Gerald Jr. “Skip” Joseph Sibiski (or Dad/Daddy) is Kirby’s father. He was a long-time women’s soccer coach, with stints at Kutztown University and Lehigh Valley United. Skip is a prominent figure in the Ocean City, Maryland social scene and has been described as “The Mayor of Ocean City.”
Skip is one of the most formative figures in Kirby’s life, inspiring his early obsessions with soccer, Manchester United, professional wrestling, and diverse forms of media. Kirby’s friend Corey Arnold once described him as “one of the smartest people I’ve met,” to which Kirby wholeheartedly agreed.
Background
Gerald “Skip” Joseph Sibiski was born on January 21, 1970, to Gerald and Connie Sibiski. His younger sister, Sherie, was born about two years later.
Skip grew up in Dundalk, Maryland, just outside of Baltimore. His father worked at Bethlehem Steel, one of the largest employers in the region. Skip attended Catholic school until the family relocated to Northampton, Pennsylvania, following the closure of the Bethlehem Steel plant in Dundalk and the wave of layoffs that followed.
Throughout his school years, Skip often returned to Dundalk to visit his grandfather and reconnect with old friends. He and two of his closest buddies frequently rode Baltimore’s public transit across the city to hang out at a popular mall, where they were among the few white kids in the crowd—earning them the affectionate nickname “The Beastie Boys.”
Music and sports defined much of Skip’s youth. He saw Public Enemy open for the Beastie Boys in the mid-1980s and grew up watching professional wrestling. His mother, Connie, once took him to a local wrestling show where the crowd was chanting “Russia sucks!”—though she misheard it as “Wash those socks!”
After high school, Skip enrolled at Moravian College, where he played soccer. Though he left school before finishing his degree, he later returned and officially graduated in 2002.
One night out in Kutztown, Skip met Shannon Brown at Shorty’s Bar. The two fell in love, and not long after, they welcomed their first son, Kirby. Three years later, they had their second, Beckham. Kirby fondly recalls watching Gargoyles on TV with Skip at their Lenni Street home the night Beckham was born.
As the boys grew up, Skip worked for DSC Logistics, a supply chain company that partnered with Kellogg’s. He’d sometimes bring home large boxes filled with Kellogg’s snacks—Nutri-Grain bars, cereals, and other treats.
In the evenings, Skip coached soccer—a lifelong passion. Over the years, he served as the Kutztown University Women’s Assistant Coach, Brandywine Heights High School Girls’ Head Coach, and coach for several travel teams, including FC Revolution and Lehigh Valley United. He also coached many of the boys’ teams that Kirby and Beckham played on throughout their youth.
Influence on Kirby
In Kirby’s early years, he and Skip spent countless hours playing video games together — from FIFA, Cookies & Cream, and Sonic the Hedgehog to Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, and Super Monkey Ball. For more chaotic titles like State of Emergency and Grand Theft Auto, Skip printed out the cheat codes and organized them in a binder.
The family’s collection of consoles grew over time — Sega Genesis, GameCube, Wii, Xbox 360, multiple generations of PlayStation, and various Game Boys. Connie often gifted the boys new systems for Christmas, turning new technology into a family tradition.
When they weren’t playing or coaching soccer, Skip and the boys would gather to watch TV together — everything from professional wrestling and Premier League matches to Celebrity Deathmatch. Kirby especially remembers watching R. Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet, as well as cult B-movies like The Fly and The Fly II with his dad in his parents’ bed.
Skip and Shannon often bought the boys wrestling action figures, which Kirby played with for hours. Thanks to Leroy, who had a friend working for WWE, the family frequently received free tickets whenever the company came to town. The seats were usually excellent — once, they sat right behind the announcers’ desk and next to Snitsky’s family. (Snitsky’s father famously stepped out for a cigarette and missed his son’s match.)
At another house show, The Hurricane pointed directly at Skip after he put on one of the boys’ Hurricane masks. The family was also in attendance the night Chris Benoit won the Royal Rumble in Philadelphia.
These rituals continued throughout Kirby’s school years. Though contact became less frequent during college, he and Skip reconnected through their shared love of professional wrestling. After rediscovering RAW and SmackDown with his roommate Brent and their friend Matt, Kirby would watch alongside his father whenever he came home.
Together, the four attended a live taping of RAW, and later, Brent, Kirby, and Skip went to Battleground — where they scored second-row seats and got to take home their commemorative chairs. The event, headlined by Jinder Mahal and Randy Orton in a Punjabi Prison Match, has since gone down as one of the most notoriously bad matches (and pay-per-views) in WWE history.
After graduation, NXT — and often Monday Night RAW — became a weekly tradition. During Kirby’s Wasted Potential era, those nights provided rare moments of comfort that didn’t revolve around drinking. Even in his lowest periods, Skip was steadfastly supportive. He once told Kirby something to the effect of, “You’re so much smarter than I could ever hope to be — I don’t want you to have to work as much as I did.”
The father and son kept their weekly viewing tradition alive until the family home was sold in February 2022 following the parents’ divorce. During that time, Kirby came to fully recognize the scope of his father’s sacrifices. While building his freelance business in late 2021 and early 2022, Kirby continued living with Skip at Highland Ave before moving to his grandfather’s home in Topton.
Skip relocated to Ocean City, Maryland, where he met Sarah — a social worker dedicated to helping formerly incarcerated individuals reenter civilian life. Kirby and Beckham now visit them every Christmas and summer, and often at other times throughout the year.