'The ultimate coach, teacher, and friend': Plainfield community mourns Bob Arremony

News of Bob Arremony’s passing spread quickly throughout Plainfield and Connecticut on Wednesday. Of course, the emails, texts, and phone calls sped all the way to Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

Yeah, John Schiffner’s phone was buzzing all day. It’s what happens when coaching legends hear that another coaching legend has died. The legend only becomes a living thing from the retelling. And there were a lot of Bob stories being resurrected on this somber day.

For Schiffner, it was also hearing that a great friend had passed on.

“Bob was the ultimate coach, teacher, and friend,” said Schiffner from his home on Cape Cod.

Bob Arremony, John Schiffner, and Jan Voland began teaching and coaching at Plainfield High School in 1978. All three were terrific athletes – Arremony played basketball and baseball at Southern Connecticut State University, Voland played basketball at Norwich University, and Schiffner was an All-ECAC baseball player at Providence College. All three had successful stints as Plainfield’s director of athletics.

“Bobby and I drove to school together on that first day in 1978,” Voland said. “We carpooled. And if he was late I’d call his mother, ‘Mrs. Arremony … where is he?’ He’d come to my house with a towel over his head and a cup of coffee and I’d slide over and drive his car.”

Arremony and Schiffner coached football and baseball together for a number of years. During numerous scouting trips, the duo made sure that all of the local establishments were serving cold beer.

“We raided some of those places,” Schiffner said. “We had an absolute blast. Bob had a great sense of humor. We had lots of laughs over 35 years.”

The coaching fraternity in Eastern Connecticut during the 1970s and 1980s was a special club. There was a tight-knit bond.

“We were young guys, young coaches and teachers and we spent a lot of time on and off the field,” Schiffner said. “Bob and I welcomed young coaches into the fraternity and we became kind of the thread of Eastern Connecticut coaching because we coached all the sports and we knew all of the coaches.”

Patrick Smith became part of that fraternity. Smith has coached football with the Panthers for 30 seasons, the past 23 as head coach. His son Liam (basketball) and daughter Emily (girls volleyball) both played for Arremony.

“Bob’s coaching principles were repetition, hard work, toughness and passion,” Smith said. “Outsiders may think that Bob was a man of few words. An exception would be when he was calmly talking to officials. But you always knew where you stood with Bob.”

Arremony coached numerous sports at Plainfield. He was willing to help where needed.

During Schiffner’s time as athletic director he faced a dilemma when the girls soccer coach suddenly resigned.

“Plainfield was not a soccer town. Nobody played soccer,” Schiffner said. “Bobby says, ‘I’ll coach. I’ll do it.’ I said, ‘You know soccer?’ And he says, ‘They play with a ball, right?’ To his credit he scoured through films and books and went to clinics and learned soccer. I don’t remember the record but they qualified for the state tournament after I believe having no wins or one win the previous year.”

Griswold boys basketball coach Rob Mileski was just getting his “feet wet” coaching against Arremony and Schiffner and Putnam’s Tony Falzarano and Marianapolis Prep’s Chuck Bourgeois. This was during the final days of the Quinebaug Valley Conference.

“Bob was a great coach,” Mileski said. “Over the years we got to know each other and we’d have a beer at Gus’s Pub, one of my favorite spots, and we would just talk.”

When Schiffner became the manager of the Cape Cod Baseball League’s Chatham A’s, Arremony became Plainfield’s athletic director.

“When I got the job in the Cape Cod League I knew my AD days were over,” said Schiffner, who was inducted into the Cape Cod Baseball League Hall of Fame in 2018. “I spent too much time recruiting. Bob stepped in and did it for over 20 years.”

Tom Hardy played for Arremony in the mid-1990s. Hardy is in his first year as Plainfield’s Director of Athletics.

“I remember in my study hall period I would go down and I’d hang out in Bob’s office and help him out with some AD stuff,” Hardy said. “It’s funny how things come full circle.”

The Eastern Connecticut coaching fraternity lost a good one this week. And during this time of grieving, the Bob Arremony stories made everyone smile. Again.

Jimmy Zanor is a sportswriter for the Norwich Bulletin and can be reached at jzanor@norwichbulletin.com. Follow him on Twitter@jzanorNB.

This article originally appeared on The Bulletin: Jimmy Zanor: Plainfield coach and teacher Bob Arremony mourned