I can count on one hand the number of people in my life who are positive people —  positive in their attitude, in their dealing with people, in their handling of the opportunities life throws their way. The latest such individual is Tom Mach, the varsity football coach at Detroit Catholic Central. Tom always loved football. He played Little League and CYO at Our Lady of La Salette in Berkley, where he was raised since he was 6 years old, when his father moved the family from Chicago to take an engineering position at General Motors. With thoughts of the priesthood, Tom went to high school at Sacred Heart Seminary. “We played touch football. It was very physical. There were a lot of great athletes there,” he says.

After one year of college at Sacred Heart, Tom changed his life’s direction and transferred to Wayne State. How positive was Tom Mach? He walked on the Wayne State football team and started three years in the defensive backfield and as a running back. He also graduated with majors in history and social studies. He took a time out to serve six months in the Army Reserves (and afterward six more years of weekend duty) before resuming his football career. “I figured coaching was the next best thing to playing,” so Tom hired on as an assistant coach at Southgate Aquinas. He also worked on a teaching degree at Eastern Michigan. He credits many life and coaching lessons from Vern Gale, the coach at Wayne State, and Dick Comar, at Aquinas. “They were great mentors. They taught me how to be a coach, not a yeller.”



After five years at Aquinas, “I felt I did what I had to do, so I dropped my name in the hat for a head coaching job,” Tom says. And not just any job: the vacancy at Catholic Central, which to that point in its rich history had won a state championship, four Goodfellows (city championships) and 11 Catholic League titles. How positive was Tom that he would be the next Shamrocks’ coach? So confident that it was the only school he sent an application to. Perhaps a more important question: why CC? The answer lies in the values his father (“the greatest man who ever lived”) and Irish-Catholic mother taught him in his youth. “Their message was always positive. There is much more to life than what the world has to offer,” Tom says. “If you believe in loving God with your whole being and loving your neighbor, then you have the spirituality you can use for the rest of your life.” What attracted Tom to CC was “its faith-based environment, and the extension of that faith to the kids.”

Now entering his 40th year there, he feels just as fervently as he did the first year that “Catholic Central is the place I always wanted to be.” What certainly had to impress the interview committee was the 45-page book he had written accompanying his resume specifying how he would run a football program. The Shamrocks went 8-1 in Tom’s first season in 1976. Three years later, he won the first of 10 state championships and a total of 15 appearances in the finals. Add to that 16 CHSL championships. Tom, 67, is the fourth-winningest coach in state history with a 348-93 record. The Shamrocks open this season Aug. 28 hosting Muskegon. His sons, Mike and Joe, both attended CC, played on the 2001 and 2002 state champs, are on the CC faculty and assistants on their father’s staff. Five years ago, Tom retired from the classroom after 36 years teaching history and health and physical education. Thousands and thousands of students and athletes have come under Tom’s care. “The goal has always been to make the best person possible. To make people better is a hard job, but it’s a worthy one.” Positively.

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Don Horkey may be reached at [email protected].