Former Wyanet, Hall coaches to be inducted into Illinois Football Coaches Hall of Fame

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Two coaches with Bureau County ties are among 17 coaches to be inducted into the Illinois Football Coaches Association Hall of Fame on April 5 in Champaign.

William Evans, who was head coach at Wyanet from 1978-81 and has been head coach at Bridgeport Red Hill since 1982, will be joined by former Hall assistant and Ottawa head coach, Tim Jobst, for induction.

Evans had a 12-24 record at Wyanet from 1978-81. The Eagles went 5-4 in 1980, but 1-8 in his final season, the next.

The best part of Wyanet, he says, was the friendships he formed there and still enjoys today. He still exchanges Christmas cards with many people from Wyanet and opens his doors to Wyanet people driving through over the winter on the way south.

“The people at Wyanet are some of the best people I’ve been around,” he said from his home in Bridgeport, where he is retired from teaching and works part-time as athletic director. “They were very caring up there. My wife and I were recently married, and I can’t stress, enough, the importance of those people in our lives. We were a long way from our home in Terre Haute, but those people made us feel as one of their own. They really helped us mature a lot, as young as we were.”

The Evanses wanted to move a little closer to home, with their parents getting older, and Bill got the head coaching job at Red Hill. He wasn’t sure what he was getting into.

“They had one winning season in 15 years before I got there, and we proceed to go 0-9. I said, ‘We’re closer to home, babe, but not having any fun.’”

Evans went to work putting in a junior football program and has been blessed with assistants who have stuck with him for years. He said they started to become competitive about 1992 after moving into the Little Illini Conference.

He has just completed his 25th season at Red Hill, 35th overall, won two championships and has been the coach of all nine of the Salukis’ playoff teams since 1996. The Salukis’ best year was 1996 when they reached the 3A quarterfinals. Red Hill won their first 10 games in 2006 before falling in the second round of the 2A playoffs and went 8-3 last season.

He said he was somewhat surprised to be inducted, but it’s just a matter of “what you’ve done and where you’ve been.”

He added, “I think it’d be a surprised to anyone except somebody that wins five or six state championships or goes undefeated 10 times in their coaching career.”

The Red Hill coach found more humor when he was listed as being head coach at Red Bud in the IFCA press release. It was Red Bud that beat Red Hill in the playoffs this year.

“At least they got the Red right,” he said.

Evans just turned 57. He and his wife have two children, Scott, 25, who is the sports manager for the Philadelphia Phillies new Triple A team the, Allen-town Iron Pigs, and Ashley, 24, who is a first-year teacher.

Jobst started out his career on the sophomore level at Hall, along with his twin brother, Tom. He taught PE.

“They were all business, there was no messing around,” retired Hall athletic director Frank Colmone said. “They came up in the (Bill) Novak era on all those good Ottawa teams and it carried over with them.”

According to Colmone, Tom applied for head job at Hall when Dan Darlington left for Morris, but Lou Zecca got the job. Tom left Hall for a head job in the Springfield area, and Tim left to take over as head coach at Kewanee Wethersfield.

After one year (4-6) at Wethersfield, Tim Jobst went to Marseilles, where he had a 19-35 record from 1976-83 as head coach. When Marseilles consolidated into the Ottawa district, he joined the Pirates staff. In 1995, his third year after taking over the Pirates’ helm from his brother, Tom, he led Ottawa to a 11-0 start before falling to Mt. Carmel in the 5A quarterfinals.

Jobst retired as head coach at Ottawa in 2005. He compiled a 74-54 record in 13 seasons with seven playoff teams.

Other coaches to be inducted include Jim Proud, who retired in 2006 after 33 years at Fulton, and former Geneseo coach Denny Diericx.

• Illinois coach Ron Zook and Northern Illinois’ Joe Novak are the schedule featured speakers for the IFCA program in Champaign.

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