'Beardstown legend': Longtime basketball, football coach remembered as smart and dedicated
Bob Hembrough may have been inducted into both football and basketball halls of fame, but there really wasn’t a sport he wouldn’t coach.
The longtime Beardstown High School football and basketball coach died Wednesday, May 11 at 88 years old. His celebration of life was Saturday at the high school.
“He is a Beardstown legend,” said Wendy McClenning, Beardstown’s district technology director. “That’s probably the only place that could hold as many people who want to come celebrate his life.”
Hembrough’s teaching and coaching career spanned decades. Before Beardstown, he had stops at Virginia, Lexington, Los Angeles and Hamilton before he was hired at Beardstown. With the Tigers, he coached the boys basketball team from 1978-92 and again as a co-head coach with Gale Thoroman from 2000-04.
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Hembrough told The State Journal-Register of the unusual co-head coach arrangement in 2000, “(Thoroman) worries too much some times, and I don't worry much, so we are a pretty good match.”
His teams in the 1980s were quite successful, with Class A state tournament appearances in 1987 — where the Tigers finished fourth — and again in 1988. Between the 1980-81 season through 1989-90, Beardstown won nine regional titles and won six Winchester Invitational Tournament championships between 1980 and 1988. He was inducted into the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2006.
“He shut a lot of people down,” Beardstown’s retiring baseball coach, Robin Lewis, said. “And he would say, ‘I don't know how to run their offense, but I can stop it,’ that was one of his one of his great quotes.
Hembrough also coached the Beardstown football team from 1971-76. He coached football at his other Illinois stops, starting with Virginia in 1959. Hembrough, who was inducted into the Illinois High School Football Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 1995, has a career football record of 102-47-7, according to his obituary.
Lewis met Hembrough as a sophomore in 1971. He played three seasons for Hembrough’s football team. The Tigers were 2-7 the season before Hembrough. That first year, "our team won the Spoon River Conference,” Lewis said. It was a “big turnaround for Beardstown.”
In fact, Beardstown went 8-1-1 that season and 8-2 in each of the next two seasons.
“We had some very talented football players, but we weren't able to put it all together,” Lewis said. “He had seen our program before, in Hamilton, he'd come down and scouted us a few times. He'd seen our kids playing, and he thought he could make something out of it, and he did.”
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Elliott Craig, Beardstown’s first-year football coach and athletic director, admitted he didn’t know Hembrough long, but said he was glad to get to know him.
“One of my first days on the job, Bob came and introduced himself to me, and we had a nice chat about football and athletics — not only at Beardstown, but in general,” Craig said. “I can say over the nine months I have known him and seen him at many high school and junior high events this school year, he was a great man and very highly respected by many people in this community and even the current high school students.”
In 2009, Hembrough stepped back into the coaching box again for three seasons as the Beardstown girls basketball coach. He found time to coach track and field and softball, as well.
McClenning knew Hembrough from her days as a student in the district and played softball for him.
“He went from my coach to a colleague and friend, and I've known him since I was young,” McClenning said. “He took a little bitty freshman and believed in her and put me on his varsity team.
“He believed in kids, he was hard, tough love. He would yell at you but in the next minute, he would tell you, he loved ya and he just brought the best out of kids with funny humor, one-liners. You just don't find anybody like that.”
Hembrough was born in Longview, a tiny community south of Champaign. He graduated from Franklin High School in 1951 then served in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War. After the war, he enrolled at Illinois College and graduated in 1959.
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He didn’t slow down in retirement. If Beardstown needed a bus driven, call Hembrough. If a teacher called in sick, Hembrough was on the substitute call list. He officiated football, basketball, baseball and softball games.
“He was just a just a good guy, and he loved the kids, and he brought the best out of kids,” McClenning said. “You're just not going to see many coaches like that; that dedicated.”
Contact Ryan Mahan: 788-1546, ryan.mahan@sj-r.com, Twitter.com/RyanMahanSJR.
This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: Former Beardstown football, basketball coach Bob Hembrough dies at 88
