‘A lot of memories up on the walls’

For the first time in 36 years, Bob Moore isn’t spending part of his summer looking forward to the next school year.

Moore, who started his teaching and coaching career at Winchester High School in 1972, retired this spring. He served as the school’s athletic director for the past 28 years.

“My wife retired also, and we’ve talked about it, and we haven’t noticed the retirement yet, because we’ve always had our summers off,” Moore said. “It really hasn’t sunk in too much, yet, but probably about Aug. 1, I’ll start noticing it.”

Moore’s association with Winchester High School started back in the 1960s, when he was a student at the school. Moore played football, basketball and baseball, earning all-conference honors in football and basketball his senior season.

After graduation, he attended Western Illinois University in Macomb, earning his teaching certificate in the spring of 1972.

Moore took a job at Winchester the following fall as a physical education and social studies teacher. He soon became an assistant coach for the football team and later took over assistant duties for the boys’ basketball team.

Moore served as an assistant to head basketball coach Max Greer during his early years at the school. He became head coach when Greer resigned following the 1977-78 season.

Although Moore had always heard that you shouldn’t coach sports in your hometown, he never had a problem.

“I never saw it that way. I was always accepted by the community, and I never felt like there was a lot of pressure on me,” he said. “I was kind of lucky. I had a lot of winning records, but I had a lot of good players.”

Moore’s first season coaching the basketball team was unremarkable. The team finished the season with a 4-19 record, the worst during Moore’s 13-year tenure.

The coach’s teams gradually improved, however, with the 1985-86 team breaking nearly every record in school history.

That team went 29-4 and won regional, sectional and super-sectional titles. Winchester went to state for the first and, so far, the only time that year, dropping a 51-38 decision to Hoopeston-East Lynn after leading 32-31 after three quarters.

“That was the highlight of my coaching career,” Moore said of the state appearance. “I remember walking out of the tunnel at the Assembly Hall and seeing the Winchester crowd. I think most of the town was there.”

Moore concluded his basketball coaching career after the 1990-91 season with a 207-150 mark, including four conference titles.

Despite his success in boys’ basketball, Moore had nearly twice as many wins in other sports.

He coached the Winchester softball team for 22 years, posting a 316-194 career mark, including four conference championships and three regional titles.

Moore later coached girls’ basketball at the school, winning two regional titles over five years. His career mark coaching girls’ basketball was 73-63.

“We had a good run there with the girls’ softball team,” Moore said. “I always enjoyed coaching the girls because it seemed like they were always willing to listen to instruction a little bit more, maybe, and accepted instruction a little more easily.”

Aside from coaching multiple sports, one of Moore’s annual duties as the Winchester athletic director was to oversee the Winchester Invitational Tournament, the oldest boys’ basketball invitational tournament in the state of Illinois.

Moore figures he’s been a part of at least half of the 86 tournaments to date. At this year’s tournament, the coach was presented a lifetime pass to the attend the event.

“I’ve seen a lot of them, but it’s always the highlight of the winter for the community of Winchester,” Moore said. “After 87 years, it’s a tradition, and it’s something that the entire town takes part in.”

Jeff Abell, who coaches the West Central boys’ basketball team —the co-op that now includes students from both Winchester and Bluffs high schools —never knew how much work went into the tournament until he got behind the scenes.

“He had done it long enough where he had a system down, and things ran pretty smooth,” Abell said. “When we first started the co-op, and me being kind of a host coach, I didn’t realize how much goes into running something like that, but he makes it look easy.”

Abell said that he and the rest of the West Central coaches knew that Moore would handle any problem they took to him.

“Whatever you needed, he was there to take care of it,” Abell said.

Moore’s players remember him as a quiet, calm coach that never lost his cool on the sidelines.

“He’s not a yeller or a screamer at all,” said Mark Cox, Winchester’s all-time leading scorer in boys’ basketball, who is married to Moore’s daughter, Jennifer. “During the games, he would just sit there and not say too much, and during halftime, he would talk and explain. But he hardly ever raised his voice.”

Cox, who coached boys’ basketball for eight years at PORTA High School, remembers the off-season days when he and his teammates would call Moore to have him come unlock the doors to the high school gym.

“Jimmy Evans would even call him on holidays, and he would go over and open the gym,” Cox said. “But he never complained about it ever. He was always willing to do that.”

Cox said one of Moore’s top accomplishments as a coach at Winchester was his success with the girls’ basketball team. The team had gone 8-44 in the two years prior to Moore taking the job.

“His friends were teasing him about taking the job, you know, saying ‘What, do you think you’re going to win, a regional?’” Cox recalled. “And, by God, they won the regional that year, and he turned the girls’ program around.

“And he just did it with a steady-as-you-go approach.”

Moore cleaned his office out a couple weeks ago, and while doing so, came across mementos from former teams and former players.

“I had a lot of memories up on the walls of teams from the past, players and memorabilia and things like that,” Moore said. “It makes you think about it when you’re taking it down and putting it away.”

Now that he’s retired, Moore plans on playing more golf, traveling and spending time with his grandchildren.

His son, Brett, is an assistant boys’ basketball coach at Somanauk High School in northern Illinois, and he plans to attend as many of his games as he can.

The former coach also plans on attending spring training for the St. Louis Cardinals next year in Florida.

Moore figures he’ll attend his share of West Central sporting events, too, but says he’ll miss the connections he’s built with fellow teachers, coaches, officials and players.

“There haven’t been many days in my life where I haven’t wanted to go to work,” he said. “When you’re in education, it’s something different every day, and it’s been a very rewarding career, and I feel good about the way things have gone.

“You build a lot of good relationships with players and coaches through the years, and you try to make a difference in some people’s lives, and that’s what education is all about.”