The winningest coach in Illinois high school basketball history, Gene Pingatore, often kept his wife and personal life out of the public eye. It was only after his demise that fans knew about his divorce from his first wife, Mary Beth Kurtz.
Fondly called Ping by those around him, Gene’s basketball coaching career began and ended with the St. Joseph High School basketball team.
Born and raised in Cicero, Illinois, Gene played four years of college basketball at Loyola Marymount University.
He joined the St. Joseph High School basketball team in 1960 as an assistant coach. He fulfilled the role for eight years before becoming their head coach.
St. Joes' Gene Pingatore (b 1935-d 2019) has the most wins of a varsity H.S. basketball coach in #Illinois 1,035. His first season he was 3-13, the school was just 10 years old.
— Vincent Johnson (@VincentDJohnson) December 24, 2021
Two state 🏆 & 6 total final 4 appearances later he's a legend.
Champions aren't born over night. pic.twitter.com/CL1SIHgHJ4
In his 50-year-long career, Pingatore won 1035 games and 13 sectional titles. He had six top-four state finishes and two state championships.
Pingatore coached three McDonald’s All-Americans: Isiah Thomas, Daryl Thomas, and Deryl Cunningham. Gene achieved his 1000th win in 2017 and became the 15th boys coach in the States to have quadruple-digit victories.
The basketball coach died on June 26, 2019, at his home in Westchester, Illinois. St. Joseph High School announced his demise, but no cause was mentioned.
Gene Pingatore And Mary Beth Kurtz Were Divorced For A Long Time
Gene and Mary Beth’s divorce wasn’t known before his demise in 2019.
The New York Times shared this information in an article covering Gene’s basketball coaching journey.
Despite their divorce, Mary uses her former husband’s last name on social media handles.
On her Facebook page, Mary has shared that she graduated from Loyola University Chicago and is happily retired.
With both of them hailing from Chicago, there’s a good chance Mary and Gene met after college when Gene began his coaching job.
Gene and Mary have one daughter named Lisa Pingatore Crispo.
Lisa is available on Facebook and has mostly shared pictures of her three kids- Erin, Kelli, and Jack. Her profile picture is that of her and her late father.
Despite their divorce, it looks like Mary decided to enjoy her single life and spend time with her siblings’ families.
Gene’s fiance, Jill Oakley, is also on the photo-sharing platform.
She lives in Lombard, Illinois, and is a graduate of Northern Illinois University.
Jill isn’t very active on the platform, and the last post she shared was a decade ago.
Pingatore Was Left Irritated With How They Portrayed Him In The 1994 Documentary “Hoop Dreams”
The Illinois basketball coach Pingatore achieved national fame with the documentary Hoop Dreams, released in 1994.
The documentary followed two Chicago-born teenagers, Williams Gates and Arthur Agee, for four years.
Pingatore coached Gates at St. Joseph and Agee, who began playing at St. Joseph but transferred to Marshall Metropolitan after his parents failed to pay his tuition fees.
The basketball coach was upset that the documentary made him and the school look like they didn’t help Agee because he was less talented than Gates.
Speaking to CSN Chicago, Pingatore said,
In the beginning it was sort of fun. But then it came pain in the neck. Every time you turned around, they wanted to be on the bus, they wanted to be in the locker room. And the last year, I shut it down and didn’t want to do it.
via: The New York Times
Before the documentary was released, Pingatore and St. Joseph sued the producers in Cook County Circuit Court.
On the day the lawsuit was filed, Charles Lynch, the school’s president, said the documentary only showed negative images of Pingatore, which felt untrue for the man he is.
The suit was settled months later when the producers established academic scholarships at St. Joseph and Marshall.
In Case You Didn’t Know
- After hearing about Pingatore’s death, Isaiah Thomas tweeted, “I always told you, you saved my life.”
- In 2018, Pingatore won the Basketball Hall of Fame Morgan Wootten Award for lifetime achievement.
