Rick Keeley made the most of his 60 years playing, coaching football
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Rick Keeley went out on top, with a trophy in his hands and a smile on his face.
“Not everybody gets to do that,” said the Berks Catholic football coach Wednesday morning after announcing an end to his 60-year association with football, including a Berks-record 38 as a head coach.
The only head coach the Saints have ever known took his team to seven straight District 3 championship games, something no other Berks football coach has ever done. His team won four of them and was the first from Berks to win three in a row, from 2015-17.
Keeley’s last two teams each finished the regular season with a losing record but wrapped things up with an Eastern Conference championship, a postseason format for teams which don’t qualify for their district tournament.
“I enjoyed that as much as any district championship that I was involved in,” Keeley said of the Saints’ 40-21 win over Hamburg in the Class 3A championship game. “Absolutely. To see the kids achieve to the level that they can. And they had to play well, and come back, to make it happen.
“I enjoyed it on the field with the kids, getting a trophy, and the medals. It was just a good feeling.”
Keeley was familiar with the highs and lows throughout a 48-year coaching career that began at his alma mater, St. Pius, as an assistant for his high school coach, the legendary Jim Mich.
The highs include 280 victories – fourth-most among District 3 coaches — five district championships and 11 league championships.
He was named Coach of the Year 10 times by his peers.
Among the lows was a 1-10 finish in his third year as a head coach at Holy Name.
The fact that he often talks about it – and brought it up again Wednesday, after informing his players of his retirement – says all you need to know about Rick Keeley, the man and the coach.
He took over as Blue Jays head coach in 1986, succeeding Russ Rudy. The Blue Jays won three Inter-County League championships under Rudy and Keeley decided he wasn’t going to change things in the program. He continued to run the Split Back Veer, which Rudy had implemented.
“Our first season, we went 7-4 and qualified for playoffs,” Keeley recalled. “The next year, we set the school record with 11 wins and I’m thinking: ‘Boy, I’m pretty good at this.’ But the next year we didn’t have an option quarterback and we went 1-10.”
Keeley acted no differently throughout the 1-10 season than he did in going 11-2 the year before. That earned him undying respect from his players and the coaches around him.
Bill Hess, Berks Catholic’s athletic director and the starting center on Holy Name’a 10-loss team, later told Keeley: “You had us believing every week that we could win, and that’s what a coach does.”
Keeley took a negative and made it a positive; that’s part of the legacy he leaves behind.
“Scott Charles (a former Holy Name assistant coach) told me once: ‘I watched you coach an 11-win championship team; I watched you coach a 1-10 team. And you coach exactly the same. I can’t tell if you’re winning or if you’re losing. You’re coaching.’ ”
Keeley shrugged off credit for his better teams, often saying: “It’s not the X’s and O’s, it’s the Jimmys and Joes.”
He was always more concerned about the development of his players as people than he was about what the scoreboard looked like at the end of a Friday night.
He played for and learned from two of Pennsylvania’s greatest coaches, Mich and George Baldwin at what is now Kutztown University. He shared those lessons over parts of six decades with generations of student-athletes, many of whom came back to coach with him at Holy Name or Berks Catholic, where he has coached the past 13 seasons.
“Coach Baldwin told us once: ‘We need good citizens on the team if we’re gonna win.’ That just stuck with me,” Keeley said. “I talk to my teams about being a good citizen: ‘Do what’s right. If it’s almost right, don’t do it, it’s wrong. Be where you’re supposed to be, when you’re supposed to be there.’ ”
Where he’s supposed to be now is with his wife Sharon, his four children and 13 grandchildren. He retired from the classroom two years ago. Now he’s about to find out what it’s really like to be retired.
Wednesday afternoon that meant babysitting duty. Come this weekend, when he turns 70, that will mean youth soccer and flag football games. Soon after it will mean travel, including to Texas where his oldest, Amy and four grandchildren live.
“This will be a good time (to leave Berks Catholic), with us going into a new section (of the Lancaster-Lebanon League),” Keeley said. “It was a good time to make this decision.”
Hess said a search will soon begin for the Saints next head coach; it’s expected to be Dave Stahler, who played for Keeley at Holy Name. Stahler has been the Saints offensive coordinator and several years ago was elevated to Associate Head Coach.
Shortly after graduating from college Keeley got a phone call from Mich, asking him to help out at summer practices. A year later he was the Winged Lions’ defensive line coach.
After two years at St. Pius was hired as a teacher and assistant football coach at Holy Name in 1978. He never imagined he would remain on the sidelines for so long.
Keeley’s exit is no surprise. He retired as a teacher in 2021 and hinted that he was coming close to the end when he was inducted into the Pennsylvania Football Coaches Hall of Fame in 2022.
That was his fifth Hall of Fame, after being inducted into Holy Name’s, the Berks Coach’s, the Tri-County’s, and the Berks Chapter of the Pennsylvania HOF.
“To me,” Keeley once said, “if you get the most out of your kids, that’s success. When you have talent, you’re going to win. When you don’t have a lot of talent and other teams do, you’re probably not going to win.”
