By Ryan Arena

L’Observateur

LAPLACE — As St. Charles Catholic softball coach Ty Monica grew up, he didn’t get to spend quite as much time with his father as he would have liked. Frank Monica worked relentless hours as assistant coach at the Tulane University, which required him to leave his home early and return late.

Today, you could say the father and son are making up for lost time.

Now the head football coach and athletic director at St. Charles, Frank works with Ty every day — the son is the team’s offensive coordinator and wide receiver coach in addition to his duties overseeing the school’s highly successful softball program as head coach.

Both Ty and his brother Nick — the head baseball coach and an assistant football coach at Rummel — have become successful at the prep coaching level.

“I had no clue,” said Frank, who said he had major reservations about guiding his sons to a profession in which the ”hours can be dreadful … you never leave it behind.”

“I didn’t know they’d be coaches. Ty, for one, had a degree in cardiopulmonary science, and I thought that was the direction he was headed. And with Nick, I didn’t have the idea that’s what he wanted to do. But when you see him watching ESPN 24-7 … when you look back at it … they’ve just always been around it. They grew up with it all.”

Ty echoed his father’s words, saying sports became ingrained in him at a young age.

“I’ve just been around the game since the day I was born,” he said. “There was always that competitive nature, always around some kind of sporting event. At some point, you just want to be that guy.”

Ty and Nick each had the opportunity to play for their father for a brief period. When Frank took over the Comets’ program in 1997-98, each were quarterbacks on the football team, and Ty played for his father on the baseball team.

“It was good but then awkward at times. Ty knew I expected more out of him. The thing was, when I was at Tulane, I had to miss so many of his games and so much time with him. It’s good to have this with him now,” said the elder Monica.

Ty said it could be tough at times to play for his father, who, as Frank admitted, could be quite demanding.

“There were nights I didn’t want to go home, because you hear it on the field, and then sometimes there was that double dip … but it’s the way it always was. Mental toughness, and it’s been instilled in us since we were little. Since I was 5. You learn to get the job done and get it done right,” said Ty.

Said Frank, “I wanted them to be very tough, not fragile. I feel like they’ve developed that alligator skin.”

Ty just completed his ninth year as teacher and coach at the school, and he calls the opportunity to coach with his father “an honor.”

“It’s really a pleasure. I don’t feel like I’m being biased when I say this because you ask people around and hear the same, but he’s one of the best coaches around, if not the best,” said Ty.

“It’s an honor to work under this guy, but even further than that, to have him at family functions and be able to call him ‘Dad’ is an amazing thing.”

At the same time, Ty said the expectations on the football staff are not all that different than when he played.

“Some things never change,” he said with a chuckle.

“If something goes wrong, I know it’s gonna be my fault. But it’s making me a better coach. I know that I have to have my A-game at all times. You just have to learn when he is your dad and when he is your head coach.”

But despite the tough love, the father indeed holds the son and pupil in high regard.

“He sees the game and is able to analyze it so well,” he said. “He breaks down the film and has a great eye for what goes on. He’s highly intelligent and very intutitive … he makes most of the adjustments at halftime, which takes a lot of pressure off me.”

Futhermore, the bond between father and son allows for a higher level of trust.

“He won’t give me the company answer. He’ll tell me how he feels. There’s a separation between us as coaches and as father and son, and you recognize it. But loyalty’s always the first thing a head coach looks for in an assistant, and that’s never a question.”

Before the 1997 softball season, Frank offered Ty a choice to remain as an assistant coach on the baseball team, or take the head coaching position in softball.

With the chance to oversee his own program, Ty took over the softball team. Since then, the results have been impressive — five trips to Sulphur, two appearances in the state championship game and one state championship.

The title came in 1997, only his second season as coach — in his first year, he guided the Comets to the state semifinals.

“He’s built it into something very solid,” said Frank. “Even taking the record and the trips to Sulphur out of it, the facilities, the foresight he puts into things … when you go back there (to the softball field) everything is set up. You’ve got parents who are willing to help and work hard. With this, it’s not just about doing a job, but making it a better job. You can tell it’s on solid footing, and I’m very, very proud.

“To do all of that, and have a family with three kids, my grandchildren, and manage to be a solid coach, I have to be impressed and proud.”

For Ty, the things he’s learned from his father are plentiful. But he’s definitely made some of his father’s specific teachings into staples of his program.

“Instilling discipline, hard work, and mental toughness,” he said. “But at the same time, it’s about learning how to instill that into a player. I feel like we do it as a school now. He brings a lot of wisdom to any game, to anything he’s around. We’ve been around this program so long, guys like myself and Wayne (Stein, assistant baseball and football coach who also graduated from St. Charles), my dad who even before he got here was friends with the coaches at our school … because of that, because of how much we’ve put into it, we feel like it’s our job to make it successful.

“We can’t take credit … we’ve had so many great kids that we’ve had the opportunity to coach. So we just want to help them become the best that they can be. And by the time they’re seniors, we hope that’ve reached that point. The credit goes to them, but we want to help them get to that point as much as possible.”

Sounds like something Dad might say.