WARREN — Eighty-two-year old Mike Jolly’s coaching career spans more than six decades: as a head varsity coach in high school football and lacrosse, assistant coach in college football and lacrosse and in high school football, basketball, baseball, clay target shooting and lacrosse.
In particular, Jolly has made an indelible impact in lacrosse, a sport he knew little about until he climbed over a fence his freshman year at Michigan State after track practice, curious to watch the club lacrosse team practice.
He was fascinated by the teamwork and speed. “The players’ skills were way out there,” Jolly says. “You can move the ball. You can hit your opponent within the rules. It's much like hockey with the body checks and things like that.
“Hockey is fast because the puck moves fast. Lacrosse is fast not because the kids are fast, but because the ball moves so fast. Hockey may be a fast sport in skates on ice, but lacrosse is the fastest sport on two feet.”
Following his graduation from Michigan State, where he played for five years on the Spartans club lacrosse team, as head lacrosse coach at De La Salle Collegiate between 1984 and 1999, Jolly introduced and directed the lacrosse program (freshman, junior varsity, and varsity) earning the distinction as “father of DLS lacrosse.” He also was director of athletics from 1994 to 2005.
The Pilots, members of the Michigan Scholastic Lacrosse Association, won seven conference titles, seven regional titles, and the state championship in 1994. Lacrosse was not sanctioned by the Michigan High School Athletic Association until 2005.
To this date, Jolly has immersed himself in the promotion of lacrosse through membership and leadership on the state and national levels. He has been inducted into seven halls of fame, including the Catholic High School League, which named the Boys Lacrosse Scholar Athlete Award in his honor, and the National High School Athletic Coaches Association. He was recognized as the U.S. Lacrosse National Man of the Year in 2000.
The Peter Kohn Award, established in 1998, is given to a member of the lacrosse community who best exemplifies the Christian principles of character, integrity, excellence and teamwork on and off the lacrosse field.
“I am truly blessed by God’s goodness,” Jolly said at the ceremony in 2017. “I have received a lot of awards during my time in the lacrosse community, but this one is extra special.”
“Yes, the spiritual aspect, the faith aspect is huge, whether I was in public school or parochial school,” Jolly said. “I think the parochial schools actually require their coaches to have a spiritual element or motivation in their coaching as well as training boys to be men and how to be successful and things like that.”
In the Catholic League, Jolly says, “Every practice begins with prayer, every practice ends with prayer, every class begins with prayer, or probably with the repetitive motto of that school: ‘St. John Baptist de LaSalle, pray for us. Live, Jesus, in our hearts forever.’
“It becomes a catchphrase if you say it over and over and over. That’s the one that I find that motivates me, and how I treat kids.”
“I'm not uncomfortable at all being supportive and kind and understanding, demanding and occasionally angry," Jolly added. "Christ drove the money lenders out of the temple with whips. I mean, he was God in human form, he experienced human emotion, but the idea of being able to have that underlying everything that we do in a school like De La Salle is refreshing.”
Jolly continues to be involved with De La Salle, supporting the athletic programs, steering the Veterans’ Wall Committee, and working with students every Wednesday afternoon on various clay target shooting techniques.
Jolly chuckles when he says that he “was Episcopalian and Lutheran before I became a Catholic.”
He was baptized Catholic during Holy Saturday liturgy in 1974, about eight months after he married Marygay Stevens on Aug. 25, 1973, at St. Louis Church in Mount Clemens.
Marygay had been widowed twice with six sons. “I adopted all of them,” Jolly says. He and Marygay had a boy of their own, a seventh son. They have 16 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren.
Contact Don Horkey at [email protected].
