]

Thanks for sharing your story. I don't post often but I do enjoy reading. Based on your screen name I always thought you had something to do with the Orland Sparks. I was wrong. Now I will assume you are an electrician. Probably wrong about that also. lol.

DD finished her travel ball playing for the Sparks. She and I coached a team for the Sparks for a few years. That was long before your DD was born.

Another colorful character in the Chicago area softball world is Joe Tholl from the Sparks. You always know when he is on a field coaching a team.

 

[Sparky Guy]

Thank you for taking the time to share your story of Ed. I really enjoy reading about prominent softball people from the Chicago area. If you got anymore stories I would love to read them.

I also live in the southwest suburbs of Chicago. My daughter is just starting travel softball journey. She is currently a 10u player. I never met Ed but I have heard people mention his name hear and there.

Ed quit running the program a few years ago. Father time took it's toll on him, as it does with all of us.

Another guy who was loved by his players was a guy named Jim Didi. He looked and sounded more like a character out of the Spranos rather than run a softball program. He was running the Lemont Rockers. Their moniker was/is neon colored uniforms.

He had a his team at the ASA 18A National Tournament and doing well when he suffered a fatal heart attack in the middle of the tournament. His team rallied around the tragedy to win the tournament. He would do anything for his players to amke sure they succeeded.

He and Ed were friends, but they would "fight" on the local message board. It was comical. Didi would even fight with himself, logging on with different aliases trying to stir the pot. It was really pretty funny.

 

[Sparky Guy]

A story Ed proudly told me about one of his players:

Suzy (not her name) got a scholarship to a college in one of the Power 5 conferences. After a loss, the head coach rips the team a new one, and chews out the entire team. When she gets done, most of the team is tearing up. Suzy listens politely. When the coach is done, Suzy stands up and heads off. The coach says, "Suzy, how come you are not crying? The team lost!" Suzy says, "Are you crazy? I'm not going to cry over a f****** softball game." Suzy transferred after one season.

That sums up a Shark player. The only time I ever saw my DD cry was her senior year in college. She pitched her team to the conference championship game and lost. She was physically drained and couldn't hold off a good hitting team.

 

[Westwind]

A story Ed proudly told me about one of his players:

Suzy (not her name) got a scholarship to a college in one of the Power 5 conferences. After a loss, the head coach rips the team a new one, and chews out the entire team. When she gets done, most of the team is tearing up. Suzy listens politely. When the coach is done, Suzy stands up and heads off. The coach says, "Suzy, how come you are not crying? The team lost!" Suzy says, "Are you crazy? I'm not going to cry over a f****** softball game." Suzy transferred after one season.

I love it. I absolutely love it!