This Rick Keeley is a Hall of a guy
Full disclosure: I like Rick Keeley.
I mean, it would be hard not to. You will never meet a more positive, friendly, caring soul in your life. Except for 10 or 12 Friday nights a year, when he’s on the sideline coaching football for Berks Catholic, he always has a smile on his face.
Come game time Rick is all business; he wears that game face. As soon as it’s over, it’s over. He’s the Good Humor Man again.
After a tough game, in the most difficult of times, that everlasting smile is there. After a loss he will find something positive to say about his guys. He’ll be certain to tell you how good the other team played, too.
Rick is on a short list of people I consider friends. Other than at football events we don’t socialize together; when you’re in my business you’re not supposed to hang out with the people you’re writing about. It’s better for both sides that way.
Still, our lives have been intertwined for decades.
I covered his teams at Holy Name in his first season as coach there, 1986. I wrote about each of his four children when they played for the Blue Jays. He taught my girls at Holy Name; his wife Sharon taught them before that at St. Ignatius. His daughters babysat my girls.
Before he moved we attended the same church and shopped at the same grocery store. We bumped into each other in the Tastykake section more than once.
I’ve written about Rick and his teams at the best of times . . . and the worst.
I was at Hersheypark Stadium when Holy Name, after losses in each of its first five District 3 championship games, won a title in its final try.
I was there the next week sharing a bittersweet moment after the Blue Jays’ final game, in their first state playoff game.
I was there when Issac Lutz made those incredible catches in the final minute at Wyomissing to pull out a 19-14 victory that clinched a perfect season . . . and a couple weeks later when the Spartans denied the unbeaten Saints a District 3 championship.
A year later the roles reversed: Wyomissing won the season-ending battle of unbeatens against Berks Catholic, only to lose to Keeley’s Saints a few weeks later in the district championship game.
Through it all Rick was the same.
He’s been through the good and bad, time and again.
His second team at Holy Name won a league championship and set a program record for wins. The next year his team set the program record for losses.
He was just as gracious after each of those losses as he was after each of the wins the year before.
An assistant once told him: “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.”
In addition to humility, Rick learned long ago that there’s only so much you can do as a coach. You work with and prepare you kids as much as possible during the week but come Friday night it’s up to them to succeed or not.
“When you have talent, you’re going to win,” Rick will tell you. “When you don’t have a lot of talent and other teams do, you’re probably not going to win. To me, if you get the most out of your kids, that’s success.”
I mentioned the most difficult of times . . . nothing can come close to when he learned that one of his players had inoperable brain cancer. How does life prepare you for something like that?
Like the rest of us Rick was devastated when he learned about Anthony Myers, who was diagnosed with brain cancer midway through his sophomore season.
You could see the hurt in his eyes and hear it in his voice when he talked about Anthony; he was truly pained. He leaned on his deep faith and handled that delicate situation with grace.
Rick has a way of making the people around him feel better about themselves.
Once, after one of his powerful Berks Catholic teams hammered a struggling, undermanned Kutztown team, Rick went into the other team’s postgame huddle and delivered a pep talk. He told the visiting players to keep the faith and to keep working. He didn’t want them to feel beaten.
Who else does that?
Rick’s been coaching and teaching young people for a long time. He’s coached more football seasons than anyone in Berks County history. He’s making plans for his 48th season, and 38th as a head coach.
He’s won 275 games, 11 league championships and five district titles. He’s been named Coach of the Year 10 times.
He’s already been inducted into four Halls of Fame: Holy Name’s, the Berks Coach’s, the Tri-County and the Berks Chapter of the Pennsylvania HOF.
If there was a Good Guy’s Hall of Fame Rick would’ve been a charter member.
Today he’ll enter his fifth hall, when he’s inducted into the Pennsylvania Scholastic Football Coaches Association Hall of Fame before the Big 33 Classic in Harrisburg.
When asked several months ago who he would like to present him for this honor he picked his high coach at St. Pius X, the legendary Jim Mich.
It was Mich and the other teacher/coaches at Pius staff who inspired Rick’s life work. He wanted to be just like them, and has.
After leaving St. Pius Rick played at Kutztown State (now Kutztown University) where he found another role model and mentor for life, George Baldwin.
Like Mich, Baldwin left an indelible impression; his words and actions have been passed on to generations of students whose lives Rick has touched.
Baldwin believed good football teams began with good citizens and Rick has carried on that thought.
“I talk to my team about being a good citizen,” he said. “Be where you’re supposed to be, when you’re supposed to be there. Do what’s right. If it’s almost right, don’t do it — it’s wrong.”
