After a legendary coaching run, Bob Foley called it a career last week.
Foley, the longtime boys head coach at St. John’s Shrewsbury, announced his retirement last Tuesday after 61 years of coaching, including 44 leading the Pioneers. The all-time winningest coach in New England and Massachusetts history, Foley amassed 980 victories, including 774 at St. John's.
Foley began his coaching career in 1963, when he was a fresh 21-year-old graduate from Holy Cross. He started his journey at Uxbridge High School for six years, then went to St. Peter-Marian in 1969. In 1980, he was hired at St. John's Shrewsbury, where he spent the rest of his career. He won two state championships — 2000 and 2009 — and led the Pioneers to 14 Central championships, and he was inducted into the St. John's Athletics Hall of Fame in 2011.
After his emotional retirement day, New England Basketball Journal caught up with Foley for a reflective Q&A. He discussed what led to his decision to retire and looked back at some of the most memorable moments of his career.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
What led to your decision to retire?
“The big reason is in a couple weeks, I’ll be 83 years old, so we’ll start with that. So there comes a time, I guess. I feel great, my health is fine, my mind is fine, but there comes a time when you finally say, I think that’s it. There was nothing in particular. Someone said, did someone force you out? Is there something you didn’t like? No, there was nothing. I like Frank Sinatra’s song, I did it ‘My Way.’”
How difficult was this decision?
“One of my sons, Sean, said, ‘Dad, it’s time.’ And my other son who is my assistant coach said, ‘Yeah, I agree.’ So many people retire and next thing you know, they’re sick. Next thing you know, they’re dead the year after they retire. So, I wanted to make sure I was still in good health. The team, we were in a summer league, and the kids played really well, tied for first place in the summer league. I went to every game even though at that time, I was probably sure I wasn’t going to come back. But that’s how important the kids are to me, that they would see you at every game and know you were there for them. And my wife (Joan) would go to every game.
“By the way, this is 40 years for her. She was the official scorer for the team for 40 years.”
What’s the story there?
“One of my sons played for St. John’s and she used to get nervous as anything, and it was around Christmas of ’84, and the official scorer didn’t show up for the game, and she used to get nervous at the games watching her son play, and she scored the game and said, 'You know, I didn’t have time to get nervous,' and she’s done it every time since then. She has been outstanding for me, to put in all the time that I do, and she is great with the kids. There’s things as a head coach that you just can’t be their friend, and with the parents, the kids and whatever, she does all that. She’s done such a great job all these years. So, I think when the kids say thank you, the first one they say it to is to her. ‘Thank you, Mrs. Foley.’”
What did you enjoy the most about your 61 years of coaching?
“Kids. I love kids. Second would be basketball and third, I love the schools I was at, all three of them and especially the last one, St. John’s. That’s what I like most about it. In fact, I got all kinds of calls, emails, whatever you call it, today. I must have had a couple hundred of them and they range from kids who played for me to opposing coaches to kids who just had me in class and said we enjoyed your class, we just hate to see you go. Although I did give up the classroom back in 2011. I was a U.S. history teacher. I loved U.S. history, so that was fun.”
What does it mean to have so many kids and coaches from the past reach out to you?
“It just means so much. I guess in the age of electronics, I’m not a big electronics guy, with all this stuff, people can just get holier so it’s just so easy to do. Some of them, it’s just a text they’re sending you or whatever. But just a couple minutes ago, I just got a call from one of the coaches from Springfield, one of the high schools there, and he was thanking me and whatever. So, that’s kind of what makes it all worthwhile.
“When I coached, I always tried, if possible, to get the names of all the kids that we were playing against. I would know if they were left-handed, right-handed, whatever, because I’m left-handed, and when you shake before the game, I would always stick my left hand out and they would go, ‘What’s this?’ I would say, ‘You’re left-handed.’ They would say, ‘How’d you know?’ I said, ‘I know all these things.’
“It’s been fun. It isn’t just the kids on my team. It’s my students, but it’s also kids on the opposing team and to have one call after another or one email after another from opposing coaches, that kind of makes it worthwhile.”
Forty-four years at St. John’s. What made that such a great fit for you, to go that long and all the success you enjoyed there?
“Great kids, great parents, great administration and the teachers that were there and the other coaches. I’ve just been blessed. Everyone has been so good to me over the years, it’s just scary. It almost makes it hard to give it up. People say, well you’re at St. John’s and so you’ve got all those pretty good players. And I say, well back in 1963 at 21, I was the head coach of Uxbridge High and offered me the job. They forgot to tell me they were 0-20 the year before. But those kids there, I wouldn’t trade them for anything. And I ended up coaching all three sports there — football, basketball and baseball. I was an assistant coach in football and head coach in baseball, besides basketball.
“But you remember all those kids. Every now and then, a photograph gets sent to me and it will be one of my teams from back then. You gotta realize that the kids that I had, in fact there’s one or two of them who come to every one of my games. Varsity, JV and freshman. And you gotta remember, they’re 79 years old, 80 years old. I’ll say to my team, I’ll say, ‘There’s one of my kids up in the stands.’ They say, ‘That old man up there?’ I say, ‘Yeah, that’s him.’ It’s stuff like that, that really keeps you going.
“One day, we were coming home from Providence, Rhode Island, and we were riding on the highway by Uxbridge High and I said to my wife, I said, ‘Bring me over to the high school.’ She did. I said, ‘Let me out and I’ll be right back.’ I walked out to the field and I could name all nine players by position by name. I think that gives you an idea of what the kids mean to me. And that’s why coaching is … you don’t make a hell of a lot of money coaching high school sports, but that’s not what you’re in it for.”
Are there any favorite moments or games that stick out to you from your career?
“I don’t go too deep into that because if you start picking out individuals, you’re going to leave someone out, and I had a lot of good ones. But there’s a couple. In 2000, we won the state championship in Division 1 and that was a big thrill. That was the first Central Mass. team to do it since 1973, when Holy Name did it — what a great team that was. One other one would be the years 2008, ’09, ’10 and ’11 — we were in the state finals all four of those years. I had some real good players then, one of them being Richard Rodgers who ended up being a tight end for Green Bay for a few years. That was kind of a thrill to be in that state final, I won one during those four years. Another one, we lost at the buzzer by one point, so they were fun years.”
Was there a team or player you coached against who sticks out to you who was particularly difficult or a tough matchup for you over the years?
“Well, probably the biggest one was when we won the state championship (in 2000), because we had to beat Holy Name in the district finals and their center was Neil Fingleton, who was 7-foot-6. So, to play against a 7-foot-6 guy — he used to rest during the game by putting his hands against the backboard. So, yeah, that team was a real great team.”
What are you looking forward to most with retirement?
“I’ve always gone to Florida for three weeks just before basketball, and then when basketball ended, I would go to Florida for a month. So, I’ll still be doing that. I’m not going to go in January or February, I don’t need that because all I do is go to the beach every day. So, three weeks or a month is fine. I’ve got a lot of stuff, I have a lot of friends, and I’ll be going back to watch the St. John’s games and unless it changes, my son is the assistant coach there and coaches the JV.
I’ve won 980 but I’ve also lost 310, so that’s 1,290 games, and that’s what I measure it by. Because the kids play just as hard and you coach just as hard in a losing game, so it’s the number of games you’ve been involved in, I think.”
Is there anything else you wanted to reminisce about or reelect on about your career?
“The three headmasters that hired me, the superintendent of schools at Uxbridge and then the headmaster at St. Peter-Marion and then the headmaster at St. John’s, they’re the ones that gave me my chance and had confidence in me. You never know because at Uxbridge, I was taking over that 0-20 team, it took me a few years before we turned it around a little bit anyways. And at St. Peter’s when I went there, my first year we were 3-15 and people were going, ‘Who the hell is this guy? Why did we hire him?’ But the next year there, we were in the state finals, I believe. At St. John’s my first year, we were 6-16. And they’re going again, ‘Who is this guy?’ And the following year, we were in the district finals.
“So, it’s just a lot of fun taking programs that were very good at St. Peter’s and St. John’s, it just happened that when I took it over, it was a little bit bare, the cupboard. But it just happened that there were good freshmen that year, so we did lose those years, but the next year, those kids turned it all around.”
