Rockford Register Star, Matt Trowbridge
Steve Goers retired on top.
He knows he won’t stay there, but he doesn’t care.
Boylan’s boys basketball coach has won a state record 881 games, but Gene Pingatore of Westchester St. Joseph will surely pass him next year after Goers surprised Boylan officials by announcing his retirement Thursday morning.
“I could certainly return and coach next year, the year after and whatever, and with 881 wins get 900 and coach until Ping dies, because Ping is five years older than me,” Goers said. “But that wasn’t the point.”
The point as a coach, Goers said, was to get the best out of his players, on and off the court, listing the number of future doctors, lawyers, teachers and architects who played for him as some of his greatest victories.
The point as a soon to be noncoach is to now get the best out of his life with his family.
Goers, who coached Boylan for 31 years, said he’s been thinking of retiring ever since he saw Jack Nicholson’s “The Bucket List” three years ago. He finally decided it wasn’t “fair” to his wife, Mary, to continue coaching. He said he wants the freedom to visit his three children and five grandchildren, including watching his son (and former point guard) Tim coach Booneville (Ark.) High School.
“I’m going to be 69 in a couple of weeks,” Goers said. “It’s time for us to do some things. Forty-three of the last 44 Christmases I’ve been at basketball tournaments. Maybe over the Christmas holidays we can go down and watch Timmy coach two tournaments. Or go see our granddaughters. I don’t know. Go to Ireland or some place.
“It’s just the idea of having the freedom of choice. Basketball, being the longest season in high school athletics, doesn’t allow you to have all the choices that you would like to have as a family.
“Will I miss it? Heck, yeah. I miss it right now. I’m going to miss it because it’s been my life for all these years, but I don’t want to miss what else is out there that I have been missing all these years.”
Goers even missed the birth of his two oldest children. Maybe that’s why he said his favorite coaching moment was being there for the birth of his daughter, Elizabeth.
“He was a great coach. He even cut the umbilical cord,” his wife, Mary, said.
Goers’ coaching highlights include three fourth-place finishes at state, 26 conference, 28 regional and 17 sectional titles in 39 years and a state-record 30 consecutive winning seasons. Twenty-six of his last 28 Boylan teams won at least 20 games.
Roy Sackmaster, a former Boylan player who coached East to within one point of winning its first sectional title in 27 seasons this year, said Goers lifted the entire NIC-10, not just Boylan.
“He owns state records for sectionals, regionals and 20-win seasons,” Sackmaster said. “The other conference teams haven’t had as much success as Boylan has combined. He’s been huge for our conference in terms of giving us respectability from the rest of the state.”
Goers landed his first head coaching job at tiny Bardolph, a school with only 59 students, in 1968.
He then coached at Oswego for two years and LaSalle-Peru for three years before leaving coaching for one year after being let go by L-P. He was also the tennis coach there and was dismissed because of a conflict involving a tennis player, himself and a parent, who was also a school board member.
He then coached Harvard for two years before Monsignor John Mitchell and Vince McGuire hired him at Boylan.
The formerly peripatetic coach instantly put down roots and became a Rockford institution.
Goers credited his stepmother for helping him realize Boylan should be his coaching home for 31 years.
“When I was 5 years old, my mom died,” Goers said. “Two years later, my dad remarried. I had five younger brothers and sisters. My dad wasn’t Catholic. My (step) mom was Catholic. I went to Mass every Sunday, but I was never allowed to become a Catholic because my stepmother very wisely said, ‘I’m not going to force you into the church. You are going to go to Mass with us and when you are 18, you decide what you want to do.’
“When I was 18, I converted and became a Catholic. I had in the back of my mind to give back to the church if I had an opportunity. When I came here, it was a natural marriage.”
And now, Goers said, it’s time to put his marriage to Mary Goers first.
