The list of Berks coaches never to have a losing season is a short one
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Bob Wolfrum would be lying if he said that the one smudge on his otherwise pristine coaching resume doesn’t bother him.
Wolfrum is the most celebrated football coach in Berks history. He’s won a state title, a dozen District 3 championships, and 19 league or section championships. The field at Wyomissing is named in his honor.
Wolfrum has never been one to think much about win totals, stats, or personal accolades; it’s the competition and moving around the chess pieces on the board that drives him.
Still, to be a head coach for 38 years and have just one end with a losing record . . .
“It really does bug me,” he admits.
The season in question came in 2004, and after Wolfrum had begun his legendary head coaching stint with the Spartans by posting 17 consecutive winning seasons.
He had a team full of promising sophomores but they weren’t ready for the best the Inter-County League had to offer, losing to Muhlenberg 47-3, Holy Name 30-21, and Conrad Weiser 30-21.
Wolfrum points to a 22-12 loss to Twin Valley in Week 6 as the straw that broke the camel’s back. The Spartans, looking for a 22nd straight home win, led 12-7 in the fourth quarter but turned the ball over at midfield, then gave up a pair of late scores.
“I don’t know that I expected a great season,” Wolfrum said of his 2004 club, “but we always think we’re going to have a winning season.”
The best coaches know that if you stick around long enough eventually you’re going to have one of those years when things just don’t break right.
Rick Keeley went 11-2 in his second season at Holy Name, 1987. A year later the Blue Jays were 1-10. Hey, it happens to everyone. . . Well, almost everyone.
In the history of Berks football there are just four men who have coached 10 or more seasons without experiencing a losing record.
Not surprisingly they all have a Wilson connection: John Gurski, Gerry Slemmer and Doug Dahms have all coached the Bulldogs; John Yocum played at and was an assistant coach at Wilson.
Yocum currently holds the Berks record for consecutive winning seasons, at 20. He was hired by Muhlenberg in 1989. He took over a team coming off a 5-6 season and a program that had experienced just one winning season in the previous 13 years.
Yocum’s team won its first six games and finished 8-3 in his rookie season. His second team went 7-2-2. His third captured the program’s first Inter-County League championship.
Yocum’s teams went on to win nine more I-C titles. They set a program record with an 11-1 record in 1992 and matched it in 1998; those teams are regarded among the best in I-C history.
His 20-year winning streak was never in doubt. The closest the Muhls came to .500 was in 1994 when they finished 5-4-1 – but that was after a 5-1-1 start that clinched a winning record.
Berks coaches who never had a losing season
| Coach | Seasons | School | Years | |||
| John Yocum | 20 | Muhlenberg | 1989-2008 | |||
| Doug Dahms | 19 | Wilson | 2006-2024 | |||
| John Gurski | 19 | Wilson | 1963-1982 | |||
| Gerry Slemmer | 15 | Wilson | 1983-1997 | |||
| Dave Bodolus | 9 | Daniel Boone | 2003-2011 | |||
| Jim Cantafio | 8 | Wilson | 1998-2005 |
Yocum completed his Hall of Fame career with 167 wins and a .765 winning percentage. In the 16 seasons since he left the Muhls have won just 30 percent of their games.
Yocum’s record can be matched this year by Dahms, a long-time Bulldogs assistant who has known nothing but complete success during his first 19 seasons as head coach.
Dahms’ first team went 11-2 and won the Lancaster-Lebanon League Section 1 title, his first of 14 titles over his 19 seasons. Like Yocum he’s never been in danger of a losing season. His “worst” record came in 2023 at 7-4.
Dahms’ teams set records by winning nine straight Section 1 titles from 2008-2016 and by winning 68 consecutive Lancaster-Lebanon League games.
Overall, Dahms has a 196-44 record as a head coach; his .817 winning percentage is the highest in Berks history.
Dahms never experienced a losing season as an assistant coach, either. He coached one season with Gurski, in 1982; 15 with Slemmer; and eight with Jim Cantafio. All told he’s been part of 460 Wilson victories over 39 seasons.
Slemmer was a star lineman and assistant coach at Wilson before succeeding Gurski as head coach in 1983. The Bulldogs’ streak of consecutive winning seasons nearly came to an end in Slemmer’s rookie season. They won five times and lost five times.
However, late in the season it was revealed that Norristown, which beat the Bulldogs 20-15 in Week 3, used an ineligible player and was forced to forfeit the victory. That left Slemmer’s final mark at 6-4 rather than 5-5.
Slemmer never had another similar close call. His 1986 team finished 6-5 but had clinched a winning record before dropping its final two games.
Gurski began his Wilson career with back-to-back 5-5 records. That might not seem like much for someone who eventually became known as the father of Wilson football but those .500 marks came on the heels of 1-7-1 and 1-8-1 records in West Lawn.
By 1966, his third season, Gurski had the Bulldogs machine up and running. They went 8-2 – the first of his 17 consecutive winning seasons. Wilson soon overtook Gov. Mifflin as the top dog in the Tri-County League and finished 10-0 in both 1967 and 1969.
Gurski guided Wilson to its first 11-0 season in 1978, the first of a four-year run which saw the Bulldogs go an incredible 43-2 – easily the greatest four-year mark in Berks history.
Two others came close to joining this prestigious list but come up a little short of the longevity criteria.
Dave Bodolus put together nine consecutive winning seasons at Daniel Boone in as impressive a coaching job as has ever been seen in this area. The Blazers were non-contenders when Bodolus came to Birdsboro in 2003; they had gone 2-9 the season before, their 13th straight losing season.
Bodolus took the Blazers to a 6-5 record in his first season, then took the program to another level, winning eight or more games for the next eight seasons. They won the Berks Section 2 title in 2004 and shared the Berks I title in 2006 at a time when that section was filled with heavyweight teams and Hall of Fame coaches such as Yocum, Mick Vecchio of Gov. Mifflin, Kevin Keating of Pottsville, Al Moyer of Conrad Weiser, and Chuck Kutz of Blue Mountain.
Boone again shared the Section 1 title in 2010; in Bodolus’ final two seasons the Blazers went 21-4.
Overall, Bodolus had a .738 winning percentage at Boone. In the 13 seasons since he left Boone has a .313 winning percentage. In the 13 seasons before he arrived Boone had a .285 winning percentage.
Cantafio coached Wilson for eight seasons, from 1998-2005, between Slemmer and Dahms. His teams won or shared four section titles and finished with a .784 winning percentage.
Consecutive winning seasons
| Coach | Seasons | School | Years |
| John Yocum | 20 | Muhlenberg | 1989-2008 |
| Doug Dahms | 19 | Wilson | 2006-2024 |
| John Gurski | 17 | Wilson | 1963-1982 |
| Bob Wolfrum | 17 | Wyomissing | 1987-2003 |
| Gerry Slemmer | 15 | Wilson | 1983-1997 |
| Rick Keeley | 15 | H. Name/Berks Cath. | 2007-2021 |
| Ray Linn | 15 | W. Reading/Gov. Mifflin | 1951-54, 1956-66 |
| Matt Bauer | 14 | Exeter | 2011-2024 |
| Mick Vecchio | 13 | Gov. Mifflin | 2004-2015, 2017 |
| Bob Wolfrum | 11 | Wyomissing | 2014-2024 |
| Alan Moyer | 10 | Conrad Weiser | 2007-2016 |