Hall of Fame coach Mike Schnable, pillar of Oswego schools and community, remembered as ‘always upbeat’

Mike Schnable was the kind of man whom people wanted to talk to.

His players loved him. He could build a relationship with anybody. To have him as a coach was to have a friend. Schnable, who coached basketball, cross country and track and field for more than 30 years at Oswego High School, was a Hall of Fame coach. He was an even better person and family man.

He forever lived by the phrase that the glass is always half full.

“The glass could be 16 ounces and if there’s two ounces of water in the glass he would say that the glass is half full,” said Terry Coley, former sports editor at the Oswego Ledger-Sentinel who also worked with Schnable in Oswego SD308. “That is the way he lived his life.”

Schnable, a pillar of the Oswego community as coach and as an educator at Traughber Junior High School for 30 years, died on March 21. He was 73.

Born in Evanston, Schnable grew up in Harvey and was a proud alum of Thornton High School. He later ran cross country at what now is Aurora University.

After three years at Boulder Hill Elementary as an aide and sixth grade teacher, Schnable moved to Traughber Junior High in 1977, where he taught science until 2007.

“The guy was phenomenal in the classroom,” Coley said. “He made learning fun. He was innovative. He made kids want to learn. He had that energy in the classroom. In my 34 years of teaching, I would put him in the top 10 of the hundreds and hundreds of teachers I knew. He was not just an outstanding coach. He was an outstanding teacher. He is in the Hall of Fame as an educator, and coach.”

Schnable started as head boys and girls cross country coach at Oswego High School in 1983 and continued until 2001. He won more than 25 conference titles in track and cross country. He served as an assistant and head girls basketball coach from 1984-2007, winning 306 games as head coach. Schnable was inducted into the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2013.

“He was the kind of coach that would make his kids better. He was always upbeat,” Coley said. “The guy was funny all the time. He would make the kids laugh. Regardless of how good or how poor a kid was, he would make sure they felt wanted and needed on the team. As a husband and as a father, I wish I could be the same husband and father Mike was. He family is so together because he made it that way. He gave that same love to his athletes as his family. He was the kind of guy you just loved being around.”

Former Oswego boys basketball coach Matt Borrowman, who was an assistant under Schnable’s son, Kevin, called Mike Schnable a father figure and coaching mentor.

“He made girls basketball a great thing at OHS, he really did,” Borrowman said. “The girls loved him and respected him. Late in his career they got really good. People went to their games because he was so liked and respected. Mike knew the game very well. He was highly intelligent. A lot of what I know about the game is what I learned from Mike.”

Schnable did not stay retired from coaching long.

He came aboard as a volunteer assistant for the boys basketball program under his son, Kevin, in 2007. He was perhaps the missing link. One year later, Oswego enjoyed the best season in program history, taking second place in the state in Class 3A.

Joe Kwiatkowski, who starred on that Oswego team in 2008-09 and now teaches at Aurora’s Steck Elementary, spoke of the valuable lessons Schnable passed on.

“The one thing I learned from him is that X’s and O’s will always be there, but the thing that you need with anybody, and [what] was his strongest skill set, was relationships. He knew how to connect with anybody on the team,” Kwiatkowski said. “He always had the right conversations and the right words to say. I think it really resonated with kids.

“It just seemed like he had a strong rapport with his son on our team. He brought some things that we never knew about. He kind of gave us an edge, and it helped the program take off to new heights.”

Kwiatkowski’s relationship with Schnable hit close to home. Their families were next-door neighbors for 20 years.

“It was interesting, growing up I never put two and two together until I got to about middle school that this dad was running the basketball program. It was a testament to who he was,” Kwiatkowski said. “He knew how to relate to you. As great as he was as a coach, he was an even better person. Everybody on our street knew who he was. He was the kind of guy that if you left your garage door open, he’d close it for you, or shovel your driveway for you. I’d see him on the basketball court, and the next day we’d be outside on the driveway and would be talking. He was just a down-to-earth guy that could connect and relate to so many people.”

Later on in life, Schnable became a coveted high school track meet starter. He worked local meets at Oswego and Oswego East, and also conference and state series meets. He could run a track meet “like a machine gun,” getting through it in an hour and a half.

Tributes from the track and field community, even beyond Oswego, poured out this week on social media.

“He was a pillar of the Oswego community as a teacher and coach. I will greatly miss my friend that always made me laugh and challenged me to be better,” tweeted Kevin Rafferty, Waubonsie Valley boys track and field coach.

Oswego track and field coach Jeff Edwards said he will greatly miss Schnable’s stories at track meets.

“Mike would call your name and then walk up to you and put his arm around you and start laughing before he even starts telling you the story,” Edwards said. “The great stories and great advice he gave me year after year has molded me to the coach I am today. It always meant so much when Mike would congratulate me and talk to me how proud he was of our program. Our hearts are so broken that we will no longer see him at our meets, and I don’t know if that void will ever be filled with such a great person like Mike being gone.”

Schnable, also an inductee into the Oswego Athletic Department Hall of Fame, was inducted into the Oswego High School Legacy Wall in 2021.

“He was just an awesome man,” Kwiatkowski said. “He never made it about himself. He was always about what he could do for everyone else. He was about what he could do to make the Oswego schools and community a better place.”