Charleroi’s Hisiro turned from athletics to education

Editor’s note: This is the first part of a two-part series on Charleroi’s Tom Hisiro.

A college football player being redshirted isn’t unusual, but Tom Hisiro was a high school player who had his playing days extended when he was permitted to repeat his junior season on a medical waiver.

Prior to the start of his junior year, he sustained what Charleroi coach Rab Currie described as the worst leg injury any Cougar ever suffered. It was a fracture of his femur and a knee dislocation, requiring surgery and a long time being imprisoned in a body cast.

As a senior, he earned various honors including all-conference and All-WPIAL recognition and was named to both the UPI and the AP All-State teams for his play as a tight end and defensive end.

He became the first double winner of North Charleroi’s TTOS (Toast to Our Stars Club) Award as the community’s top male scholar and athlete. Tom’s biggest supporter is his brother John.

“Tom deserves credit. When he made All-State, it wasn’t like they had kids from lots of divisions like AAAA,” John Hisiro said. “It was the 11 best defensive and offensive players in the state.”

As one of Pennsylvania’s top recruited players, Hisiro made official visits to Virginia, Virginia Tech, Maryland, North Carolina, Pitt and West Virginia.

He received a congressional appointment to West Point and full scholarship offers from schools such as Nebraska, Iowa State, Temple and Miami (Ohio).

Hisiro went with WVU and became a two-way starter on the freshman team.

“That summer I was contacted by head coach Jim Carlin. He asked me to take a redshirt for the upcoming season with the intention of hopefully starting three seasons, Hisiro said.”

After graduating, Hisiro accepted positions as a teacher, assistant football coach, and a track coach at South Hagerstown High School in Maryland.

After two years, he became the youngest head varsity football coach in Maryland at the age of 24 at Linganore High School.

As if performing an act of magic, he transformed a team that won only one game in its inaugural season to a team that, within three years, won the Monocacy Valley League Championship (in 1976). He was later named Maryland’s Coach of the Year.

After five years on that job, he took the head varsity football coaching position and a job as a guidance counselor at Lake-Lehman High School in the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton area. He held those positions for two seasons, 1979 and 1980.

In his first year, his team chalked up the school’s first winning season in their new conference. Along the way, they knocked off perennial powers Nanticoke and Wyoming Valley West.

On the move again, he became the head football coach at Canon-McMillan from 1981 through 1983. In his final season there, he guided the Big Macs to a postseason berth.

Hisiro lists some of his biggest accomplishments as having many of his players earn full scholarships and named to various All-State squads. Four of his players played in Big 33 games, and one reached a pinnacle when he received USA Today’s All-American first-team honors.

Among Hisiro’s other jobs, he once held the dual role as athletic director and co-principal at Burgettstown. He was the principal at Avonworth High School, Bethel Park High School, Charleroi High, Owen J. Roberts High and Redstone Middle School.

The holder of a doctoral degree in education leadership from Pitt, the well-traveled man has served with distinction as an educator for 51 years, including more than 20 years as a principal.

After retirement, he became the head of graduate education at Bethel University in Tennessee. He handled the duty as the football team’s public address announcer, too.

He has been a full and tenured professor at Marshall University for the last 12 years and served as the chair of the university’s athletic committee. He has been an advisor and investigator for the university’s Title IX enforcement program.

Teaching others isn’t all he did — when he was 50 years old, he took on a new learning project and wound up earning a black belt in Tae Kwon Do.

“I continue to make personal fitness as a priority,” he said.

He resides in Teays Valley, W.Va., and continues to keep busy and on the move.