Paul Hindes sat in the den of his home late last week, talking to a reporter while looking at the many photos and plaques adorning the walls.
“I love this room. It’s my little escape,” he said. “You don’t live in the past. You live with the past.”
Hindes’ past is unlike any in WPIAL history. There has been no coach like him. Hindes guided his Baldwin teams to a total of 16 WPIAL championships and three PIAA championships during a long coaching career that extended nearly 50 years. If the number of championships isn’t jaw-dropping enough, get this: Hindes did it in three sports. He won eight WPIAL titles in softball, five in girls volleyball and three in girls basketball during the 1980s and 1990s. The PIAA titles all came in volleyball.
“You can count on one hand how many coaches in the history of Western Pa. high school sports have had the type of impact Paul Hindes has had on his players,” Baldwin girls basketball coach Kyle DeGregorio said.
That impact was gigantic, but often misunderstood. Talk to some of his former players, and a common theme emerges. Hindes could be an absolute bear to play for, but the respect his players had for him and the way they would bust their butts to achieve the goals of the team showed there was a method to the madness.
Hindes, 70, admits his demanding, in-your-face coaching style likely wouldn’t fly in today’s world, a sentiment shared by one of his star players, Jen Flynn Oldenburg.
“Nothing was ever good enough for him, but it’s not because he was mad or angry. It was because he knew that to compete at a high level, he needed to put us in pressure situations in practice,” said Flynn Oldenburg, a 1996 graduate.
Hindes, Flynn Oldenburg and 1991 grad Kelly Kovach Schoenly are in the WPIAL Hall of Fame. Flynn Oldenburg and Kovach Schoenly are former Post-Gazette Athletes of the Year who played volleyball and softball for Hindes. Each has followed in Hindes’ footsteps to become highly successful coaches. Both are head coaches at Ohio State — Kovach Schoenly coaches softball and Flynn Oldenburg volleyball.
“I think he was the most relentless coach I ever had,” Kovach Schoenly said. “We had really talented athletes. For him to get us to play as a team and to understand the team concept, that’s what took us over the edge. We would literally do anything for each other. And he bred that. We bonded and leaned on each other.”
First and foremost, Hindes was a teacher. He taught social studies at Baldwin High School for 34 years. A Bethel Park graduate, Hindes studied pre-law at Duquesne University, but said he “wasn’t smart enough” to start a career in law. He took a teaching job at Baldwin and began coaching middle school basketball and track in the early 1970s.
“I didn’t want to be a middle school coach,” Hindes said. “That’s when I found myself in the right place at the right moment. I told the athletic director that I didn’t want to do it anymore. I was in his office when the phone rang. The [high school girls] volleyball coach resigned. [The athletic director] said to me, ‘I just lost a volleyball coach.’ I said, ‘No, you just found one.’”
Hindes was extremely confident considering there was one glaring omission from his resume — he didn’t know anything about the sport. But that didn’t stop him from starting to build a powerhouse program in 1978, and it didn’t take long for his new players to realize their lives were about to change, like it or not.
“When I walked in, the girls weren’t serious about volleyball. And here comes this coach who is very serious and very passionate, wanting them to be the best they can be,” said Hindes. “They would cry everyday at practice. Suddenly, volleyball changed.
“I can remember buying a book by [legendary UCLA volleyball coach] Al Scates because I didn’t know anything about volleyball. There was no YouTube. No Google. I went to camps and clinics. I read a chapter in that book each day and then taught them what I learned.”
Hindes, who often coached multiple sports each school year, quickly took the reins of the girls basketball program. He won his first WPIAL title in 1981, and the Highlanders went on to three-peat. The first of his WPIAL girls volleyball titles came in 1986 and the first softball crown came in 1989. Hindes won a staggering 11 WPIAL titles from 1989-1996.
The 1989 volleyball team might have been his best. It’s also in the WPIAL Hall of Fame. Kovach Schoenly was one of three all-state players on that team. The Highlanders didn’t lose a match and dropped only two games the entire season.
“We had eight or nine Division I athletes and he got the best out of us,” Kovach Schoenly said.
The Highlanders also won state titles in 1990 and 1991.
As a head coach, Hindes always guided girls teams at Baldwin. He said that a man coaching girls teams wasn’t the most accepted thing at the time, but added that there was a good reason for him doing so.
“A lot of people looked down and said, ‘You’re only a girls coach.’ But at Baldwin, those were the right kids to coach,” Hindes said.
Hindes had a stint as a college coach, as well. He coached the Duquesne women’s basketball team for four years in the mid-1980s, helping the Dukes make the giant transition from Division III to Division I. That job wasn’t a full-time position back in those days, so Hindes still taught and coached sports at Baldwin at the same time.
And teach he did, while always trying to relay lessons beyond what was in a textbook. One year, Hindes told his students they would be having a quiz the following day. Few kids studied for it, figuring it was only going to make a minimal effect on their grade. Well, Hindes made it worth 10,000 points. Quickly, nearly all of the students had a failing grade, causing parents to call the school to complain. So, Hindes told them he would give them a chance to bring up their grade via a “big test” the following week. The kids studied hard for it. Unfortunately, Hindes made it worth just five points.
“I think it’s important sometimes to teach kids that life isn’t always fair and you have to prepare for the unexpected,” said Hindes. “It was an opportunity for them to learn that every little thing they do counts.”
Hindes could have a hard shell and was sometimes feared, but he was caring and had a huge heart. Case in point: Early in her sophomore year, Kovach Schoenly’s brother, Mike, was killed in a car accident. That morning, Hindes called Kovach Schoenly, and what transpired over the next few days still impacts her to this day.
“It happened early on a Thursday morning. I didn’t go to school and he called me at 10 a.m.,” Kovach Schoenly recalls. “I just remember being on the phone with him for an hour or two. I would just cry. He didn’t always say something, but he was on there with me. Friday night comes around and we had a viewing at the funeral home, and he shows up with the entire team. We had a tournament the next day and he told me he wanted me to be there, so I went. He knew exactly how to navigate it and get me through that time. I needed that distraction.”
Hindes retired as a teacher and head coach in 2007. He was an assistant coach for a number of years, his final role working for DeGregorio during the 2018-19 season. In March, the Highlanders earned a huge upset of Central Dauphin, the state’s No. 1-ranked team in Class 6A, in the first round of the PIAA playoffs. The players made sure to call Hindes afterward, knowing he would be proud of their accomplishment.
Nowadays, Hindes resides in South Park with his wife of 53 years, Mary Kay. They have three children and five grandchildren. Hindes spends a lot of time with his grandkids, playing pickleball, and doing a lot of fishing. Fishing has been a passion of his for much of his life.
“Once the bug hits, you can’t get rid of it,” Hindes said.
He and former Baldwin track coach Chuck McKinney formed the Baldwin Fly Fishing Club in 1979. Hindes would later co-found Family Tyes in 1993, a youth mentor program involving fly fishing in which Hindes taught — yes, still teaching — kids how to fish. About five years ago, Family Tyes was dissolved and became part of the YMCA of Greater Pittsburgh.
There are lots of fishing photos on that wall in Hindes’ den, a place where he likes to sit back and recall the great times and the great teams. And there sure are a lot of them.
“So many great memories. So many great kids. Great assistant coaches and great parents,” he said. “It’s like I was dropped into the right place at the right time.”
Brad Everett: beverett@post-gazette.com and Twitter: @BREAL412.
First Published: May 7, 2020, 10:15 a.m.