By day, he cares for 987 boys and girls in their brand-new home.

	Robin Rombach, Post-Gazette John Sarandrea with sons Ronnie, left, and Joey: A rare respite from a busy life. Click photo for larger image.

Several afternoons a week and on weekends, he cares for his two special-needs sons.

He is a principal.

He is a single parent.

He is also a singularly successful high-school basketball coach, but what's time with another dozen or so boys when you already devote most of the rest of your waking hours to nearly a thousand children?

John Sarandrea has been called many things the past 12 years around New Castle, a lot of them unkind, because of his positions as basketball coach and principal, in that order. On this day, though, he gets recognized by his family as something else, something special, first and foremost.

Father.

Just spend a few hours with him, just watch him perform duties with his children and others' children.

School's out

The principal is missing until about 40 minutes from the end of the fourth-to-last school day. He crams a bunch of students into a school van and ferries them to another district school for a rehearsal because their auditorium is under construction. But the simple drop-off job grows into a 3 1/2-hour adventure.

Robin Rombach, Post-Gazette Sarandrea tries to keep up with Ronnie, left, and Joey. Afternoon walks are a regular -- and necessary -- part of a busy daily routine. Click photo for larger image.

Turns out, the rehearsal is a bit disorganized for the exacting principal's taste, so he stays to preside. Only when the next night's fashion show for the new dress-uniform code gets all worked out does he agree to drive the participating students back to the 6-month-old version of New Castle High.

Once there, he settles behind a new desk in a new office with the same old priorities. The shelves behind his chair contain school artifacts on the left, and a shrine to his two sons -- Ronnie, 8, and Joey, 6 -- on the right.

"In the beginning, when you start a process of this magnitude, you never think you're going to get done," Sarandrea says. "It's far more beautiful than we envisioned it to be."

He just as well could be talking about his sons, but he is speaking of the new Ne-Ca-Hi, as it's called.

The school is indeed remarkable for any community, let alone one still working to revitalize itself from a generation-old downturn that followed heady days of manufacturing, pottery and steel. Sparkling red brick on the outside, school-color gray and black bricks lining the inside, the building comes replete with all the modern accoutrements: electric-eye bathroom plumbing, completely computerized classrooms, air conditioning, a food-court cafeteria. ("The Slushees ... they're a big seller.")

It's quite a leap to go from Pennsylvania's oldest high school, at 95 years, to its newest. And Sarandrea still oversees the jump.

There's another year and a half worth of construction yet to go. The junior high, on the second floor of the new school, will be connected to the new auditorium and arts center. Those will ultimately join the renovated fieldhouse (which explains why his Hurricanes this past season played the first 13 games on the road and were bused 6 miles to the Neshannock YMCA to practice). Seconds later, he arises from his desk and heads out the door just before the students.

It's father time.

Therapy

"There's his crutches," the father says, steering his SUV around a corner at nearby Croton Elementary School at 2:58 p.m. On the other side of the brick wall where the metal crutches lean, his son, a kindergartner, stands with his walker between two school aides. Sarandrea scoops up Joey, who grabs his dad's tie. The father plops him into the backseat, then opens the trunk to load the walker and crutches -- the tools of a child with cerebral palsy.

"He's already way beyond his age level for this," the father says. "He's really a remarkable kid. Physical therapy. Occupational therapy. Speech therapy. Vision therapy."

And they're off to the downtown YMCA, across the square on West Washington Street from the office of the boys' mother, dentist Paula Joseph, from whom Sarandrea was divorced three months ago. On the Monday, Tuesday and Thursday evenings plus weekends when he has custody of the boys, they perform physical therapy on their own. For Joey, this means 500 paces across the parquet floor of the Y's downstairs dance studio that is all theirs between 3 and 4 p.m.

Independent steps are their goal. They want Joey to walk into first grade next fall without crutches. So he toils like this four days a week, on legs that have undergone muscle-lengthening surgeries behind each knee and inside each thigh. That's in addition to the eye-muscle surgeries and Botox shots to relax muscles and a lifetime of medical attention.

None of that matters to Joey now, who gathers up his tiny body, moving legs with straps and metal braces. He smiles with each step, throwing his arms in the air for balance, moving his shoulders, next his hips and legs. He falls forward on his hands 50 times, but each time his dad helps pick him up by the waist and kisses him, often apologizing for failing to catch him -- though he catches him without fail 50 other times.

"This kid works hard every day of his life, and he never C-O-M-P-L-A-I-N-S," Sarandrea says, spelling out the last word. "This is like our Little League, our soccer. His mom is a whiz at this, too."

Joey often leans backward against him, sometimes just to feel the support, one time to put his left hand around his father's head and ask: "Am I doing good?" They end up performing 521 steps.

"That's a new record for us," Sarandrea marvels. He picks up the boy, and Joey pats his father on the back.

Three's company

Father and youngest son grab a drink at home while waiting for 4:05 p.m., when the baby sitter will deliver Ronnie, the firstborn son Sarandrea calls "my big guy." Ronnie is a lanky third-grader with severe mental retardation. He doesn't talk. He doesn't walk on his own. But he enjoys activity, nay needs to move, as much as his little brother. So that means more family physical therapy in the afternoon, with the boys ambling behind matching walkers around the quiet streets of Sarandrea's subdivision. "It's standard with them," he says.

Ronnie grabs his wheeled walker and scoots off. Joey is so deft with his wheeled walker, he props himself on the rear bar and coasts. All the while, he is endlessly chirping about basketball. He also is starting to worry about being late for NeCa Hi's summer-league basketball game at 7 this night.

After Sarandrea picks up a few calls on a cellular phone that rings almost every 15 minutes, the guys trundle off to a nearby restaurant. The father sits smack dab in the middle, the better to feed each boy. Ronnie moans when the food is slow to arrive, and the father comforts him, kissing his head. He orders a meal called a Triple Play, and he completes dinner for three unassisted. He holds their drinks up to their mouths. He cuts and serves their food. When he talks about hoping to quit coaching and become a superintendent someday soon, there's little doubt he can handle that balancing act.

At 5:52 p.m., Joey from the backseat drives his father nuts with the worry: "We're going to be late."

At 6:04 p.m., Joey looks for the fuel gauge: "You on E?"

"I don't know what I'd do without him," Sarandrea kids. "He's my co-pilot."

Play time

They get to the Neshannock Y game on time, moments before tipoff, though assistant Ralph Blundo has the team in control.

Mom has dressed the boys for the occasion in matching, school-color shorts and T-shirts.

Ronnie in his stroller gets perched at the end of the bench. The father rubs his hand through the boy's hair. He whispers to him, "You look tired."

Joey takes his normal seat in the middle of the bench. He is such a part of Red Hurricanes landscape, the point guard's mother -- who also happens to be his kindergarten teacher -- once wondered why the kid was outside the locker room after a close call last season. "My dad might be using bad words," he explained to Doreen Richards before dispensing coachly criticism. "And David didn't have a very good game."

Coaching is the one job where Sarandrea attracts negativity like a magnet, and this after four WPIAL championships in 12 Red Hurricanes seasons and a record three consecutive in Class AAAA (1997-99) . There was that ugly transfer business with Marcus Thomas coming from Texas to New Castle in time for that first title in 1993, yet even that has a happy ending to Sarandrea: Thomas sprouted into a Texas Ranger.

True, Sarandrea is exacting, unforgiving and blunt with his players, but then maybe they wouldn't have won all those titles -- WPIAL major championships in football and, this past winter, girls' basketball (whose players autographed Joey's backpack).

The New Castle faithful being rather spoiled, the basketball coach gets heckled at even this summer-league game. The coach gives it right back to the heckler: "You come over and try it." Forget about walking a mile in his shoes; try a mile, then 521 steps, then the subdivision streets, then dinner, then basketball, then back to dad's home for baths. After he drives the boys to their mom's house, he heads home alone. "Then," Sarandrea says, "daddy craps out." Assistant Blundo looks at it another way: "The man can cope."

Today, John and Ronnie (who share the same Nov. 26 birthday) and Joey fly to Phoenix for a much-deserved vacation. Just the three of them. They will meet the boys' uncle, who lives there, and their grandparents are jetting in from New York. For once, it's dad's day. But for single fathers like him, for fathers of special-needs children, for fathers of every stripe who put in time to perform the world's most difficult job -- parenting -- it's not radically different than the other 364. Simply another day to celebrate life, step by step.

At Croton kindergarten graduation recently, when each student was asked to stand up and tell everyone what he or she hopes to become, Joey's answer was easy.

"A coach. Like my dad."