Czartosieski's Retirement From Teaching Appears To Have Had Bearing On Westhampton Beach School District's Decision To Not Bring Him Back As Tennis Coach

John Czartosieski said he heard from former players and opposing coaches over the past week who reached out to him after they learned of the surprising decision by the Westhampton Beach School District to not bring him back as the boys and girls varsity tennis coach.

“Everybody is just as shocked as I was,” he said.

It appears, though, that Czartosieski’s retirement from his mathematics teaching position that he held in the district for 26 years, which became official on July 1, may have been his undoing.

“This year, following the retirement of our longtime varsity tennis coach, a decision was made to appoint a new coach to oversee the tennis program,” Westhampton Beach Board of Education President Suzanne Mensch said in an email on Monday. “We are truly thankful to John for helping to build such a successful program.”

Czartosieski said last week he filed all of the necessary paperwork and let the district know of his intentions to retire back in February, as he was required to do. Czartosieski also said he didn’t think his decision to retire from his teaching position should have had any bearing on his head coaching positions, and mentioned there are other coaches within the district who have been retired who still hold their coaching jobs.

Mensch couldn’t comment any further, she said, because it was a personnel matter.

Carolyn Probst, the district’s deputy superintendent, who is set to officially take over for retiring Superintendent Michael Radday on August 17, said it’s the school district’s intention to hire Matt Reed as Czartosieski’s replacement at the next School Board meeting on August 23. Reed has experience coaching within the district, but not tennis. He coached both middle school softball and soccer recently, and while he hasn’t coached tennis within the district, he does have experience both coaching and playing the sport outside of the district.

Prior to coming to Westhampton Beach, Reed, who is about to enter his fourth year in the district as a special education teacher, was the junior varsity boys tennis coach at Elwood and he played tennis at St. Joseph’s College, where he stayed on as the assistant coach for both the men’s and women’s tennis programs for two years after graduating.

Czartosieski coached for 25 years at Westhampton Beach, 22 of them at the varsity level, and amassed well over 500 career victories combined on both the boys and girls teams. He has won numerous league, division and county titles, and even coached the 2018 girls team to a Long Island Championship, becoming the first team from Suffolk County to ever do so. He’s coached some top-notch players who have gone on to have successful college careers, some of whom moved on to become successful high school and college coaches themselves.

Richard “Juni” Wingfield has been on the opposing sidelines of Czartosieski numerous times as the varsity boys and girls tennis coach at Southampton for the past 33 years. As Wingfield noted, his Southampton teams have “always been the bridesmaid, never the bride to Westhampton,” talking to the overall success of “Coach Ski,” as he’s known in the local tennis circuit.

“We applauded his success because we knew it takes a lot of work to get — especially our kids on the East End — a Long Island Championship or a county championship. We admired him for that,” he said. “And you know what? Good teachers are good coaches, and good coaches are good teachers. I have tennis players who haven’t played an ounce of tennis, but I’ve always motivated them, and that’s the way Coach Ski has always been. He’s been taking my lambs to the slaughter for a while now but he was always still concerned about their personal success and the team’s success.”

With Czartosieski now seemingly out as head coach at Westhampton Beach — the official decision to be made at the board meeting later this month — Wingfield asked a simple question.

“Is Westhampton truly a tennis community?” he said. “At the end of the day, honestly, something’s really amiss here. The district is missing the point. You judge him on his success, and that’s not always about winning matches, it’s what kind of individuals have become as a result of that success. Of course, I always says sports is a metaphor for life, you lose gracefully, you win gracefully. Winning isn’t enough now it seems.”