After 35 years, coach Joe Hohman continues to make an impact at Divine Mercy Academy

Joe Hohman may not be the biggest name in area basketball coaching circles, but the long-tenured varsity boys coach at St. Bernadette’s school in Monroeville, now Divine Mercy Academy, has built a successful winning resume for 35 years while also serving as a trusted mentor to hundreds of players who have come under his guidance.

And Hohman hopes to continue in that role for as long as possible.

“The reason I’ve stayed with it all these years is I simply enjoy being around all the kids,” said Hohman, who owns 938 victories against 526 losses over the course of 1,464 games coached starting with the North American Martyrs program in the 1989-90 season.

“Being in the gym and helping a young player get better helps keep my mind off of everything else. It also keeps me active as opposed to sitting around thinking about everything all the time. I am getting up there. I will be 76 this year, but there are a couple of other coaches in the (Pittsburgh) Diocese who have been coaching for a long time, too.”

Born and raised in East McKeesport and a Monroeville resident with his wife, Mary Margaret, since 1977, Hohman also refereed hundreds of basketball games over the years. His final WPIAL title game was in 2005 as he officiated the Quad-A boys championship contest that saw Upper St. Clair, led by future Penn State and Dallas Cowboys linebacker Sean Lee, defeat Mt. Lebanon for the title at Duquesne’s Palumbo Center.

“I got the chance to referee a lot of big-time players throughout the years,” said Hohman, who played football in college at St. Vincent

“I was doing that and coaching and running my own business.”

The seventh- and eighth-grade teams throughout the Diocese are considered the varsity teams because players move on to public or private high schools as freshmen.

Divine Mercy also has a junior varsity team made up of players in fifth and sixth grades.

The Sabres is the athletic nickname retained from the former St. Bernadette school and team after the merger with North American Martyrs in the spring of 2018.

“We’ve been a small school, but we’ve always played in the highest Diocese league classification,” Hohman said.

“We played against large junior high public school teams in tournaments and exhibition games.”

Hohman’s son and daughter attended North American Martyrs, and when his son, Brian, was in third grade, he, along with Tim Thorsen, started a basketball program at the school in 1989.

Hohman coached with Thorsen at NAM for four years before moving over to St. Bernadette’s as an assistant for the 1993-94 season.

The next year, Hohman became the head varsity boys coach at St. Bernadette, a job he still holds to this day.

Hohman estimates he’s coached close to 300 boys in his 35 years as coach.

Of his 1,464 games, 1,098 have come at the Varsity A level with 693 wins against 405 losses, a 63% win percentage. Another 366 came at the Varsity B level for strictly seventh graders.

He’s enjoyed 23 seasons of 18 or more wins, and 13 seasons with 25 or more victories. Six times his team has won 30 or more games.

The 2015-16 St. Bernadette team captured the Diocesan championship, finished as the state runner-up, and concluded the season with a 45-6 record.

His teams have finished with a losing record in only six of his 35 years.

Hohman’s coaching career, and to a greater extent, his life, were tested with a pancreatic cancer diagnosis in 2019.

Last Wednesday marked five years since he got the news.

Hohman went through chemotherapy treatments for 15 months, and he continued coaching.

September will be four years since a 13-hour surgical procedure at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota helped save his life.

“They took everything out of me,” he said. “I was in the hospital for about 120 days, 30 in intensive care.”

Hohman now is cancer free. He gets checked out about every six months.

“I was a very unusual case,” he said. “Usually, it’s about a 12- to 18-month life span once you get the diagnosis, because when you are diagnosed, it’s usually in the late stages. Mine was pretty late, too, but I am extremely fortunate and grateful to still be here.”

Hohman said he lives every day to the fullest with family, friends, fellow coaches and the players he loves to instruct. His assistant, Jim Moon, took over the varsity team for the 2020-21 season while he recovered, and he was back on the bench for the 2021-22 season.

“Jim’s boy (Jimmy Moon) played for me, and then he played at Serra, and just finished up at Seton Hill. He was a very good player all throughout. Jim started coaching with me when Jimmy was playing. He stayed with it and has been with me ever since.”

Hohman said getting back to coaching was, in a way, therapeutic.

“There was no question in my mind that I was going to continue to coach,” he said.

Hohman said he’s grateful for the many coaching colleagues over the years from Thorston and Moon to Tom Brush, Ray Weaver, Jesse Stock, Jim Kromka, Joe Kromka Sr., Dave Sauter and Frankie Bozicevic.

Fifty-two of his players have gone on to play at the high school level at Gateway, Woodland Hills, Franklin Regional, Penn Hills, Serra Catholic, Central Catholic, St. Joseph and Trinity Christian.

Of the starting five for the 1997-98 Gateway varsity team, four had previously played at St. Bernadette.

Close to a dozen, including five of the six Kromka brothers — Joe Jr., Mike, Tommy, John Paul, and Will — went on to play in college.

“The Kromka’s have all been very dedicated and are high achievers,” Hohman said.

“They were very good students in addition to being pretty good athletes in basketball.”

Two of his players — Todd McGuinness and Nate Andrews — now are coaches themselves. McGuinness is the head men’s coach at Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, and Andrews is an assistant with the boys varsity team at Serra Catholic.

John Paul Kromka, who wrapped up a standout hoops career at Pitt-Johnstown in 2023, remembers the foundation lessons in basketball and life he learned from Hohman.

“He is that coach that you have when you are young who really makes a difference in your life,” John Paul said.

“You may not realize it at first, and it is hard when you are going through it, but junior high is a key stage of development, and you are going to start to make strides and see improvement. I remember practices where, at first, I felt he was just nagging on me, but he would say that if he was yelling at you, that meant he wasn’t giving up on you. He just had that ability to instill confidence in you and bring the best out of you. He helped set me on a path to where I was able to be successful in later years.”

Hohman said with the jointure, some students were lost for enrollment. Divine Mercy’s varsity boys team, he said, might have to drop down to Varsity B this season. After covid, the number of kids wanting to play basketball, he said, declined.

“We might struggle to get eight or nine players,” Hohman said. “There might be some tough times ahead. We’ll see.”

Hohman has given thought to when the right time will be to hang up his whistle and leave the bench. Bur for now, he’s still on board and ready to go.

“I enjoy coaching,” he said. “It gives me something I look forward to doing. There definitely are more challenges these days. But a big thing is wanting to make a difference.”