Coach Glenn Pacek brings more than 30 years of coaching experience to the Knights staff. He grew up in Western Pennsylvania where he was a 3-sport athlete at Pittsburgh North Catholic playing football, basketball, and tennis. He was the Defensive MVP of the football team as senior. In basketball, he was coached by Pennsylvania basketball coaching legend Don Graham who coached at North Catholic from 1948 to 2000 and until recently held the Pennsylvania record for most wins with 801.
Coach Pacek attended the University of Notre Dame where he graduated with a degree in Psychology and walked on the football team and was a member of the 1977 National Championship Team. He started his coaching career at Nazareth Academy in LaGrange Park as an assistant football and assistant basketball coach. While at Nazareth he was on Coach Tom Richardson’s staff that guided the Roadrunners to two Regional Championships and two Sectional Finals.
After 15 years at Nazareth he moved to Chicago’s Marist High School and was an assistant football and assistant basketball coach. For 16 seasons he was assistant to Head Basketball Coach Gene Nolan during which the Redhawks won 6 Regional Championships and twice reached the Sectional Finals.
Coach Pacek left Marist in 2019 to become the Head Basketball Coach of Coal City High School and led the Coalers to a 20-win season and a Regional Championship in the 2019-2020 campaign.
In 2019, Coach Pacek was inducted into the Illinois Basketball Coaches’ Association (IBCA) Hall-of-Fame. A long-time classroom teacher in History and Psychology at his previous coaching stops, Coach Pacek retired from the classroom in 2020 and currently teaches one section of Weight Training at Northridge.
