Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

‘Coach Patrick’ remembered as mentor in Las Vegas youth sports

Hana Moniz

Wade Vandervort

Hana Moniz sits in her late husband Patrick Moniz’s office and speaks about losing him to COVID Thursday, July 22, 2021.

Hana Moniz

Hana Moniz poses for a photo while holding a portrait of her late husband Patrick Moniz who died of COVID Thursday, July 22, 2021. Launch slideshow »

In a ritual Patrick Moniz repeated every night when he and his wife awaited the birth of their sixth child, the father would delicately place his hands on her stomach and begin to pray.

Sometimes he would whisper to the Lord, said his wife of 30 years, Hana Moniz, and other times he made sure his pleas could be heard. But one night, overtaken by emotion, Patrick began to weep.

She asked what was wrong.

“The Bible says that God creates us in our mother’s womb,” he responded, adding that the moment was perfect “for you to have experienced God this close to you,” she said. Hana Moniz said she could feel God sitting by her husband 13 years later in a Henderson Hospital ICU room while she prayed over him as he was dying from COVID-19.

“Watching my husband as he lay on that bed,” she said, pausing to cry, “it was hard, but I truly believe that God was present.”

Shortly after 9 p.m. on July 12, Patrick Moniz, a revered family man of eight children, who was a mentor and coach to countless other youths in the Las Vegas area, and an avid fan of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, succumbed to the virus that’s taken more than 5,800 people in Nevada since the start of the pandemic last March. He was 48.

When he lived, Hana Moniz spent little time in his Las Vegas home office, which is decorated with family photos, Bucs memorabilia, and signed basketballs and footballs. But now, that room brings her solace, just like a corner couch in their bedroom where he would post up every night to talk about his day.

“I don’t know, maybe it’s because I feel like he’s here,” she said, sitting in an office chair.

Hana Moniz, who still refers to Patrick in the present tense, said she still speaks to him. “You’re supposed to be sitting here,” she tells him. “I sit here and I pray a lot.”

•••

Patrick Moniz, who was born into a U.S. military family in Frankfurt, Germany, spent the 1980s in Tampa, Fla., which led to his obsession with the Bucs.

When they reached the Super Bowl in February, Moniz traveled to Florida to attend the game at the team’s home stadium, watching from Buccaneers Cove, a fan section decorated with a pirate ship.

Athletics have been part of the family’s life since the couple met as teenagers in Honolulu.

“He’s handsome,” Hana said, describing him as a quiet, mysterious teenager who was intelligent and charming.

Patrick Moniz worked in law enforcement until the young family — already with two sons — moved to the Las Vegas area, where they had another boy and five girls, and started a cleaning business.

He was fully involved during his wife’s pregnancies. He would feed the children and change their diapers. “There wasn’t anything that he wasn’t involved with,” Hana Moniz said. “I couldn’t have asked for a better husband.”

Patrick Moniz wanted to be more involved in his children’s life, to have “time and freedom to be with the boys,” and later the girls, so, he began to coach them, along with the neighborhood kids.

That led him into basketball coaching positions at Silverado and Liberty high schools.

Later in his career, he worked for Next College Student Athlete, a national organization that connects high school athletes to college coaches. The Moniz family has gotten countless cards, messages and visits from families of children Patrick mentored.

When they would see “Coach Patrick” out in public, his family knew how important the moment was for him and the people he spoke to, whom he always wanted to “feel important.”

Shaun King, former quarterback for the Buccaneers, met the Moniz family in 2007, when he started dating Hana’s best friend.

“Do you know who we just met!?” Hana said her pleasantly surprised husband told her.

But while Patrick idolized the NFL veteran, regarding him as an all-time favorite player next to Warren Sapp, King felt the same way about his friend, whom he considered a brother.

“He’s that friend you almost hate when he’s in town,” King said, explaining that when the Monizes visited his family in Florida, his friend would open doors and fix plates for his family, prompting King to have to step up.

Moniz treated King’s kids like they were his own, King said.

Many people in the collegiate sports recruiting circuit treat athletes like springboards into success and notoriety for themselves, King said.

But not Patrick Moniz, who was committed to “not just on court or on-grass development,” King said, “but the development of the person, because sports is about so much more than just playing. It’s about being self-confident. It’s about being able to deal with authority, to have self-discipline, to be able to face adversity.”

Moniz also was an exceptional friend, King said. “When you meet somebody who really cares about you, despite your deficiencies, your idiosyncrasies, that’s rare,” he said. “And that’s who Patrick was. I miss my brother.”

“When I walk by that casket,” King said. “I’m going to look, and I will know it’s a good man lying there.”

•••

As the virus grabbed hold of the valley, the Moniz family took safety precautions, Hana Moniz said.

But Patrick wanted to learn more about the vaccines, and which of the three versions would be best for him, she said. He hadn’t yet gotten a jab when he started to feel sick soon after Father’s Day. Then his oxygen went, and he had to be hospitalized.

He could spend no more than 15 seconds without an oxygen mask before his lungs began to give out.

Medical professionals then put him on a ventilator, which he’d resisted in conversations about the virus before he was hospitalized, Hana Moniz said.

But he wanted to get better for their children, and then agreed — with the condition that she wouldn’t leave his side. The rest of the family kept tabs on him during Zoom calls. When he’d hear their voices, his eyelids would flicker, Hana Moniz said.

The night before he died, while well-wishers at their church prayed for him, thunder rumbled. “We were just banging on the gates of heaven ... for mercy and grace, and we were just praying for this miracle,” Hana said. “Honey, the heavens are roaring ... and the prayers are being heard,” she told him through tears later that night.

“And of course, in my heart I didn’t want Jesus to take him at that time, I wanted a miracle,” she said.

•••

The loss has devastated the family, but they’re leaning on their faith to heal, Moniz said.

“It’s been hard. ... I’ve spent 30 years of my life with this man, and I expected another 30 or 40.

“I did everything with my husband, like literally everything,” she said. “He’s the first person I wake up and talk to and the very last person I speak to before I go to bed, and throughout the day we’ve always stayed connected.”

It’s even harder to think about what her children are feeling, she said.

“When I think about the children, they don’t have him,” she said. “I still have my dad, and to just think about what life would be like without my dad, even at that age, I can’t imagine what that must be like for them.”

However, the eight children, who range from 9 to 27 years old, are more resilient than she initially imagined, she said.

Whenever she feels like grieving is going to completely break her down, she finds that one of their kids is standing next to her, out of nowhere, she said — almost like a message from her late husband.

“This is temporary,” she said.

A “celebration of life” service will be held from 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Aug. 19 at Hope Church, 850 E. Cactus Ave., Las Vegas.