Olympian and former Penn track coach Irving Mondschein dies

Coaching ability and comic timing are what people remember the most about Irving "Moon" Mondschein, which is why Brian Mondschein spent so much time on the telephone talking to members of the track and field community after his father's death on Friday.

"They've got stories, and they just wanted to talk about my dad," he said. "It was neat for me, too. Every single person had a Moon story."

Moon Mondschein, 91, who coached at Penn for more than two decades, died Friday at an assisted- living facility in Hershey, Pa., with his family at his bedside.

Mr. Mondschein's athletic talent was unquestioned. A football and track star at New York University, he was a three-time AAU champion in the decathlon and a two-time NCAA champion in the high jump. He competed in the decathlon at the 1948 London Olympics.

He made his coaching debut at the 1952 Helsinki Games as the track and field coach of Israel's first Olympic team. After coaching in high school, he joined Penn as an assistant in 1965 and later succeeded Jim Tuppeny, who had retired, as head coach in 1979. He became a legendary figure with the Quakers.

"He gave so much of himself," said Brian Mondschein, an assistant women's track coach at Princeton. "He loved everybody. Navy coach Al Cantello told me, 'Your dad could teach a tree stump how to high jump.' That's how I understood his value, is the way he treated people that might never score a point.

"He was driven. He wanted to win, but he sort of saw the whole person. And he was funny as hell, funny and kind of outrageous. He had absolutely no filter."

Mr. Mondschein "retired" after the 1988 Olympics following a coaching stint with the U.S. team. But he later served as a volunteer assistant at Kutztown when Brian was head coach, and at Haverford.

"He brought out the best in a lot of people," Brian said. "I can't tell you how many people said, 'He was like a second father to me.' I was one of the kids whose dad was cooler than he was growing up."

Mondschein said his father did not want a funeral because "when he died, he was just going to disappear. He didn't want to make a fuss."

Irving Mondschein is survived by his wife, Momoe; two sons, Brian and Mark, and a daughter, Ilana; a sister, Roslyn Lampert, and brother-in-law, Stanley Lampert; two grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.