Bob Hillegas remembered as teacher, coach at Boyertown
2023 Berks football coverage presented by
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Bob Hillegas coached many sports at Boyertown, including football, but he is remembered most as a teacher.
“He was a teacher first,” according to a post on bashfootball.com announcing the passing of the Boyertown icon earlier this week. “He was a teacher of various sports but more importantly a teacher of life. At the end of every Friday night, win or lose, there was a lesson about life. Coach will live on for a long time because the lessons he taught us we will pass down to the next generation.”
Hillegas was a Hall of Fame pick at both Boyertown and at Kutztown University, where he played defensive back, quarterback and running back.
He was a football coach at Boyertown for 23 seasons, including eight as head coach, from 1987-1994. His teams in 1989 and 1991 each finished 9-2. He was an assistant coach on the 1977 squad which won the last of Boyertown’s three Ches-Mont League championships.
He was a senior captain on the first of those championship teams, in 1962.
Hillegas was a three-year letterman in football, basketball and baseball at Boyertown from 1960-63.
Boyertown’s Offensive Player of the Year award was named in his honor: The Bob Hillegas Award.
Hillegas played football at Kutztown University from 1966-68, was a team captain as a senior, and was inducted into its Hall of Fame in 1984.
He coached football, basketball, baseball and softball, was a geography teacher in the Boyertown district for more than three decades and served as social studies department leader at Boyertown Junior High East.
Hillegas began his coaching career with the Kutztown freshmen team. He was an assistant coach from 1968-71 at Chester High, from 1971-73 at Reading High, defensive coordinator at Boyertown from 1973-81 and an assistant at Albright College from 1982-83.
