by Meta Machulis

Mike Chianakas, who coached Dwight High School athletics from 1950 through 1953, was inducted into the Greater Peoria Sports Hall of Fame on March 14 for his accomplishments as a member of the Bradley University basketball team.

“It was a humbling experience, really, because they were drawing on what I did over 50 years ago,” Chia-nakas said of the induction. “I look back and it probably means more to me now than it ever did then.”

The induction ceremony was attended by Fred and Jeanne Zabel of Dwight, longtime friends of Chiana-kas and his wife, Sophie, who passed away in 2001.

Chianakas’ athletic career ranged from high school during the early 1940s through his retirement as a YMCA administrator in 1990. During his years of coaching in Dwight, he led the boys’ basketball, football, baseball and track teams.

He was born in Pontiac, but his family moved to Eureka when Chianakas was in third grade. At Eureka High School, he was a member of the football, basketball, baseball and track teams. As a senior football player, he had 13 interceptions, and for many years he held the state record for the most interceptions returned for touchdowns (three). In track and field, he won the state discus throw in 1943. During high school he earned 16 letters – although he humbly noted, “I always tell everybody it’s not that big a deal, because we didn’t have that many kids in school.”

He then served with the U.S. Navy Construction Battalion for three years during World War II, working with the Marines in the Aleutian Islands and Okinawa, Japan.

After returning to Illinois, Chianakas attended Bradley University in Peoria, where he played basketball and  football and participated in track. In 1949, he married Sophie (the couple later had four children). As a senior during the 1949-1950 year, he was a member of the Bradley Braves basketball team that boasted a 32-5 record and is also, as a collective, a Greater Peoria Sports Hall of Fame inductee. The team was rated as number one in the country by both the Associated Press and United Press polls, Chianakas said.

And by its record, it nearly was  – Chianakas was one of the players who led the Braves all the way to the championship games of the National Invitational and the NCAA tournaments, but they lost both to City College of New York.

Chianakas came to Dwight after graduation from Bradley. A Bradley classmate was on the Dwight school board at the time, and knowing that the school was looking for a coach, asked Chianakas if he might be interested.

Although he can’t remember exact statistics about his time coaching in Dwight, he said, “I know we had some good success. I had the most enjoyable time. The boys there were tremendous.”

What Chianakas does recall is the outstanding athletic ability and moral character of many of the students he coached in Dwight. Names familiar to many current Dwightites – names such as Geschwind, Hoffman, Jensen, Zappa and Riccolo – sprung to mind when Chianakas recalled his best players.

“The thing I was wrapped up with were the kids that I had,” he said of his Dwight students, “and I think even to this day, they’ve been community leaders, and I’m very proud of that.”

He recalled that he let the boys he coached make up their own rules of conduct, and he then became the enforcer of those rules. But in an order of his own, “I had a rule that anybody who was playing any sport had to go out for track. That’s where your legs are,” Chianakas said, explaining that leg strength and agility are crucial in basketball, baseball and football.

Before leaving Dwight, Chianakas also “got into the gas station business for two years,” but being more inclined to athletics, he accepted a position as assistant physical director of the Peoria YMCA in 1955. He was promoted to physical director before he was given a grant to work for a year in his parents’ native country of Greece from 1960 to 1961.

Chianakas was named the 1961 winner of the Illinois State Alliance of YMCAs Roknich Award for Out-standing Physical Director. He helped to start a new YMCA in East Peoria; in 1964, he did the same in Canton, where he worked until 1977; that year, he continued YMCA work at the Freeport “Y” until his retirement in 1990.

“I don’t know where the time went,” he said.

The Canton YMCA now awards young athletes with the Mike Chianakas Out-standing Youth Award. Although Chianakas primarily resides in Crystal Lake, he still owns property in Canton and enjoys visiting his friends there.

And indeed, while athletic know-how hasn’t hurt, it seems to be Chianakas’ love of people that impacted his career the most.

“The only thing that mattered was my family and the people I was surrounded with,” Chianakas said. “The people were what really made the sport.”