Archbishop Hoban's T.K. Griffith is a great basketball coach, even better educator and ambassador

Griffith has been a teacher and basketball coach for over 30 years at his alma mater, and the principal for almost three years

AKRON, Ohio – When Archbishop Hoban won the OHSAA Division I boys basketball state championship last season, head coach T.K. Griffith got on the ladder, faced the student section, and led the Hoban community in a cheer during the net-cutting ceremony.

“Give me an H…Give me an O…Give me a B…” Griffith shouted as the fans screamed back even louder until they finished the entire cheer.

That night would have been special for any coach. But for one with such deep roots and a vested interested in the school? That night was magical.

After all, Griffith graduated from Hoban in 1989, was a ball boy when he was in middle school, was on the last state championship team, has been a teacher at the school for over 30 years, the basketball coach for 31 seasons and was officially named as Hoban’s principal on Sept. 23, 2021.

His wife Amy? A Hoban grad. All four Griffith children? Hoban grads, with the youngest – Andrew – a senior on that championship team. His dad and brother? Amy’s dad and sister? All Hoban grads.

“I love Hoban, I bleed blue and gold,” Griffith said. “No matter what role I am in, if I am teaching English, coaching basketball or being the principal, I want to try to do it well.”

To say Griffith has taken on these roles and more, such as admissions director at one point, and done them well is an understatement.

“It's a hefty load and it's an astronomical task to try to balance and I think T.K. admittedly is probably a bit hard on himself in still trying to figure out how to balance it,” Hoban President Chris DiMauro said. “I don't know how he does it, to be quite honest with you, but he does it. And I don't think that we've missed the beat in any of our school initiatives or our academic achievement-based initiatives and obviously he's the head of all of that. I don't think we've missed a beat having a caring, vibrant school culture which ultimately, he's in charge of too along with me.

“And then obviously hoops speaks for itself. You can't judge anyone any better than the kids love playing for him, he has winning records and he won a Division I state championship, all while being a principal. So I think just look at look at the data and it speaks for itself.”

As a basketball coach, he has not only led Hoban to that Division I state title last year - the first since his senior year of 1989 - but with an 81-52 win over Holy Name on January 30 of this year, Griffith won his 500th game as the head coach of his alma mater.

But like everything else, winning 500 games for Griffith wasn’t about him, even if earlier in his career he might have wanted the spotlight a little bit.

“I want to do well for Hoban, and I want to represent us well,” Griffith said after the win. “I used to care what people think and I used to want to get an article (about me) when I was in my 20s, that was important to me, but now it’s not.”

Griffith then went on to deflect the praise, as he often does.

“I have a sense of gratitude that I am in a place with so many good people,” Griffith said. “It’s easier here. Even if I was a puppet, and didn’t know a thing about basketball, I probably would have won 300 or 400. I hope I helped with 50 or 100 of them with a game plan or something but it is hard to fail when you have such a supportive family who is going to pick you up here.”

It’s that sense of humbleness and love of the Hoban community that made Griffith an easy choice for DiMauro in May of 2021 when the school needed to name an interim principal and then eventually nominate a candidate to Hoban’s Board of Directors to take over in a full-time capacity.

“T.K. in terms of leadership, humble servant is the first phrase that comes to mind,” DiMauro said. “He's incredibly well-respected in our community and beyond. But probably most of all, when I looked for a person that could lead us in the principal role, I wanted a person that wanted every decision to be about the kids. And when I look at him, it's so silly to think about him ever making a non-kid based decision that you just know that's your guy. No brainer, complete no brainer.”

Griffith’s student-first mentality was on display less than a half hour after Hoban had won its state semifinal game against Toledo St. John’s last season. In his meeting with the media, Griffith was still thinking about the day-to-day operations of the school and those who made it possible for him to not only be a principal but be able to step away from the school to be the head coach of the basketball team when need be.

“The principal job is not for the faint of heart, so right now a lot of people are carrying me,” Griffith said that night. “My assistant principals are literally carrying us right now – Catherine Perrow, Jen Mattis, Tim Lucey – because obviously basketball is taking its toll on us.”

As the former principal at Stow-Munroe Falls High School, DiMauro knows it takes more than just one person to lead the school each day, and believes Griffith, Perrow, Mattis and Lucey have formed what he calls an “incredible team.”

“They're really great at taking cues off of one another, and they're all great at times of reaching out to me for my expertise as a former principal,” DiMauro said. “I think they take nuggets. Some of them are applicable, others maybe not so much. The three of them along with T.K. are seeing a tremendous amount of growth in them since our taking over here, going on three years here in June. And to see what we started with and what we were faced with to where we're at now, it's like a night and day growth.”

To help build the team and because he knew how tough the new role of principal was going to be in that first year, Griffith stepped away from teaching. But after a year, he went to DiMauro and asked one thing of the school's president, who believes Griffith’s “love of all loves is being in the classroom.”

“He came to me that second year and said I think I want to get back into the classroom for at least one period a day,” DiMauro said. “You could tell that that was something he just kind of ached for and it was an easy decision for me.”

His passion for teaching English not only comes out in the classroom, but leaks over to the basketball world as well at times, especially in his postgame comments. When asked what makes then-junior Jonas Nichols so good last season, the first response out of Griffith’s mouth was “ten thousand hours is the magic number of greatness, Malcom Gladwell.”

His response led to research that night before even beginning to write about Nichols. So even reporters end up with homework in the presence of T.K. Griffith.

Archbishop Hoban boys basketball head coach T.K. Griffith talks to his team during a timeout of their win over GlenOak in the 2023 district semifinals / Jeff Harwell, SBLive Sports

One benefit of having Griffith in the classroom is that he can understand the side of a teacher and the side of an administrator.

“I think it helps him stay connected with our teachers in a sense too, because you don't really forget what it's like to be in the classroom with 25 kids and some days are better than others,” DiMauro said. “And it's easy for us as administrators to look at teachers and say, hey, please do this and please do that. I've been out of the classroom now for 10 years. And so sometimes I forget what life was like as a high school English teacher grading papers and being asked by your administrators to do this, that, and the other thing so I think it's a unique piece that he's able to offer.”

When asked if he had Griffith in class when he was a student, DiMauro, who graduated from Hoban in 1999, chuckled and said, “I did.”

“(He was) the same as he is now,” DiMauro said. “He has a really fantastic way of humanizing all of the work that we do. I think we all had those teachers in our past that you learned a whole lot, but you never doubted that they cared about you, and they find a way to connect it to things that are meaningful, and I think that's still him today.”

Caring about people is just something that comes naturally to Griffith, whether it is as a teacher, a principal or a basketball coach. And sometimes, it is when two or more of those roles get combined.

“With me going to college, he is just keeping me disciplined in knowing what I have to do,” said Nichols, who became Hoban’s all-time leading scorer this season and has signed to play at Kent State University. “He is on top of me, and he is our principal, so I can go talk to him about grades and what I need. He is a great role model for me.”

The way Griffith cares about his students and players was evident to Nichols right away, even if as a freshman Nichols didn’t really think or care about the academics part of being a student-athlete. It was how Griffith cares about more than basketball that stuck with the young player before his sophomore year.

“One thing I learned about Hoban is coach T.K. doesn't really care about what's on the court, he really cares about what's off the court,” Nichols said. “And once I got that in my head from freshman year to senior year, it gave me a real big jump in life, not just on the basketball court."

Griffith wouldn’t take all the credit for the improvement in Nichols, however, making sure that those in the school building who saw Nichols on a day-to-day basis are recognized for their efforts as well.

"I have a ton of gratitude for him staying here and believing in us but also all the people through the school day that help him," Griffith said. "Our administrators, our teachers, our counselors, our tutors. He doesn’t need the help so much from a cognitive way, but just staying on track with things. There are so many people who have stepped up here in his life to influence him. It's just an amazing story."

That’s just one of so many stories that can be told about how Griffith has impacted the life of one of his players without it being about basketball. And it is also part of what made Griffith such an appealing candidate for DiMauro, as he had watched T.K. for years and knew that even with as successful as he was on the hardwood, Griffith was always going to care more about what happened in the classroom and throughout the school building first and foremost.

“What I appreciate about T.K. is his ability to remain a teacher first,” DiMauro said. “And we try to remind all of the coaches that we hire that you’re a teacher. Yes, we love winning games, yes, we love state championships and all of those things, but at the end of the day, these kids have to look at you as a teacher and you can't forget that.”

As with everything else, Griffith leads by example. While basketball is important, it cannot be the most important. And Griffith’s teams at Hoban embody that ideal.

“Playing a part in the Hoban community I think is an expectation of the kids that are on his team, to be leaders in the hallways, to model what it means to be a Hoban Knight,” DiMauro said. “We're a Holy Cross School so it's to be a person of hope, it's to do the right things in the classroom and treat people well, so that other kids in the building, all 850 of them, can look at the members of his team and say, Oh, that's how we do it here. It's kind of an unspoken modeling that he demands out of those guys, and I certainly appreciate it. I think all the adults in our building appreciate his desire for his roster to look and act like a Hoban student should.”

It would be one thing for Griffith to just demand that out of his players, but he lives it himself. After wins, he never says how great the win was for him or for his team, it is always about Hoban as a whole. That was on full display in Dayton last season for the state semifinals and state championship.

“I can’t believe that this is true, it doesn’t feel real,” Griffith said as he sat at the table addressing the media after the state semifinal win. “I am just so proud and excited for our school community and for these players.”

After winning the state championship the next night, a visibly exhausted and emotional Griffith hugged as many people wearing blue and gold as he could and then again talked about the community.

“I am exhausted and tired right now, but this means so much to the Hoban community and this means so much to these kids,” Griffith said. "This is some sort of spiritual experience and a blessing for our entire Hoban community."

With all of years of dedication put in at One Holy Cross Boulevard, it would be easy to say that Griffith has been the blessing to the Hoban family.

“I don't think it's anything that anyone around here like readily chooses to point out because it just is,” DiMauro says of the importance of Griffith to Hoban. “It's kind of hard to put into words. I think all of us appreciate his kind of willingness to continue to keep the Hoban torch lit and to do it in a way that really validates all the men and women that have come before us and will certainly come after us. Our name is on it for a short period of time and he's just a great model of that.”

-- Ryan Isley | ryan@scorebooklive.com | @sbliveoh