Inductees

Countless people have contributed to the success of St. Pius X High School athletics, but one name continually resurfaces when talking about the school and winning – Monachino.

Joe Monachino and his son, Joe Jr., each built their own successful coaching careers at St. Pius X, winning state championships and earning Final Four appearances in football and basketball over a span of more than 50 years.

The Missouri Sports Hall of Fame is proud to honor the father-son duo by the Monachino Father-Son Coaching Duo of St. Pius X into the Class of 2025.

“What dad taught me, and I think it is true, is that kids will do anything you ask them if they know you care about them and you’re putting them into a situation where they know they can be successful,” Joe Jr. said. “The biggest compliment you can ever get is when a coach walks over to you after a game, win or lose, and says that you have a well-coached team. You might not always have the best athletes, but they’re doing what you’re asking them to do.”

A New York native, Joe, Sr., attend Northwest Missouri State.

“I don’t even know that he had big goals to become a coach to start with,” Joe Jr. said. “He wanted to get into education and back then, if you were a man in education, you coached something.”

He got his first head coaching job at St. Pius X in 1966 and stayed there until 1983 before finishing his coaching career at North Kansas City.

At Pius, his Warriors won four district titles, earning the Class 3 state runner-up in 1979 and then a co-state championship in 1981 in Class 2. He was the Western Missouri Football Coaches Association Coach of the Year in 1979, won the Cecil O. Patterson Coach of the Year Award in 1982 and inducted into the Missouri Football Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 1996.

“He was really good at getting the ball to his best players,” Joe Jr. said. “He ran the ball an awful lot. He liked to get three yards a play, play really good defense, and take his chances.”

During Joe Jr.’s senior season, the starting running back suffered an injury.

“I think that was the first time dad every really threw the ball a lot,” he said. “He was an old-school coach. He thought if you just ran the ball and held the other team to 10 or 15 points, you had a chance to win. You look at pictures of him coaching, and he was there in a suit and tie. That was just his mentality.”

Joe Jr. played football for three of his four years at Pius, but basketball was his sport.

“I think it killed dad that I didn’t play football my sophomore year,” he joked. “But he never pressured me into anything. I just knew I wanted to be a coach. Growing up, the team would come over to the house and eat dinner and watch film, and I just always thought that was a cool relationship. I saw the impact he had on their lives, they on his, and it was always something I wanted to do.”

Joe. Jr. spent 37 years (1986-2023) at Pius, not including when he was a student-athlete there. He was an assistant boys basketball coach for two years and then the head coach from 1988 to 1998. His teams earned three Final Four appearances (1988, 1989, 1990), finishing fourth in the state tournament each season.

He then was an assistant girls basketball coach from 2011 to 2023, helping two teams reach the Final Four (third in 2016, state runner-up in 2017). He is currently the Director of Athletic Programs for the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, running the youth sports programs for its elementary and middle schools.

All this came after Monachino graduated from Pius in 1981, where he played football, basketball and ran track. He was All-State in football and basketball and then a 1,000-point scorer in basketball at Rockhurst University.

Both coaches had family support. Joe Sr., and Nancy Collins are parents to Ann, Tim, Chris and Vince. Joe, Jr., and his wife, Janice, are parents to Rose and Antonette.

“I think we were both most proud of the people we’ve coached and the dads and moms and citizens they became,” he said. “I loved teaching basketball, but teaching life, the winning and losing and struggles, that was what we enjoyed most.”